Personality, self-knowledge, and meat reduction intentions

Abstract

Objective: Meat consumption has a host of serious negative consequences for nonhuman animals, underprivileged humans, and the natural environment. Several interventions have been developed to encourage meat reduction but to relatively limited effect. There is also a range of established predictors of meat consumption, but much less is known about the factors that predict intentions to reduce meat consumption. The goal of this study was to determine the roles of personality and self-knowledge in meat reduction intentions.

Method: In this set of three preregistered studies, we tested brief interventions to encourage meat reduction intentions and examined personality predictors of intentions to reduce meat consumption.

Results: We found no evidence that brief interventions with or without a self-knowledge component had a meaningful effect on changing meat reduction intentions. However, we found robust evidence for relatively small associations between intending to eat less meat and high Openness to Experience, high Emotionality, and perceiving meat reduction as moral behaviors.

Conclusion: Individual differences may be a more influential predictor of meat reduction intentions than brief interventions. Implications for promoting meat reduction are discussed.

Keywords: intervention; meat; personality; self-knowledge; vegetarian.