Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Apr 1:147:104554.
doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2019.104554. Epub 2019 Dec 9.

Dissociating meat from its animal origins: A systematic literature review

Nora C G Benningstad  1 , Jonas R Kunst  2
Affiliations
Free article

Dissociating meat from its animal origins: A systematic literature review

Nora C G Benningstad et al. Appetite. .
Free article

Abstract

Meat eaters often have an ambivalent relationship with the common practice of killing animals for food. They enjoy the taste of meat but dislike the harming of animals that it entails. This moral conflict, often referred to as the 'meat paradox,' tends to result in cognitive dissonance that meat eaters need to resolve. One of the arguably most basic strategies to deal with this dissonance is to cognitively dissociate meat from its animal origins. Whereas philosophers for long time have theorized about the role of such dissociation for consumer behavior, researchers have only recently started to empirically investigate the phenomenon. Here, we present the first systematic literature review of research on consumers' tendency to dissociate meat from its animal origins. Twenty-one publications comprising eight qualitative, one mixed-methods, four correlational, and twenty experimental/interventional studies were identified, which all provided support for the central psychological role of dissociation for meat consumption. However, the review also revealed the need for further research on moderating variables such as gender, age and generation, dietary styles, and people's place of living, including cross-cultural differences. Strikingly, no study so far seems to have included behavioral outcomes, urging the need for future research on how dissociation might affect behavior.

Keywords: Animals; Cognitive dissonance; Dissociation; Literature review; Meat consumption; Meat paradox.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources