True Left

Vegetarians and vegans are seen as less socially attractive by the meat-eating majority in part because they are viewed as moralistic, according to a new study published in the journal Appetite. The findings provide new insight into the relationship between dietary choices and social attraction, or the willingness to affiliate oneself with particular social groups.
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“Despite strong arguments favoring a shift toward plant-based diets, there is only a minority of people who choose to abstain from meat (vegetarians) or other animal products (vegans), raising the question why shifts toward plant-based diets are often resisted by the meat-eating or ‘omnivorous’ majority.”

“One of the barriers could be social: People often do not like to deviate from social norms, even if there are good moral reasons to do so, and minorities are often seen as less socially attractive. I therefore decided to examine the role of negative stereotypes in predicting the social attractiveness of vegetarians and vegans,” De Groeve said.
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The participants viewed omnivores as the most socially attractive group, followed by vegetarians. In other words, the participants were very willing to be associated with omnivores and slightly less willing to be associated with vegetarians. They were slightly unwilling, however, to be associated with vegans.

Vegetarians, and especially vegans, were seen as more moral but also more eccentric and moralistic (self-righteous and narrow-minded) than omnivores, which in turn predicted lower social attractiveness. Vegetarians and vegans were often described as “eco-friendly” and “considerate” during the free association task, but they were also described as “judgmental” and “preachy.”
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“An interesting question for future research is to examine the accuracy of stereotypes associated with vegetarians and vegans, in particular with regard to moralistic impressions. People may have had negative experiences with moralistic vegans, though people might also merely imagine being moralistically judged by vegans,” De Groeve said.

“A lot of evidence also shows that many people typically want to avoid harming animals, despite engaging in dietary habits that harm animals (this has been called the meat paradox in psychological literature). To maintain the illusion that eating animals or their products is both (relatively) harmless and unavoidable, people might engage in motivated reasoning to defend their diet. Moralistic stereotypes may serve as a stigma to silence morally-motivated vegetarians and vegans whose mere existence challenges this illusion.”

https://www.psypost.org/2021/09/moralistic-impressions-help-explain-the-reduced-social-attractiveness-of-vegetarians-and-vegans-61889

Ironically, for every vegan I've seen preaching, I've seen 100 anti-vegan reactionaries preach about how much they hate vegans. You know, all those low-effort jokes about "How do you know someone is a vegan? They won't shut up about it, hah hah hah!!".

I think this is the real reason why non-vegans are perceived as the most "socially attractive"--people want to fit in with the majority and will join in on the vegan-bashing stereotypes because it signals they are part of the dominant majority group.


I agree with the author that it probably does get under the average person's skin when a moralistic person forces them to confront difficult moral questions. The majority of people seem highly adverse to such a thing, and I suppose most are just too dumb or selfish to want to be bothered with the difficult task of self-reflection.

Unlike the author, I don't think the majority of people would care about the exploitation of animals, if they were forced to self-reflect on their actions. Rightists are motivated by the Judeo-Christian logic that animals were created by Yahweh so the superior humans could exploit them. And False Left secular humanists are motivated by what is essentially the same reasoning (especially when it comes to scientific exploitation of animals).

The majority of people are ignoble.

I think a lot of the judgement omnivores and carnivores feel from vegetarians is self-inflicted by virtue of the mere presence of a vegetarian.

For example, if you offer someone meat and they refuse it because they don’t eat meat, the natural human impulse is to question - what’s wrong with them or what’s wrong with me?

Even if the vegetarian doesn’t explain their motivations, we are all already familiar with why most people become vegetarian:

    Reduce animal suffering

    Plant based diets are generally healthier

    Plant based diets have a lower ecological footprint

Why are most people meat eaters?

    Meat tastes good

    It’s what I know and I’m comfortable with it / It's part of my cultural upbringing and traditions

Because of that, many meat eaters look at a vegetarian and think, “they think they’re better than me.” Which ironically is quite judgmental.

https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/pwcpvb/moralistic_impressions_help_explain_the_reduced/heh4zfv/

As a side note, I've noticed a similar reaction from alcohol drinkers toward non-drinkers. Many actually get angry and indignant when they are merely in the presence of someone who doesn't drink alcohol. Why? Because they are afraid of being judged by others for their degeneracy? Because they have an internal conflict with themselves over their desire for alcohol? Idk, but they end up reinforcing their in-group status by judging non-drinkers for being "weirdos" for not engaging in the same behavior as the majority of people.

Even if a non-alcohol-drinker literally doesn't say anything about why they aren't drinking alcohol, they will still be judged simply for not joining in with the majority. Even if a vegan/vegetarian literally doesn't say a single word, omnivores will look at their plate full of plants and make a disparaging comment to reinforce that they are in the out-group.