Beyond indicating that one does not eat meat, the decision to identify as vegetarian signals social identity. Yet many people limit their meat intake without giving up meat entirely: These people are called flexitarians (a term combining the words, “flexible” and “vegetarian”). Some flexitarians, despite eating meat, consider themselves to be vegetarian. Through a preregistered study (N = 837), we investigated how flexitarians express social identity around their diets—namely, how they self-identify on a continuous scale ranging from meat-eater (i.e., omnivorous) to vegetarian. Over and above actual eating behavior, two psychosocial variables emerged as significant predictors of flexitarians’ levels of vegetarian identification: the centrality of meat-reduced dieting to their identity and their beliefs about carnism (the ideology of eating animals). These results suggest that greater consideration of meat-reduced eating behaviors offers promise for elucidating the intersections of social identity and moral judgment.
AkinwandeM. O.DikkoH. G.SamsonA. (2015). Variance inflation factor: As a condition for the inclusion of suppressor variable(s) in regression analysis. Open Journal of Statistics, 5, 754–767.
2.
BarrS. I.ChapmanG. E. (2002). Perceptions and practices of self-defined current vegetarian, former vegetarian, and nonvegetarian women. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 102, 354–360.
3.
BatsonC. D.KennedyC. L.NordL. A.StocksE. L.FlemingD. Y. A.MarzetteC. M.…ZergerT. (2007). Anger at unfairness: Is it moral outrage?European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 1272–1285.
4.
BrewerM. B. (1991). The social self: On being the same and different at the same time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 475–482.
5.
CliceriD.SpinelliS.DinnellaC.PrescottJ.MonteleoneE. (2018). The influence of psychological traits, beliefs and taste responsiveness on implicit attitudes toward plant-and animal-based dishes among vegetarians, flexitarians and omnivores. Food Quality and Preference, 68, 276–291.
6.
CorrinT.PapadopoulosA. (2017). Understanding the attitudes and perceptions of vegetarian and plant-based diets to shape future health promotion programs. Appetite, 109, 40–47.
7.
De BackerC. J.HuddersL. (2014). From meatless Mondays to meatless Sundays: Motivations for meat reduction among vegetarians and semi-vegetarians who mildly or significantly reduce their meat intake. Ecology of Food and Nutrition, 53, 639–657.
8.
De BackerC. J.HuddersL. (2015). Meat morals: Relationship between meat consumption consumer attitudes towards human and animal welfare and moral behavior. Meat Science, 99, 68–74.
9.
DerbyshireE. J. (2016). Flexitarian diets and health: A review of the evidence-based literature. Frontiers in Nutrition, 3, 55.
10.
EllemersN.PagliaroS.BarretoM. (2013). Morality and behavioural regulation in groups: A social identity approach. European Review of Social Psychology, 24, 160–193.
11.
EllisA. L.MitchellR. W. (2000). Sexual orientation. In SzuchmanL. T.MuscarellaF. (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on human sexuality (pp. 196–231). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
12.
FoxN.WardK. J. (2008b). You are what you eat? Vegetarianism, health and identity. Social Science & Medicine, 66, 2585–2595.
13.
HoggM. A.TerryD. I. (2000). Social identity and self-categorization processes in organizational contexts. Academy of Management Review, 25, 121–140.
14.
HornseyM. J. (2008). Social identity theory and self-categorization theory: A historical review. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 204–222.
15.
JabsJ.SobalJ.DevineC. M. (2000). Managing vegetarianism: Identities, norms and interactions. Ecology of Food and Nutrition, 39, 375–394.
16.
JoyM. (2009). Why we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows: An introduction to carnism. San Francisco, CA: Conari Press.
17.
KwanS.RothL. (2004). Meat consumption and its discontents: Vegetarianism as counter-hegemonic embodiment. In Conference Papers–American Sociological Association (pp. 1–14).
18.
LeckyP. (1945). Self-consistency: A theory of personality. New York, NY: Island.
19.
LuhtanenR.CrockerJ. (1992). A collective self-esteem scale: Self-evaluation of one’s social identity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 302–318.
20.
MacInnisC. C.HodsonG. (2017). It ain’t easy eating greens: Evidence of bias toward vegetarians and vegans from both source and target. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 20, 721–744.
21.
MinsonJ. A.MoninB. (2012). Do-gooder derogation: Disparaging morally motivated minorities to defuse anticipated reproach. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3, 200–207.
22.
MohrJ. J. (2002). Heterosexual identity and the heterosexual therapist: An identity perspective on sexual orientation dynamics in psychotherapy. Counseling Psychologist, 30, 532–566.
23.
MonteiroC. A.PfeilerT. M.PattersonM. D.MilburnM. A. (2017). The Carnism Inventory: Measuring the ideology of eating animals. Appetite, 113, 51–62.
24.
Morgan ThompsonE. M.MorganE. M. (2008). “Mostly straight” young women: Variations in sexual behavior and identity development. Developmental Psychology, 44, 15–21.
PlanteC. N.RosenfeldD. L.PlanteM.ReysenS. (2019). The role of social identity motivation in dietary attitudes and behaviors among vegetarians. Appetite, 141, 104307. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2019.05.038
27.
PrenticeD. A.MillerD. T. (1993). Pluralistic ignorance and alcohol use on campus: Some consequences of misperceiving the social norm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 243–256.
28.
RosenfeldD. L. (2018). The psychology of vegetarianism: Recent advances and future directions. Appetite, 131, 125–138.
29.
RosenfeldD. L.BurrowA. L. (2017a). The unified model of vegetarian identity: A conceptual framework for understanding plant-based food choices. Appetite, 112, 78–95.
30.
RosenfeldD. L.BurrowA. L. (2017b). Vegetarian on purpose: Understanding the motivations of plant-based dieters. Appetite, 116, 456–463.
31.
RosenfeldD. L.BurrowA. L. (2017c). Vegetarianism and beyond: Investigating how people construe meat avoidance. Raw data. Retrieved fromhttps://osf.io/edm2v/
32.
RosenfeldD. L.BurrowA. L. (2018). Development and validation of the Dietarian Identity Questionnaire: Assessing self-perceptions of animal-product consumption. Appetite, 127, 182–194.
33.
RosenfeldD. L.TomiyamaA. J. (in press). How proximal are pescatarians to vegetarians? An investigation of dietary identity, motivation, and attitudes toward animals. Journal of Health Psychology.
34.
RothgerberH. (2013). Real men don’t eat (vegetable) quiche: Masculinity and the justification of meat consumption. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 14, 363–375.
35.
RothgerberH. (2014a). A comparison of attitudes toward meat and animals among strict and semi-vegetarians. Appetite, 72, 98–105.
36.
RothgerberH. (2014b). Evaluation of ingroup disloyalty within a multigroup context. Social Psychology, 45, 382–390.
RothgerberH. (2017). Attitudes toward meat and plants in vegetarians. In MariottiF. (Ed.), Vegetarian and plant-based diets in health and disease prevention (pp. 11–35). London, England: Academic Press.
39.
RubyM. B. (2012). Vegetarianism. A blossoming field of study. Appetite, 58, 141–150.
40.
RubyM. B.HeineS. J. (2011). Meat, morals, and masculinity. Appetite, 56, 447–450.
41.
Savin-WilliamsR. C. (2008). Then and now: Recruitment, definition, diversity, and positive attributes of same-sex populations. Developmental Psychology, 44, 135–138.
42.
SobalJ. (2005). Men, meat, and marriage: Models of masculinity. Food and Foodways, 13, 135–158.
43.
TajfelH.TurnerJ. C. (1985). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In WorchelS.AustinW. G. (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (Vol. 2, pp. 7–24). Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall.
TurnerJ. C.HoggM. A.OakesP. J.ReicherS. D.WetherellM. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
