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Animal Rights/Vegan Activists' Strategies

Development of the Passive and Active Meat-Animal Dissociation Scale (MADS)

From Jared Piazza, PHAIR Society [The Society for the Psychology of Human-Animal Intergroup Relations]
September 2024

Meat-animal dissociation is when people fail to 'seeanimals in meat or suppress thoughts about the animal origins of meat. In this PHAIR article, Bennigstad et al. (2024) distinguish between two types of meat-animal dissociation.

Markus Spiske, Unsplash

Meat-animal dissociation is when people fail to ‘see’ animals in meat or suppress thoughts about the animal origins of meat. In this PHAIR article, Bennigstad et al. (2024) distinguish between two types of meat-animal dissociation:

1.  active dissociation, where a person actively suppresses thoughts about the animal origins of meat (e.g., when an animal reminder is present);
2. passive dissociation, where a person fails to think about the animal origins of meat when interacting with meat (e.g., because a product is familiar or habitually eaten).

The authors developed a scale that reliably distinguishes between the two forms of dissociation (e.g., active item: “I actively avoid meat that visibly reminds me of an animal”; passive item: “Animals rarely come to mind when I eat meat”) (Study 1). They found that both active and passive forms of dissociation are stable (Study 2); and explored active and passive orientations among meat industry workers and general consumers (Study 3).

Implications for advocacy

It may be useful for advocates to distinguish between these two forms of dissociation when building interventions. Passive dissociation may be especially problematic for animal advocacy because it may be indicative of a habitual relationship with meat. Indeed, Bennigstad et al. found that passive dissociation had a consistent positive relationship with meat consumption (Study 1). Furthermore, passive dissociation increased with time spent working with meat (Study 3), which may highlight the role of habit in its maintenance.

By contrast, active dissociation may be a sign that a person is ambivalent about meat and open to reduction, since they are actively trying to suppress problematic thoughts about meat in their daily lives.

Part of the work of advocates is to increase the visibility of animals exploited for food. But an equally important effort may involve finding ways to bring consumers’ thoughts to animal exploitation when they interact with animal products.

Link to the paper: Open Access

Abstract

Many individuals like eating meat but condemn causing harm to animals. Dissociating meat from its animal origins is one way to avoid the cognitive dissonance this ‘meat paradox’ elicits. While the significance of meat-animal dissociation for meat consumption is well-established, a recent literature review suggested that it consists of two distinct tendencies. First, people may differ in the degree to which they passively disassociate meat from its animal origins. Second, they may differ in the extent to which they actively dissociate to decrease dissonance. By developing and validating a scale in three pre-registered studies using samples of American and British meat-eaters, the present investigation aimed to quantitatively establish whether these two proposed tendencies constitute distinct constructs with different relations to dietary preferences, meat-related cognition, and affect. Study 1 (n = 300) provided initial support for a normally-distributed scale with two orthogonal dimensions that were systematically and differently related to a range of individual differences and dietary preferences. In Study 2 (n = 628), both dimensions were non-responsive to short-term cues that highlight the animal-meat link but predicted dietary preferences independent of them. Finally, Study 3 (n = 231) showed that the dissociation dimensions predict dietary preferences even in people working in the meat industry who have long-term exposure to cues that connect meat with its animal origins. Together, the results of the three studies supported the notion that people’s dissociation tendencies can be divided into two qualitatively distinct tendencies. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed.

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: September 16, 2024
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