Revisiting the motivated denial of mind to animals used for food: Replication Registered Report of Bastian et al. (2012)use asterix (*) to get italics

Tyler P. Jacobs, Meiying Wang, Stefan Leach, Ho Loong Siu, Mahika Khanna, Ka Wan Chan, Ho Ting Chau, Yuen Yan Tam, Gilad FeldmanPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"

2024

<p>Bastian et al. (2012) argued that the ‘meat paradox’–caring for animals yet eating them–exemplifies the motivated moral disengagement driven by a psychologically aversive tension between people’s moral standards (caring for animals) and their behavior (eating them). One disengagement mechanism that is thought to play a central role is the denial of food animal minds, and therefore their status as moral patients. This idea has garnered substantial interest and has framed much of the psychological approach to meat consumption. We subjected Studies 1 and 2 of Bastian et al. (2012) to high-powered direct replications and found support for the target article’s hypotheses, concluding a successful replication. Perceptions of animals’ minds were negatively related to their perceived edibility (original: r = -.42 [-.67, -.08]; replication: r = -.45 [-.69, -.12]), positively related to moral concern for them (original: r = .77 [.58, .88]); replication: r = .83 [.68, .91]) and positively related to negative affect related to eating them (original: r = .80 [.63, .90]; replication: r = .80 [.62, .90]). Learning that an animal will be used for food led people to deny its mental capabilities (original: d = 0.40 [0.15, 0.65]; replication: d = 0.30, 95% CI [0.24, 0.37]), with the effect slightly weaker than the original. Our findings support the idea that the meat paradox is resolved through people’s motivated denial of food-animals' minds. Materials, data, and code are available on the OSF: https://osf.io/h2pqu/.</p>

cognitive dissonance, mind attribution, mind denial, morality, meat, animals, registered replication

NonePlease indicate the methods that may require specialised expertise during the peer review process (use a comma to separate various required expertises).

Social sciences

Ben De Groeve suggested: João Graça: joao.graca@rug.nl , Ben De Groeve suggested: Matthew Ruby: M.Ruby@latrobe.edu.au , Ben De Groeve suggested: Jared Piazza: j.piazza@lancaster.ac.uk, Brock Bastian suggested: Steve Loughnan or Nick Haslam No need for them to be recommenders of PCI Registered Reports. Please do not suggest reviewers for whom there might be a conflict of interest. Reviewers are not allowed to review preprints written by close colleagues (with whom they have published in the last four years, with whom they have received joint funding in the last four years, or with whom they are currently writing a manuscript, or submitting a grant proposal), or by family members, friends, or anyone for whom bias might affect the nature of the review - see the code of conduct

2023-08-10 21:19:16

Chris Chambers