The traditional vegetarians – improving attitudes toward vegetarians through emphasizing similarities between vegetarianism and traditional fasting

ABSTRACT

The modern choices of diet are often perceived at odds with the traditional worldviews. This study aimed to test the possibility of improving attitudes toward vegetarians by emphasizing the similarity between vegetarianism and religious fasting. We expected the effects of induction to be moderated by endorsement of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation (SDO-D and SDO-E). Participants (N = 246) were randomly divided into three groups that all read a text about a traditional birthday celebration. The control group read a text about the celebration with meat-based meals, one experimental group read about a celebration with meatless dishes. In the second experimental group it was emphasized that the host became a vegetarian after years of religious fasting. Both inductions improved attitudes toward vegetarians. Only SDO-D proved to be a significant moderator, with induction exhibiting a significant effect at higher levels of SDO-D. The findings inform public communications about reducing meat consumption.

KEYWORDS:

• Vegetarianism
• attitudes toward vegetarians
• SDO
• RWA
• intergroup relations
• ethnic identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/mw32d; https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/MW32D and https://aspredicted.org/k3vr7.pdf.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/mw32d; https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/MW32D and https://aspredicted.org/k3vr7.pdf.

Graph 1. Moderation effect of RWA.

Graph 2. Moderation effect of SDO dominance.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Anastasija Budžak

Anastasija Budžak is a research assistant at the Faculty of Media and Communications and a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, Serbia. Her main fields of interest are human-animal interaction and inter-group perception and relations.

Marija Branković

Marija Branković is a research associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory and an associate professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications in Belgrade, Serbia. She conducts research related to social identities, inter-group relations, and human-animal interaction.