STUDY: Unwelcome Reminders – Meat Imagery And Antiveg*n Sentiments
Eliciting distress for meat-eaters and empathy for the animals worked to increase animal empathy. Both negative and positive emotions are important for influencing perceptions and attitudes.
CELINE ICARD-STOLL: ‘Does reminding people that the meat on their plate came from an animal have any influence on their attitudes toward veg*ns?… Could a shift in perspective help to reduce these sentiments? In this study, a team of British and Canadian researchers sought to investigate whether highlighting the connection between meat and animals could lead to decreased meat consumption as well as increased empathy for veg*ns. The driving concept behind this research is the “meat paradox.”
At the heart of it is the idea that many people do indeed find the idea of consuming animals to be distressing. People do not want to harm animals but nonetheless consume them and their byproducts. To circumvent this conflict, humans distance themselves (psychologically and physically) from the origins of their meat through factory farms, which keep the raising and slaughtering process away from the public eye, and the butchering process, which makes the end-resulting meat appear nothing like the animal it originated from through skinning and cutting.
Previous research has demonstrated that reminding people of the animal origins of their meat, (forming “animal-meat associations”), increases empathy and decreases desire for meat. The present research sought to extend those findings, examining whether distress for consuming meat and empathy for animals were mediators between animal-meat associations and willingness to consume meat. Further, the researchers examined whether increased animal-meat associations would decrease antiveg*n attitudes as a byproduct of increased pro-animal sentiments…
For animal advocates, there are several fascinating takeaways from these studies. First, the fact that both distress and empathy worked to increase animal empathy suggests that both negative and positive emotions are important for influencing perceptions and attitudes. Those who practice advocacy through animal-meat reminders such as signs, social media posts, etc. may be encouraged to find out that these do indeed affect viewers’ ideas of meat.
For veg*ns, knowing that increased distress and empathy predict less antiveg*n attitudes might inform the way you explain your lifestyle to others, as well as the way you approach your meat-eating friends and family… Coupling this with previous research that shows increased negative attitudes to veg*ns for moral reasons (versus veg*ans for health reasons) may help you navigate antiveg*n prejudice better’. SOURCE…
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