🧵 New paper alert! People enjoy eating meat but often feel uneasy when being reminded that it comes from animals. To understand how people avoid this conflict, our new study explores how food preparation helps people mentally separate meat from its animal origins. Here’s what we found 👇 1/9

Many people experience meat-related conflict. This has often been discussed in light of the so-called meat paradox: People like eating meat but don’t like harming animals. One way people avoid this conflict? They dissociate — mentally separating meat from the animal it once was. 2/9

However, food preparation arguably includes at least two different steps: 🥩 Disassembling (chopping, mincing, etc.) 🔥 Cooking (applying heat) Surprisingly, past research hadn’t clearly teased apart how each of these steps affects people’s feelings about meat. 4/9

So we did! 🧪 We re-analyzed data from 1,189 people (U.S.-representative sample) who each saw one of many meat images varied on two factors: 🥩 Whole vs. disassembled 🔥 Raw vs. cooked Then we asked about their attitudes and feelings about the presented meat dish and how much they wanted to eat it. 5/9

Here’s what we found 👇 🥩 When the dish was disassembled, people felt less emotionally aroused and less compassionate than when it was whole. 🔥 When the dish was cooked, people felt less compassionate, but also less negative, conflicted, disgusted, and angry, and had a greater desire to eat it. 6/9

Thereby, our study shows how food preparation can change how people think and feel about meat, and their willingness to eat it. This knowledge can inform the design of interventions that encourage people to eat less meat in a way that is psychologically informed and situationally sensitive. 7/9

If you’re interested in the psychology of eating and animal ethics, check out the full paper published open access in PHAIR, the official journal of the @phair-society.bsky.social hosted by the @psychopengold.bsky.social at the @zpid.bsky.social 👇 phair.psychopen.eu/index.php/ph... 8/9