Those who request vegetarian meals in social situations such as at dinner parties and the pub are perceived more positively if they make the request for health rather than environmental reasons.
This is one of the key findings of a new research paper from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) published in Nature Scientific Reports.
As reducing meat consumption is one of the most impactful ways individuals can reduce their carbon footprint, the researchers set out to explore some of the social barriers facing those wanting to eat less meat.
With a sample of 1,117 UK-based meat eaters, the researchers presented hypothetical situations of people requesting vegetarian meals across four social meal settings (a dinner party, BBQ, pub meal and restaurant). They then analysed the respondents’ perceptions of and emotional responses to the meal requesters.
They found that people requesting a vegetarian meal are perceived as less judgmental, less self-righteous, less preachy, less superior, more intelligent and more inspiring when they mention health motives for their request compared to none.
In contrast, they are perceived to be more judgmental, self-righteous, preachy, and less modest when they mention environmental motives compared to none. However, they are also perceived to be more intelligent and more moral.
In the paper, the researchers outline possible reasons for this behaviour: “Meat eaters feel interested and less irritated by those with health reasons for their diet, and guilty and ashamed when the requestor mentions environmental motives.
“This is suggestive of cognitive dissonance, or the ‘meat paradox’ whereby some people may want to eat meat but are aware of the environmental impact of doing so and do not want to contribute to climate change. Health reasons for not eating meat are more personal and do not infer a moral obligation on others to make similar choices.”
The researchers also found that meat eaters are more interested and inspired when an individual requests a vegetarian meal option because they are reducing their meat consumption (rather than cutting it out completely) compared to when no diet is stated. The researchers believe this is because cutting back on meat consumption and adopting a more flexitarian diet is seen as less extreme and more aspirational.
They also found a respondents’ level of ‘meat attachment’ strongly predicts their responses to a vegetarian meal requester. People who have a positive bond to meat consumption (measured by assessing how much they derive pleasure, have a fondness towards, feel entitled to and are dependent on meat consumption) tend to respond with higher levels of distress, upset, hostility, and irritability to a vegetarian meal request.
As a result, the researchers advise: “Mentioning the motive behind a vegetarian meal request can help or hinder depending on the motive and the company a person is in. In choosing if or when to explain motives, it is important to pick one’s battles.”
Commenting on the results and their wider significance, paper co-author Dr Kate Laffan from the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science said: “We know that social situations throw up some of the biggest challenges for people looking to reduce or eliminate their meat consumption. Our results indicate that these challenges people face when making vegetarian meal requests are amplified by mentioning environmental motives and when doing so in the company of people who are very attached to eating meat.
“Given that other work finds that many people are unaware of the extent of the environmental impacts of meat consumption, an important next step for our research is to investigate how to approach these interactions in ways that can raise awareness of environmental motives for eating less meat without eliciting negative responses among meat eaters.”