Attitudes toward vegans can be markedly ambivalent. On the one hand, vegans may evoke admiration for their commitment in caring for animals; On the other hand, when vegans use animal ethics as reasons to advocate for vegan diets, they are subjected to stigmatization for appearing to display moralistic traits indicating arrogance and overcommitment. Thus, by stereotyping vegan advocates as being overcommitted, omnivores can justify the idea that veganism is impossible to maintain.
BEN DE GROEVE: Attitudes toward vegans can be markedly ambivalent. On the one hand, vegans may evoke admiration among omnivores for their moral commitment to their vegan diet and lifestyle. On the other hand, vegans may be subjected to stigmatization for appearing to display moralistic traits indicating arrogance and overcommitment. This ambivalence in stereotypical impressions has recently been termed the “vegan paradox” and is theorized to stem from the cognitive dissonance people may feel from eating meat: Omnivores may view vegans as morally committed because they embody care for animals, but defend their own dietary preferences by negatively stereotyping vegans as arrogantly overcommitted…
Although promoting vegan diets does not seem inherently arrogant or overcommitted, when vegans use animal ethics reasons to advocate for vegans diets, they clearly break social norms and confront omnivores with animal harms so that they feel or anticipate moral rejection. Consequently, omnivores may engage in ego-defensive processing by projecting arrogant stereotypes to vegans. Furthermore, stereotyping animal ethics vegan advocates as overcommitted may justify the idea that veganism is superfluous or impossible to maintain.
Similarly, viewing vegans as a cultural threat has been shown to predict negative stereotyping. Carnism – the prevailing belief system of the omnivorous majority that entails the premise of human dominance over animals and legitimizing animal-product consumption as a harmless, cherished given – reinforces the idea that vegan advocates lack moral legitimacy to challenge the omnivorous diet and thus justify animal ethics advocacy as moralistic virtue-signaling. In contrast, when compared to a vegan advocate motivated by health reasons, we expected that omnivores would feel less morally judged and stereotype vegans less strongly as arrogant and overcommitted.
Omnivores may view health vegans more favorably than animal rights vegans; health reasons for vegan diets are more mainstream and perceived as more engaging and credible. Whereas moral persons are highly attractive, arrogant and overcommitted people are more likely to push others away. We thus expected that both perceived arrogance and overcommitment would decrease the advocates’ social attractiveness and, consequently, omnivores’ willingness to change their diet. SOURCE…
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