Development of the passive and active meat-animal dissociation scale (mads)

The paper, in plain language

Splitting dissociation in two

Our earlier review proposed that meat-animal dissociation is not one thing: passive dissociation is never making the connection — the product of a food system that hides production — while active dissociation is suppressing a connection that intrudes. With Nora Benningstad and Hank Rothgerber, I turned that distinction into the twelve-item MADS scale and validated it in US consumers, a large experiment, and a sample of meat-industry workers from slaughterers to butchers.

Two profiles, opposite directions

The subscales were essentially uncorrelated and describe different people. Passive dissociators endorse pro-meat justifications and speciesism, feel less empathy for animals, eat more red meat, and lack motivation to change. Active dissociators show the conflicted profile: more disgust, more empathy, more animal-welfare motivation, more vegetarian meals. Among industry workers, those who actively dissociate report more stress, lower job satisfaction and stronger intentions to quit — suppression has a price. The honest edge: our head-on pork roast manipulation moved eating intentions but neither dissociation dimension, killing the preregistered mediation and telling us the scale measures a stable trait, not a momentary state.

Why it matters

If the two profiles are real, one intervention cannot serve both: animal-welfare messaging speaks to active dissociators who already feel the conflict, while passive dissociators — who feel none — are more likely reached by structural levers like pricing and availability. The scale gives the meat-paradox research my dissociation work established a psychometric instrument, and the worker findings open a neglected question: what the industry does to the minds it employs.