Friedrich, Sophie (2024) The Salience of Moral Implications of Meat Consumption in Predicting Moral Disengagement. Bachelor thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
The process of coming to a decision can often lead to cognitive dissonance when people’s actions conflict with their values, prompting the use of self-serving reasoning processes like moral disengagement to resolve this dissonance. In the present study, we investigate how these self-serving processes are employed in the moral context of meat consumption. Specifically, we explored the influence of dietary preferences on moral disengagement, with a focus on the potential moderating effects of moral identity and cognitive engagement. Participants (N = 70) read a text outlining the adverse effects of meat consumption and then completed a questionnaire assessing them on moral identity, cognitive engagement, and their extent of moral disengagement, inferred by measuring their perceived argument persuasiveness and perceived author’s motives. Our findings indicate a significant main effect of dietary preference on persuasiveness; that is, individuals following plant-based or vegetarian diets perceived arguments regarding meat consumption as significantly more persuasive than their meat-eating counterparts. However, contrary to our hypotheses, neither moral identity nor cognitive engagement significantly moderated this relationship. The results emphasize the importance of dietary preferences in shaping perceptions of ethical arguments and suggest that tailored messaging should consider these preferences to increase persuasiveness. Keywords: dietary preference, moral disengagement, cognitive engagement, moral identity
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
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| Supervisor name: | Gutzkow, B. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | None [Bachelor Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Jul 2024 06:55 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Jul 2024 06:55 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3883 |
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