Ideological bases of attitudes towards meat abstention: Vegetarianism as a threat to the cultural and economic status quo

Author:
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Those on the political right engage in greater meat consumption and animal exploitation than their left-wing counterparts. Previous research suggests this is because they view vegetarianism as threatening the nation’s dietary customs and economy. Across two studies, I extend this concept of “vegetarianism threat” by showing that it separates into two distinct dimensions of concern: cultural (symbolic) threats and economic (realistic) threats. The resultant multidimensional scale allows a finer grained understanding of the roots of ideology-based threat responses to meat-free movements. Together, results implicate symbolic concerns as the key element of vegetarianism threat contributing to negative attitudes towards meat abstention and its proponents.
Funding Information
  • Research School of Psychology, Australian National University

This publication has 42 references indexed in Scilit: