The role of meat consumption in the denial of moral status and mind to meat animals
Abstract
People enjoy eating meat but disapprove of harming animals. One resolution to this conflict is to withdraw moral concern from animals and deny their capacity to suffer. To test this possibility, we asked participants to eat dried beef or dried nuts and then indicate their moral concern for animals and judge the moral status and mental states of a cow. Eating meat reduced the perceived obligation to show moral concern for animals in general and the perceived moral status of the cow. It also indirectly reduced the ascription of mental states necessary to experience suffering. People may escape the conflict between enjoying meat and concern for animal welfare by perceiving animals as unworthy and unfeeling.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Subjects who ate beef jerky were more reluctant to attribute cognitive abilities to animals than subjects who ate a vegetarian treat.
“Those subjects who had beef jerky were much more reluctant to attribute cognitive abilities to animals (Loughnan, Haslam, & Bastian, 2010.”
From Conative Dissonance (2026) · cites this paper as Loughnan, Haslam, & Bastian, 2010
Cites
A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
Festinger, L. (1957) · doi:10.1515/9781503620766 · Cited by 24,241 · see citing works
SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2004) · Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers · doi:10.3758/bf03206553 · Cited by 17,383 · see citing works
Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena.
Bem, D. J. (1967) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/h0024835 · Cited by 2,959 · see citing works
Gray, H. M., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2007) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1134475 · Cited by 2,342 · cited 4× · see citing works
“Moreover, people generally believe that animals should be afforded moral consideration because they possess these mental capacities (Gray et al., 2007).”
BackgroundResultInfluential
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Efforts to overcome vegetarian-induced dissonance among meat eaters
Rothgerber, H. (2014) · Appetite · doi:10.1016/j.appet.2014.04.003 · Cited by 207 · see citing works
Michel, F., Knaapila, A., Hartmann, C., & Siegrist, M. (2021) · Food Quality and Preference · doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2021.104195 · Cited by 127 · see citing works
Cooking and disgust sensitivity influence preference for attending insect-based food events
Hamerman, E. J. (2016) · Appetite · doi:10.1016/j.appet.2015.09.029 · Cited by 120 · see citing works
Potential negative consequences of mindfulness in the moral domain
Schindler, S., Pfattheicher, S., & Reinhard, M. (2019) · European Journal of Social Psychology · doi:10.1002/ejsp.2570 · Cited by 116 · see citing works
Predicting the moral consideration of artificial intelligences
Pauketat, J. V. T., & Anthis, J. R. (2022) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2022.107372 · Cited by 60 · see citing works
Nanay, B. (2026) · Cognitive Science · doi:10.1111/cogs.70258
- Authors
- Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., & Bastian, B.
- Affiliations
- The University of Melbourne (AU)
- The University of Queensland (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Loughnan, Steve
- Venue
- Appetite
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2010-08
- Volume
- 55
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 156-159
- ISSN
- 0195-6663 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2155117264
- Cited by
- 488
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 40 · 2025: 42 · 2024: 36 · 2023: 43 · 2022: 58 · 2021: 64 · 2020: 42 · 2019: 42 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 22 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 15 · 2013: 14 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 114.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Appetite (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Minerva Access (University of Melbourne) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Law › Animal Law and Welfare
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact
- Keywords
- meat consumption, moral status of animals, animal welfare, moral concern for animals, mental state ascriptions, suffering, moral disengagement, eating meat, human-animal relations
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Animals, Animal Welfare, Cattle, Denial, Psychological, Diet, Female, Food Preferences, Humans, Male, Meat, Pain
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
