Meat and interpersonal motives: the case of self-enhancement

ABSTRACT

Meat eaters have a more hierarchical, less egalitarian view at the world than vegetarians. This can be manifested in social dominance orientation, at the intergroup level, but also at the interspecies level, yielding more empathy with nonhuman animals, and at the interpersonal level. We examined if interpersonal motives in human–human relationships and empathy with people are associated with frequency of meat eating, using a cross-sectional survey (N = 580). For the motives power and affiliation, no significant relationships emerged, but the self-enhancement motive was positively related to the number of days that participants ate meat. This predicted additional variance over and above variables at the intergroup and interspecies level, such as social dominance orientation and human-animal continuity. Empathy with people was negatively related to meat consumption, but this was explained by its correlation with empathy with animals. Discussion focuses on the importance of the self-enhancement motive in attachment to meat, the symbol of human superiority, as well as resistance to meat refusers.

KEYWORDS:

• Meat consumption
• interpersonal motives
• self-enhancement
• empathy
• social dominance orientation
• speciesism

People differ in their orientation toward the world: On one end of a continuum, they have an egalitarian perspective, oriented toward establishing with whom they want to connect (or disconnect), on a basis of equality. On the other end, their perspective is hierarchical, focused on who can dominate whom. We propose that these individual differences can manifest at three different levels.

At the interpersonal level, they are related to empathy toward others, as well as with basic human motives, such as affiliation versus power (McClelland, 1985). Presumably, the affiliation motive is associated with empathy with other people (e.g., Zaki, 2014), whereas the power motive is associated with a need to dominate and feel superior to others, i.e., self-enhancement (e.g., Alicke & Sedikides, 2009; Cannon & Rucker, 2022).

At the intergroup level, these differences are described by the concept of Social Dominance Orientation (SDO; Pratto et al., 1994; cf., Kteily et al., 2012): People higher in SDO tend to see groups as differing in status and entitled privileges, with some groups being superior to others. This view leads to higher endorsement of social hierarchy and inequality between groups and also to racism (e.g., Ho et al., 2015) and ethnocentrism (e.g., Pratto & Glasford, 2008). At the other end, those lower in SDO regard different groups as equal in worth, with no group dominating other groups in an ideal world.

Finally, a similar distinction appears to operate at the interspecies level. The hierarchical view here is that humans are the peak of evolution, with a large gap between homo sapiens and other species (e.g., Bastian et al., 2012). This view justifies that other animals are exploited for human purposes (i.e, speciesism; Caviola et al., 2019). In an egalitarian view, humans are part of the natural world in which different species co-exist, each with their own qualities and their right to live, without one being more worthy or entitled than another.

Empirically, there is evidence that variables across these three different levels correlate with each other, and also with attitudes toward climate and environmental protection, animal exploitation and meat eating. While the SDO concept was developed in the domain of intergroup relations, it appears to be similarly useful in explaining attitudes at the interspecies level, such as attitudes toward animals (Dhont & Hodson, 2014; Dhont et al., 2014; Graça et al., 2018) and the natural environment (Milfont et al., 2013; Milfont & Sibley, 2014, 2016). As noted by Allen et al. (2000, p. 411), the “desire for dominance appears to go beyond the human sphere and into that of animals and nature.” Specifically, individuals higher on SDO are more dismissive about the protection of climate, nature, and animal welfare, because this could threaten the status quo (e.g., Clarke et al., 2019; cf., Feygina et al., 2010) in a world characterized by hierarchy – with the human species on top, dominating the rest of the world.

Meat eating symbolizes this dominance and superiority (Allen et al., 2000). So, not surprisingly, several studies have shown a relationship between SDO and meat consumption (e.g., Allen & Baines, 2002; Allen et al., 2000; Dhont & Hodson, 2014; Wilson & Allen, 2007). Vegetarians and vegans, on the other hand, have a more egalitarian view on other groups as well as other species (cf., Caviola et al., 2019; Hodson & Costello, 2018; Veser et al., 2015). Similarly, prejudice toward and dehumanization of other human groups (intergroup level) is associated with a human-animal divide belief system (interspecies level; Costello & Hodson, 2010, 2014), i.e., the view that there is a large and profound gap between humans and other animals, as opposed to a gradual continuum of different species, with no sharp distinction between humans and other animals: Human-Animal Continuity (HAC). Thus, the connection between attitudes toward hierarchy and egalitarianism at the group level and at the interspecies level has been well established.

Previous studies also show a link between hierarchical attitudes at the intergroup level and the interpersonal level. First, lower SDO has been found to be associated with more interest in feelings (e.g., Allen et al., 2000) and more empathy with other individuals (Sidanius et al., 2013; cf., Sherman et al., 2015). With their more egalitarian look at the world, people lower in SDO are presumably more oriented toward connecting with others – the horizontal, egalitarian dimension of social interaction – than establishing who dominates whom – the vertical, hierarchical dimension. Second, there is indirect evidence that people higher in SDO are more strongly motivated by the need for power and dominance, whereas those lower in SDO have a stronger affiliation motive. Several studies found that political conservatives rate higher on SDO (e.g., Dhont & Hodson, 2014; Wilson & Sibley, 2013) and are also more power-oriented than liberals, who are more affiliation-oriented (Fetterman et al., 2015). Similarly, higher SDO may be associated with a stronger motive toward self-enhancement in interpersonal relations: With a more hierarchical view on human relations, it may also be more important to see oneself as better than others, rather than connecting with others on an egalitarian basis.

Little research has been conducted on the connection between the interpersonal and interspecies level. In the present study, we aim to explore how individual differences in interpersonal orientation are associated with interspecies attitudes and meat eating. Our study started from the assumption that an egalitarian outlook on human–human relations extends to human–animal relations, so that animals are seen as individuals with their own personal characteristics (“someone, not something”), as companions (“friends, not food”) and as part of the natural world in which we all coexist. People with higher SDO, on the other hand, tend to objectify animals more and regard them in a more instrumental way. For instance, Graça et al. (2018) showed that SDO as well as lower empathy with people are associated with human supremacy beliefs and favorable attitudes toward animal exploitation.

We expected that these relations are also reflected in meat consumption, because (a) if the feelings of human individuals are not considered, then those of animals certainly won’t, and (b) meat is implicitly seen as a symbol of people’s power over the natural world (Adams, 2020; Allen et al., 2000), so eating it underscores one’s dominant status. Note that at present, the evidence regarding the role of empathy is not yet conclusive, because empathy with animals and with people are moderately correlated (Norring et al., 2014; Paul, 2000; Taylor & Signal, 2005). Our study included measures of both empathy with animals (interspecies) and with people (interpersonal), to examine if empathy with people has a unique relationship with meat eating, over and above its overlap with empathy with animals.

Because empathy is primarily an affective measure, we also included a cognitive measure at the interspecies level, the Human-Animal Continuity scale (HAC; Costello & Hodson, 2010; Templer et al., 2006), about how people look at the similarities and differences between human and non-human animals. Presumably, people with a hierarchical outlook, tend to perceive a fundamental and large gap between the two, with humans having unique characteristics that make them superior and legitimize their exploitation of animals. In a strictly egalitarian view, on the other hand, there is no dichotomy and humans are just another animal species. We expected this variable to be related to meat consumption too, and also to the interpersonal motives.

In sum, we examined the relations of meat eating with a hierarchical versus egalitarian perspective at three different levels, two of which (intergroup and interspecies) have already been established in previous research. Our main goal was to explore the role of variables at the interpersonal level (self-motives and empathy with people) and to demonstrate that, in addition to the group (SDO) and interspecies level (HAC and empathy with animals), they yield an additional contribution in explaining meat eating. More generally, our goal was to examine all three levels in association with meat eating, to demonstrate their interconnections, because this has not been done in earlier studies.

Method

Measures and procedure

The study was conducted in The Netherlands, online via Qualtrics, as part of a larger study with other measures not described here (but see supplementary materials). All existing English scales were translated to Dutch via forward-backward translation by independent pairs of students. Five students pretested all measures for clarity among their acquaintances, family and fellow students.

After a brief introduction and informed consent, the first part of the study included the SDO scale (10 items from the SDO-5¹; Sidanius & Pratto, 2001, pp. 67, λ2 = .82), rated on 7-point response scales. The scales for interpersonal motives were based on Hill (1987) and Schönbrodt and Gerstenberg (2012). Participants were asked to indicate the importance of different goals in their everyday lives on 7-point scales: three goals for Power (e.g., “Having the possibility to influence people”), three for Self-Enhancement (e.g., “Impressing people with what I do”), and four for Affiliation (e.g., “Developing close relationships with others”). All items are in the Supplementary Materials and in Table 1.

Table 1. Pattern matrix of motives after promax rotation.

For each goal, please indicate how important it is to you in general.	Factor
	1	2	3
Developing close relationships with others.	.85
Having close friendships.	.78
Getting to know other people very well.	.68
Having intimate one-on-one contact with someone.	.48
Achieving a higher status.		.90
Performing better than others.		.68
Impressing people with what I do.		.60
Being able to manage others’ activities.			.87
Leading others.			.50
Having the possibility to influence people.			.49

Factor loadings <.25 are not printed

To assess empathy with people, we selected items from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index by Davis (1983, translated by De Corte et al., 2007) and the Toronto Empathy Scales (Spreng et al., 2009). Most items were not suitable to create equivalent items for empathy with animals (e.g., “Before criticizing someone, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place”), so we also constructed new items for which we could make an animal equivalent, e.g., “I can get very upset when I see people (animals) suffer.” To construct the Empathy with Animals scale, we used items from existing scales for empathy with animals (Paul, 2000; Powell, 2010) as well as new items, in order to ensure optimal similarity with the Empathy with People items. Details and a table with all 39 items are in the supplementary materials.

To assess human-animal continuity (HAC), we selected and adapted items from existing scales that have been used to measure this variable or strongly related variables, such as Belief in Animal Mind (Hills, 1995, e.g., “Animals do not have consciousness”), Human-Animal Continuity (Templer et al., 2006; e.g., “Humans can think, animals cannot”), Animal-Human Similarity (Costello & Hodson, 2010; e.g., “The needs of people should always come before the needs of animals”), and Human Supremacy Beliefs (Dhont et al., 2014). The 16 items administered in this study are presented in the supplementary materials. Based on reliability analyses and content considerations, we created a short 8-item version of this scale with good reliability (λ₂ = .87).

Finally, as part of the background questions about demographics, participants were asked on how many days a week, on average, they ate meat, fish, poultry, vegetarian and vegan meals. Responses to each could range from 0 (never at all) to 7 days (every day). They were asked to consider all meals they eat on a typical day, including breakfast, lunch and snacks.² This measure is similar to the one used by Allen et al. (2000) except that theirs referred to the past three days.

Subsequently, participants were debriefed and given an opportunity to leave their e-mail address for participating in a lottery and/or receiving a report of the results.

Participants

The study was administered online. The sample size was not determined in advance; we recruited as many participants as we could, aiming to accomplish heterogeneity in the sample with respect to meat eating and attitudes toward animals. Participants were not told what the study was about, they were only told that it would take about 20 minutes and that five monetary prizes of 25 or 50 euros would be allotted among those who completed the study. They were approached via different channels. First, the study was mentioned on a national TV morning show. Second, students distributed flyers on campus and among their family and acquaintances. Third, the study was promoted on several different Facebook pages, both for animal lovers and groups like farmers and hunters (although the announcements were typically removed in less animal-friendly groups).

Altogether, 723 people participated up to at least the second questionnaire; 580 of them got to the final part with background questions and answered the questions about their eating habits. These were 217 men and 363 women, with a mean age of 39.9 (range 16–85, SD = 14.43). 25% of them had a right-wing political orientation, 52% left-wing, the remainder was in between. The 143 participants who did not answer the question about eating habits were retained in the analyses of variables that they did complete. On the scales administered in the first questionnaire, they did not differ from those who did complete the study.

Results

Factor analyses

Factor analysis on the interpersonal motives revealed the three scales as expected, see Table 1, with Eigen values of 3.13, 2.28, and 1.06. Self-Enhancement (Factor 2) and Power (Factor 3) correlated r = .47. Reliabilities of the three scales were λ₂ = .78 for Affiliation, λ₂ = .70 for Power, and λ₂ = .78 for Self-Enhancement. As expected, SDO correlated negatively with Affiliation, r = – .21, and positively with Power and Self-Enhancement, r = .22 and r = .33, all p < .001.

For the empathy scales, three factors were extracted based on the scree plot (Eigen values 12.15, 4.28, and 2.38). They could be interpreted as (1) Empathy with Animals, (2) Affective Empathy with People (empathic concern + personal distress), and (3) Cognitive Empathy with People (perspective taking). Five items that directly compared empathy with people and animals loaded primarily on the first factor. A separate factor analysis on the 20 animal empathy items (including these five) yielded a one-dimensional solution (Eigen values 11.18, 1.29, < 1). Thus, we did not find an affective-cognitive distinction in the empathy with animals items, but this can be explained by the fact that there were very few cognitive empathy items in the animal set. For most perspective taking items, it does not make sense to convert them to animals (e.g., ‘When I’m sure that I’m right, I don’t waste much time listening to other people’s arguments).³

Based on these analyses and reliability analyses, we computed three scales: Empathy with Animals (8 items, λ₂ = .95), Affective Empathy with People (9 items, λ₂ = .83), and Cognitive Empathy with People (perspective taking; 6 items, λ₂ = .74). The Empathy with Animals scale contains only empathic concern items (e.g., “I am often sad about how animals are treated in our world”), just as the Affective Empathy with People scale (e.g., ’Other people’s misfortunes don’t usually disturb me a great deal’); although the personal distress items loaded high on the same factor as the empathic concern items, they reduced the reliability in both the animal and people scale, so they were not included. Thus, both these scales represent affective empathy and, therefore, are comparable. They are presented in Appendix. In both scales, 4 items are human-animal equivalents, e.g., “I tend to want to protect and care for others (animals).”⁴

Factor analysis on the five items about eating habits yielded a one-dimensional solution explaining 46% of the variance, with the highest loading for the meat item (.86) and lower loadings for the others. For this reason, and because of its overlap with the number of vegetarian (r = – .67) and vegan meals consumed (r = – .44), we used only this item.⁵ On average, participants reported that they ate meat on 2.9 days a week (Mdn = 3; sd = 2.11). When excluding vegetarians (16% of this sample), the mean was 3.6 days (sd = 1.74). Eleven percent of all participants were high-frequency meat eaters (6 or 7 times a week).

Correlational and confirmatory analyses

Correlations of the number of meat days with the three motives and other variables are presented in Table 2. As expected, meat consumption correlates positively with the Self-Enhancement motive, but not with Power. The correlations of the motives with SDO show the expected pattern, with significant positive correlations for Power and Self-Enhancement, and a negative correlation for Affiliation. SDO is also related to meat eating. Meat eating correlates negatively with Empathy with Animals, more strongly than with the comparable Affective Empathy with People scale.

Table 2. Pearson correlations for number of meat days (Meat), affiliation, self-enhancement, power, Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), Affective Empathy with People (AEwP), Cognitive Empathy with People (CEwP), Empathy with Animals (EwA), and Human-Animal Continuity (HAC).

Variable	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
1. Meat	1
2. Affil.	−.08	1
3. Enhance	.23*	.08	1
4. Power	.07	.16*	.47*	1
5. SDO	.35*	−.21*	.33*	.22*	1
6. AEwP	−.26	.38*	−.16*	−.06	−.43*	1
7. CEwP	−.11	.31*	−.16*	−.01	−.28*	.35*	1
8. EwA	−.50*	.08	−.17*	−.10	−.31*	.42*	.12	1
9. HAC	−.50*	.06	−.20*	−.13	−.38*	.28*	.09	.71*	1

* p < .001 (two-tailed).

As noted in the introduction, affective empathy with people and empathy with animals are correlated (r = .42 in these data), so the correlation between empathy with people and meat eating can possibly be accounted for by the overlap with empathy with animals. Indeed, a linear regression model testing the effects of our main variables⁶ on days eating meat per week yielded a significant negative effect of empathy with animals, p < .001, but not of affective empathy with people, p = .939. On the interspecies level, we found a significant effect of HAC on meat consumption, p < .001. On the intergroup level, an effect of SDO was obtained, p < .001. Controlling for the variables on the interspecies and intergroup level, we also found a positive effect of the self-enhancement motive, p = .035. The complete model is presented in Table 3. It accounted for 32% of the variance in days eating meat and the model fit was significantly better than that of other models. (A comparison of different models is presented in the Supplementary materials)

Table 3. Standardized regression estimates (β) with number of days eating meat per week as dependent variable.

Independent variable	β	t(5, 574)
Interspecies
Empathy with animals	−.27*	−5.29
Human-animal continuity	−.23*	−4.59
Intergroup
Social dominance orientation	.15*	3.70
Interpersonal
Affective empathy with people	.00	0.08
Self-enhancement	.08	2.12

* p < .001 (two-tailed).

A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) with a categorical predictor distinguishing between vegetarians (people who reported eating meat zero times a week) and meat-eaters (people who reported eating meat at least once a week), confirmed these results. There was a multivariate significant effect of the predictor on the variables of interest (same as above), F(1,578) = 32.08, p < .001, with all univariate effects being significant at p < .001.

Path analysis

Although our study is correlational and does not allow any conclusions about the direction of the effects, we wanted to exploratively examine the structure of the relations we obtained. Following the ordering from interpersonal to interspecies variables, with meat eating at the level of interspecies, we conducted a path analysis involving the same variables as in the regression analysis above. We already know from the regression that there are small but significant direct effects of self-enhancement and SDO on meat eating, but we wanted to explore the intermediate steps in between, going from self-enhancement (interpersonal) via SDO (intergroup) via empathy with animals and HAC (interspecies) to meat eating as the dependent variable; see Figure 1.

Figure 1. Path model of the relations between interpersonal, intergroup and interspecies variables.

Values represent the β coefficients of the fully standardized solution. * p < .05; ** p < .001

The analysis was conducted using a robust maximum likelihood estimator in the lavaan package in R-studio (R Core Team, 2022; Rosseel, 2012; RStudio Team, 2022). The model fit the data well, χ²_robust(2) = 5.90 (p = .05); CFI_robust = .99; TLI_robust = 0.98; RMSEA_robust = .06; SRMR = .03. We found that the relationship between SDO and meat consumption was mediated by empathy with animals, β_indirect = .06; p = .001, as well as HAC, β_indirect = .12; p < .001. Thus, the total effect of SDO on meat consumption mounted to β = .33; p < .001. SDO in turn mediated the effect of self-enhancement on meat consumption, β_indirect = .11; p < .001. Standardized coefficients of the direct pathways are presented in Figure 1.

Discussion

This study examined meat consumption as a function of a hierarchical versus egalitarian stance at three different levels. At the interspecies level, a hierarchical perspective is reflected in perceiving the human species as superior to other animals, thereby legitimizing that we eat them. At the intergroup level, people regard certain groups as better and more deserving than others. And at the interpersonal level, which has not been studied before, we hypothesized that eating meat is associated with a preference to see oneself as superior, rather than relate to others on a basis of equality.

Our results are largely convergent with what we expected. At the interspecies level, we found that meat consumption is predicted by both cognitive (human-animal continuity) and affective variables (empathy with animals). Replicating earlier findings (e.g., Camilleri et al., 2020; Rothgerber & Mican, 2014), we found that the more people empathize with animals, the less meat they eat. In addition, we obtained an independent contribution of the cognitive measure: Perceiving humans as an animal species, rather than as fundamentally distinct and superior, was also related to lower meat consumption. Thus, consuming less meat is related to a less hierarchical and more egalitarian view on the relations between species. At the intergroup level, we replicated earlier findings (e.g., Dhont & Hodson, 2014; Dhont et al., 2014) that social dominance orientation is related to higher meat consumption.

Our main interest was in the interpersonal level, which has not been examined previously in this context. Regarding empathy with people, our results indicate that earlier findings of its relation with meat consumption (e.g., Preylo & Arikawa, 2008) and attitudes toward animal exploitation (e.g., Graça et al., 2018) are most likely due to the overlap between empathy with animals and with people. Deviating from existing scales, we made a deliberate effort to create an Empathy with Animals scale as similar as possible to the Empathy with People scale. As a consequence, the correlation between Empathy with People and Animals in this study (r = .42) was somewhat higher than in earlier studies (e.g., r = .33 in the study by Taylor & Signal, 2005), which could explain why empathy with people did not account for any additional variance in meat consumption.

The affiliation motive, which was not significantly related to meat consumption either, was correlated with empathy with people (both cognitive and affective), not empathy with animals. This suggests that these variables form a cluster that operates primarily in the domain of human–human relations and, hence, may not extend to meat eating. Possibly, the same goes for the power motive which, in contrast with predictions, was also not related to meat consumption. Another unexpected result was the small but positive correlation of Power with Affiliation (r = .16). Although Power was related with SDO (r = .22), it is conceivable that the items in the Power scale, about the motive to lead and guide others, were in part also interpreted as reflecting good relationships with others (i.e., power in the sense of being able to influence and inspire others, like a good manager), rather than as having authority over them. Furthermore, the reliability of this particular scale was only moderate, λ_{2 =} .70. These considerations may explain why this measure did not yield the predicted relationship with meat eating. In future research, it would be preferable to examine this relationship using more sophisticated measures of the power motive, such as unobtrusive (e.g., Fetterman et al., 2015) or implicit measures (Haines & Kray, 2005).

For the self-enhancement motive, we did obtain a relation with meat consumption, as expected. This interpersonal variable explained variance in meat eating frequency in addition to the variance explained by the interspecies variables Empathy with Animals and HAC, as well as the intergroup variable SDO. Our regression analysis indicated that this additional contribution was small but significant. This indicates that variables operating at the interpersonal level are also related to meat consumption, in line with the idea that these relations are part of a wider array of variables involved in a hierarchical versus egalitarian stance toward the world. According to the results of our path analysis, self-enhancement is related to meat eating in part via SDO which, in turn, is related to the affective variable empathy with animals and the cognitive variable human-animal continuity. The latter two have the strongest (negative) direct relation with meat consumption, consistent with our conceptual approach because these variables are at the interspecies level as well. The results of our analysis also showed that the relations between SDO and meat eating, which has been found in other studies as well, emerges in part via the relation of SDO with empathy with animals and human animal continuity beliefs. At the same time, our model also indicates there are small direct associations of self-enhancement and social dominance orientation with meat eating. Taken together, these findings are in line with results by Dhont and colleagues (Dhont & Hodson, 2014; Dhont et al., 2016) who showed the psychological parallels between human intergroup and human-animal relations. Our results complement these by demonstrating the role of the motive to see oneself as superior at the interpersonal level.

Although the sample in our study was not representative of the larger population, it was not a mere convenience sample. In recruiting participants, care was taken to recruit a variety of demographic groups, and the data show a large heterogeneity with regard to meat eating. In particular, the sample included a much larger proportion of vegetarians (19%) than in the Dutch population (around 3% at the time the study was conducted; Motivaction, 2015), which is an advantage given the goals of the study. Obviously, the means cannot be used as estimates for the population, but the goal of the study was to demonstrate interrelationship, and the data show sufficient variation to allow that.

Implications

This study started from the idea that a hierarchical perspective can manifest at the interpersonal level, the intergroup level and the interspecies level. The relations of the self-enhancement motive with SDO, empathy with animals, human-animal continuity, and meat consumption are convergent with this idea. The fact that the self-enhancement motive operates at the interpersonal level points to a particularly problematic obstacle in the interaction between meat eaters and meat refusers and in attempts to reduce meat consumption. Vegetarians and vegans do not only threaten the status quo and the dominance of people over nature and animals (Stanley, 2021), they also constitute a personal threat to meat eaters’ self-concept (e.g., Bastian & Loughnan, 2017; Weiper & Vonk, 2021), and this may be particularly so for those with a strong self-enhancement motive. Moreover, this motive is associated with other values, so the prototypical meat eater with high SDO and a strong self-enhancement motive may not at all be responsive to the egalitarian, “we’re all in this together,” “people are part of nature”-perspective typically employed by animal and climate advocates. Meat substitutes, no matter how much they resemble meat from animals, may never be good enough for these consumers because they lack the symbolic meaning of superiority and dominance. Animal advocates tend to want to convince others by appealing to egalitarian values, but for many meat eaters this may be precisely the reason to resist their call. Moreover, meat eaters often feel that vegetarians advocate their eating habits merely to demonstrate their superiority (Weiper & Vonk, 2021) – an interpretation that may result from projecting their own hierarchical way of thinking onto the vegetarian.

Vegetarians, on the other hand, tend to assume that animals having feelings and experiences just like people, explaining their higher empathy with animals. At the interpersonal level, their egalitarian orientation makes them more empathetic with people as well, in general, as was confirmed by our MANOVA. Paradoxically, however, it may be much harder for them to empathize with the symbolic value of meat for meat eaters, because that requires a dominance-related perspective that they lack.

Feygina et al. (2010) showed that denial of climate change can be reduced by appealing to the motives and values of conservatives, such as patriotism. Similarly, people with high SDO and a strong self-enhancement motive may be more easily persuaded to abandon meat when they realize that climate change or zoonoses from farmed animals will create a planet on which people “lose” from the forces of nature or bacteria; or when they regard meat substitutes as a technological victory of humans over nature. These are the considerations that may appeal to their frame of reference.

The present research adds to a growing literature indicating that a dominance-oriented view can be expressed in interpersonal interactions as much as in food choice and major societal issues. In particular, the results indicate an alignment of attitudes toward animals and meat consumption with the self-enhancement motive, which operates at the interpersonal level. We were able to demonstrate these relationships by means of a large and heterogeneous sample, ranging from people strongly attached to their meat to principled vegans. These findings are building blocks for an overarching framework about a hierarchical/vertical versus egalitarian/horizontal orientation regarding (a) other individuals, (b) other groups, and (c) other species. In the interpersonal domain, the hierarchical perspective can create resistance to messages from meat refusers, who obstruct the self-enhancement needs of meat eaters. In the societal domain, it can create attachment to symbols of human supremacy, of which meat may be the ultimate example.

Ethical statement

This manuscript was not submitted anywhere else. The research was conducted with human participants who participated voluntarily after informed consent. All ethical guidelines in the treatment of participants and in conducting and analysing the studies were followed.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/juyqv

Acknowledgments

This study was possible thanks to the work of Judith Dunsbergen, Merlin Reimann, Sara Ordanovski, Ilse van Santfoort, and Stephanie Timmermans, as part of their Bachelor’s program, and expert help from William van der Veld with the regression and path analyses. Thanks also to an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2022.2132369

Data availability statement

All raw data are freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality.

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/juyqv

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

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

Notes on contributors

Roos Vonk

Roos Vonk is full professor in social psychology at Radboud University. She got her PhD at Leiden University studying person perception. Since then, she is studying self-esteem/self-enhancement, human-animal relations/empathy with animals, and moral resistance to persuasion.

Maike L. V. Weiper

Maike L. V. Weiper is a research master’s student in behavioural sciences at Radboud University. Her work focuses on the psychology of social change, e.g. how activists and activist movements are perceived by the public.

Notes

1. The study was conducted in 2015, shortly before we learned about the revised SDO-7 (Ho et al., 2015).

2. In a follow-up study (unpublished data not reported here because it does not contain the interpersonal motives assessment) we found that this self-report measure had good relations with behavior on a task where participants selected toppings for a pizza they felt like eating tonight. For instance, the self-reported number of days eating meat correlated r = .47 with the number of meat toppings chosen.

3. In a later study, in which we took care to create a larger number of perspective-taking and personal distress items about animals, we did obtain the same three-dimensional pattern as in the empathy with people scale, though less pronounced.

4. The 5 items addressing the comparison between empathy with animals and with people (e.g., “I sometimes empathize more with animals than with people”) were used in a separate scale, λ₂ = .88. It correlated strongly with Empathy with Animals, r = .85, and therefore was not included in the present analyses, to avoid redundancy.

5. We also examined a variable obtained by subtracting the number of vegetarian or vegan days from the number of meat days; the results were highly similar.

6. Cognitive Empathy with People and Power motive are not included in these results. The correlations (Table 2) already indicated they are relatively unimportant, and they did not explain significant additional variance in the regression.

Appendix.

Table

When I see animals suffer, I want to take immediate action to help.	When I see people suffer, I want to take immediate action to help.
I often have concerned feelings for animals in an unfortunate situation.	I often feel have concerned feelings for people who are less fortunate than me. (D)
I can get very upset when I see animals suffer.	I can get very upset when I see people suffer.
I tend to want to protect and care for animals.	I tend to want to protect and care for others.
	I’m often quite touched by things I see happening. (D)
	Other people’s misfortunes don’t usually disturb me a great deal. (D)
	I would describe myself as a pretty soft-hearted person. (D)
	When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel protective toward them. (D)
	When I see someone being treated unfairly, I feel little pity for them. (D)
I am often sad about how animals are treated in our world
I empathize with animals in need.
I am very moved by sad films about animals.
I get very angry when I see animals being mistreated.

Items with (D) are from the Davis (1983) scale.