Meat eaters by dissociation: How we present, prepare and talk about meat increases willingness to eat meat by reducing empathy and disgust
How meat is presented, prepared and talked about determines how easily it is eaten: keeping the animal out of mind lowers empathy and disgust, and raises willingness to eat. The distance between animal and meal is built, not found.
The paper, in plain language
Making the invisible mechanism visible
Most people care about animals and most people eat them — the 'meat paradox'. With Sigrid Hohle, I ran a series of experiments manipulating the ordinary details through which meat reaches us: processed versus recognisable cuts, a roast served with or without the head, 'beef' versus 'cow', 'harvesting' versus 'slaughtering'. Each detail seems trivial. None of them is.
What we found
Every step that obscures the animal reduced empathy for it and disgust at the product, and increased willingness to eat meat — with empathy and disgust mediating the effect. The studies gave the field's talk of 'dissociation' an experimental footing: the distance between animal and meal is not a private coping trick but something the presentation itself performs, before any individual psychology begins.
Why it matters
This is one of the most cited papers in the psychology of meat consumption, and its practical reading cuts both ways: the supply chain's conventions quietly do moral work for consumers, and interventions that re-associate meat with its origin measurably change appetite. Our later work — a systematic review and a dedicated dissociation scale — built the research programme this paper started.
Kunst, J. R. & Hohle, S. M.* (2016). Meat eaters by dissociation: How we present, prepare and talk about meat increases positivity to eating meat by reducing empathy and disgust. Appetite, 105, 758-774. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.07.009