Too Sweet To Eat: Exploring the Effects of Cuteness on Meat Consumption

Why do people befriend animals, yet don't feel conflicted about eating some of them? Previous research on the "meat paradox" suggests that the dehumanization of meat animals plays a crucial role in attenuating the negative affective states that consumers may experience when consuming meat. However, relatively little is known about how the converse process, namely anthropomorphism, influences meat consumption. The current research provides evidence that anthropomorphizing meat animals through the friendship metaphor, "animals are friends", can alter (omnivorous) consumers' attitudes and behavioral intentions toward meat eating, and induce feelings of guilt. More specifically, our experimental findings reveal that anthropomorphism has a negative effect on consumers' attitudes toward the food served in a restaurant and their intentions to patronize it when (pork) meat is on offer. This effect holds whether consumers are invited to consider themselves (Study 1a) or staff members (Study 1b) as taking part in a friendly humananimal interaction. We also demonstrate a similar effect of anthropomorphism on attitudes toward a (pork) meat product and their intentions to buy it, when consumers consider animal-animal friendship or human-animal friendship (Study 2). Last, we show that the negative effect of anthropomorphism on consumers' attitudes and behavioral intentions toward (pork) meat consumption is mediated by increased feelings of anticipatory guilt (Studies 3a and 3c). Nevertheless, no such effect was found with another kind of meat (beef), which indicates that anthropomorphizing meat animals through the friendship metaphor cannot be successfully applied to all commonly eaten species (Study 3b). Implications of these results for meat consumption are discussed.

We explore whether priming emotion versus deliberation affects speciesism—the tendency to prioritize certain individuals over others on the basis of their species membership (three main and two supplementary studies, four preregistered; N = 3,288). We find that the tendency to prioritize humans over animals (anthropocentric speciesism) decreases when participants were asked to think emotionally compared to deliberatively. In contrast, the tendency to prioritize dogs over other animals (pet speciesism) increases when participants were asked to think emotionally compared to deliberatively. We hypothesize that, emotionally, people like animals in general and dogs in particular; however, deliberatively, people attribute higher moral status to humans than animals and roughly equal status to dogs, chimpanzees, elephants, and pigs. In support of this explanation, participants tended to discriminate between animals based on likability when thinking emotionally and based on moral status when thinking deliberatively. These findings shed light on the psychological underpinnings of speciesism.

Previous studies have shown exposure to something cute affects moral tendencies and prosocial behaviors, but how it affects people's moral judgment is still unknown. This study examines the effect of cuteness exposure on the judgment of morally transgressive events and explores the moderating effect of the moral transgressor's socioeconomic status. In Experiment 1, we find that individuals judged moral transgression incidents more harshly after viewing cute images. Experiment 2 examined whether the socioeconomic status of moral transgressors moderates the effect. The results revealed that when cuteness was primed, individuals were more tolerant of the advantaged than the disadvantaged, and made harsher moral judgments about the disadvantaged. In summary, the findings suggest that exposure to cute stimuli can enhance individuals’ moral sense and thus lead to harsher moral judgments. This effect is more pronounced when transgressors have low socioeconomic status.