Finally, I want to give a huge thank you to @lenahahn.bsky.social and Monique Chambon, who were instrumental in bringing this paper to life. As always, it was a pleasure working with you!
9/9

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

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

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

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

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

Food preparation helps with this dissociation.
Cooking, chopping, and seasoning can hide reminders like blood or animal body parts — making meat feel less like an animal and more like… food.
3/9

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

Big shoutout to my amazing collaborators: Anna Lambrich, Linda McCaughey, and Iris K. Schneider. This work would not have been possible without you. 🙌

The paper is out now in @jexpsocpsych.bsky.social . Check it out for more details! 📄🔍10/10

#AcademicSky #PsychSky #DecisionMaking #Ambivalence

📌 TL;DR:
✔️ Info seeking helps to reduce felt ambivalence if the info is clearly positive or negative.
❌ However, this effect is not (only) driven by attitude change.
🔍 Future research should explore how info seeking helps people feel better, not just think clearly about their attitudes. 9/10

So what else might be going on?

We suggest info seeking might also be an emotion-focused coping strategy, helping people manage the discomfort stemming from the conflict, even if it doesn’t resolve the actual attitudinal roots. 8/10

This supports a core idea in ambivalence research:
People can reduce felt ambivalence through information seeking. But it’s not that simple.
Our data showed that this process can’t be fully explained by the resolution of the attitudinal conflict. 7/10

However, if the additional information is also ambivalent, information seeking may increase felt ambivalence (see the Figure in the previous post). 😬 So: info seeking can help, but only if it brings clarity, not more confusion. ✅❌ 6/10