I'll eat meat because that's what we do: A social identity approach to understanding meat-eating attitudes and intentions

Abstract

There is global concern over the rising and over-consumption of meat (Schupp & Renner, 2011; Weis, 2013) from both environmental (The Livestock, Environment and Development, 2006) and health institutions (American Institute for Cancer Research, 2018b; Superior Health Council, 2013). These institutions have advocated for the reduction of meat consumption to help curb the environmental damage contributing to climate change (The Livestock, Environment and Development, 2006; Lashof & Ahuja, 1990), as well as changing the dietary habits that have impacted population health (Salter, 2018; Vergnaud et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2016). This thesis proposes that a social psychological approach to investigating meat-eating may help understand the contributing social factors that may need to be considered in strategic interventions for reducing large-scale meat consumption. By reviewing and analysing the complex history of meat consumption, the psychological and physiological experiences of eating meat, the practicalities and implication of a fiscal policy-approach to reducing meat consumption, and the vastly different meat-eating norms across the world, I demonstrate that there is a relationship between the groups that we belong to, what we perceive as appropriate meat consumption, and how much meat we therefore eat. Through the lens of the social identity approach (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner et al., 1979), this thesis experiments with different social identities, identity processes, and perceived meat-eating norms to ascertain whether meat-eating attitudes and intentions can be influenced by group processes (i.e., social identities and social norms). Across five different studies, each study progressively builds upon the findings of the prior to explore the relationship between meat-eating and group processes, including the influences of perceived norms and social identity salience over meat-eating attitudes and intentions. By using norms such as national (i.e., Australians, Britons, and Americas), students (i.e., Australian National University Students) and gender (i.e., women), these studies have found significant effects and interactions - establishing these relationships and confirming the influence of perceived meat-eating norms, social identification, and social identity salience. Perhaps more interestingly, this thesis sheds light on how some social identities have stronger relationships with meat eating than others, and how eating meat (or not eating meat) can be a meaningful ideology, intertwined amongst the normative constructs of those groups. This, at times, results in differing and even competing beliefs, values and behaviours between in-group and out-group members, and between other in-group members, but also within the group members themselves. Show more