Mitigating Identity Threat in Health Messaging: A Social Identity Complexity Perspective

Health messages aiming to reduce red meat consumption may threaten multiple social identities because people's dietary choices are intertwined with personal, social, and cultural aspects of their lives. Leveraging social identity theory and the concept of social identity complexity, this experiment tested how identity-threatening messages affect people's intention to reduce red meat consumption and how the effect of identity threat may be moderated by messages highlighting the relationships between multiple identities that define a person. Participants (N = 409) read messages that varied identity threat (i.e. the extent to which people feel devalued because of their membership in a social group) and identity complexity (i.e. the extent to which people perceive multiple identities as independent). The study found that identity-threatening messages decreased intentions to reduce red meat consumption when people perceived their dietary identity as overlapping with other identities, but increased the intentions when the dietary identity was seen as independent from other identities. Further, the effects of identity threat and complexity were limited to people with high (vs. low) levels of red meat consumption. We discuss the role of identity complexity in alleviating identity threat and increasing persuasion.

Eating vegan due to cancer: A different social experience than other vegan dieters?

Many diagnosed with cancer change their diet in response to the diagnosis, with a vegan diet being a common choice. There may be health benefits to this, but research has demonstrated that following a vegan diet can have negative social ramifications. These social ramifications seem to be experienced to a lesser extent by those who following a vegan diet for health versus moral reasons, but this is a heterogeneous group; people may choose the diet for a myriad of different health reasons. In two pre-reregistered studies, we examined the social experience of those who adopt a vegan diet following a cancer diagnosis. Study 1, an experimental study, demonstrated that omnivores responded more positively to a friend who was vegan for cancer reasons than animal or general health reasons, which was explained by increased empathy. In Study 2, a cross-sectional survey study, those who adopted a vegan diet due to cancer reported (overall) less negative social experiences than those following a vegan diet more generally. These participants reported that cancer represented a greater social challenge than their diet. Taken together, these findings suggest that "vegan due to cancer" is a unique social identity and a unique social experience, relative to that of those motivated by other reasons, including general health reasons.

Is being anti-vegan a distinct dietarian identity? An investigation with omnivores, vegans, and self-identified "anti-vegans"

Adding to research on the form and content of anti-vegan sentiment, recent scholarship has identified a group of individuals who self-subscribe as "anti-vegan". Here, we sought to determine whether anti-veganism might reflect a distinct dietarian identity with its own unique ideological profile. Two-hundred and fourteen vegans, 732 omnivores, and 222 self-identified "anti-vegans" were assessed using a survey methodology that included the Dietarian Identity Questionnaire and ideological markers related to dark humour, social dominance orientation (SDO), speciesism, male-role norms, moral relativism, and attitudes toward science. Our analysis revealed a dietarian identity unique to anti-vegans. The dietary patterns of anti-vegans were more central to their identity than for omnivores, though marginally lower than vegans. Like vegans, anti-vegans scored highly on dietarian measures of private regard and personal dietary motivations, and lower than omnivores on public regard. The diets of anti-vegans were more morally motivated than omnivores. However, anti-vegans scored higher than both omnivores and vegans on a number of ideological measures including dark humour, SDO, speciesism, male-role norms, moral relativism, and distrust of science. Somewhat surprising, anti-vegans held greater trust than omnivores in the science of plant-based nutrition. We discuss the unique dietarian identities of anti-vegans, considering both intra-group differences of omnivores and anti-vegans (e.g., in right-wing ideology), and inter-group similarities of vegans and anti-vegans (e.g., in diet centrality).