BEAUTY IN THE BEAST: Vegans seen as moral but also face contempt from meat-eaters
In the study, vegans and people who eat plant-based food were perceived by meat-eaters as being 'moral and environmentally and health-conscious, and worthy of admiration'. However, they also produced feelings of 'envy, fear, contempt and anger' in observers. It seems that meat-eaters feel bad when they see vegans making changes that they haven’t made themselves, and which may cause them to 'turn'.
SOPHIE FREEMAN: Vegans and people who embrace meat alternatives elicit fear and contempt from others, a study has suggested. Researchers asked 3,600 people from four European countries including the UK to evaluate people who eat plant-based food. While they were perceived as “moral and environmentally and health-conscious, and worthy of admiration”, they also produced feelings of “envy, fear, contempt and anger” in observers. It’s thought that meat-eaters feel bad when they see vegans making changes that they haven’t made themselves, causing them to “turn”.
Roosa-Maaria Malila, the co-author of the study, from the University of Vaasa in Finland, said that because of the environmental impact associated with eating meat “consumers can feel pressured to reduce the consumption of meat but still fail to incorporate these new consumption habits”.
She added: “Therefore, when seeing others apply more sustainable ways of consuming food eg consuming meat alternatives, which still feels like something unknown for the individual, it can evoke negative emotions — anger, contempt, fear and envy.”
She said that it was a form of “rivalry” between those consuming in a traditional way and those embracing more sustainable options such as plant-based meat alternatives made of soy, fava beans, pea protein, oats, legumes and tofu.
For the study, published in the journal Food Quality and Preference, Malila and her team asked 900 people from the UK, 900 from Finland, 900 from Germany and 900 from Sweden to evaluate a fictional consumer based on their shopping list.
They were randomly assigned to evaluate a shopper whose list contained either meatballs and sausage (the meat shopper); chicken balls and vegetarian sausage (the flexible shopper); or plant-protein balls and vegetarian sausage (the meat-alternative shopper)…
The meat-alternative consumer was viewed as more “competent” but less “warm” — a finding psychologists said indicates “envious prejudice”. They added: “Groups perceived in this way are commonly seen as competitors.”
The shopper buying only meat was rated lowest for environmental friendliness and health orientation, while the meat-alternative consumer was rated the highest for these qualities. The shopper buying only meat provoked the least contempt, but was the least admired, while people were “more inclined to consider harming” the meat-alternative shopper compared with the other two…
The team wrote in their paper, called “Meat-alternative consumers still frowned upon in Europe”, that while “interest in the development, production, and supply of meat alternatives has risen significantly during the last decade, their consumption remains low, accounting for only 0.7 per cent of the total EU meat market”. One of the ways plant-based diets could be promoted, they said, was to portray these consumers in “softer and warmer terms”.
Previous studies had found that eating “indulgent” food signals interpersonal warmth, so plant-eaters should be depicted as “the kind of people who care about others and enjoy life to the fullest, especially by eating indulgent, yet plant-based foods”. SOURCE…
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