Is There A Psychological Bias Against Vegans?

Veganism as a movement is on the rise, and over the last decade the number of vegans in the UK and around the world has exploded. Which means more and more people expecting vegan options to be widely available, and more pressure on retailers to provide those options. In 2014 Veganuary was born, challenging non-vegans to eat vegan just for the month of January.

What Is Veganuary?

Veganuary is a non-profit organisation that encourages people worldwide to try vegan for the month of January, with the hope that they stay vegan beyond it. The founders were inspired by the success of ‘Movember’, and wanted to find a way to create the same buzz around veganism for non-vegans. Each year millions of people sign up to their one-month vegan pledge, and thanks to their corporate outreach work over 1,610 new vegan products have been launched in their key campaign countries. Now Veganuary happens every year, and is contributing to the growth of the vegan lifestyle.

But, as with many popular things, there is a faction of people who are vocally against veganism. Which seems odd, given that the healthy, environmentally friendly lifestyle choice doesn’t really affect them if they don’t choose to follow it. So why exactly do some people hate veganism so much?

What’s the Problem?

The root of the issue can be found in phycology, in something called cognitive dissonance. This is the technical name for when a person holds two incompatible views and acts on one of them.

Imagine you bring home a meal of cod and chips, and then eat it while sitting in the same room as the fish tank you carefully tend. Or if you spent your lunch break cooing over cute photos of highland cows on Instagram, and then had steak for dinner. Your affection for animals is actively clashing with the idea that it’s OK to eat them. Cognitive dissonance can be found in all areas of life, but this is one of the most common. In fact, some psychologists have called it ‘The Meat Paradox’ and ‘Moral Schizophrenia’.

The tension in our minds that’s caused by cognitive dissonance can make us feel stressed, irritated and unhappy, without really understanding why. So instead of fixing it by changing our beliefs or our behaviour, we try to find another thing to blame entirely for the feeling. And we’re REALLY good at doing that! Research shows that humans have around 15 different strategies to allow us to avoid facing up to the meat paradox – including pretending that meat has no link to animals, wilful ignorance of how it’s produced, and imagining we eat less of it than we do.

All of which are sort of ruined when a vegan walks in the room.

That’s one of the biggest reasons the vocal anti-vegan movement exists. Why so many people make fun of their beliefs, or generalise their behaviour. Because it makes the meat-eater uncomfortable, and have to face up to that cognitive dissonance. It’s nothing to do with the lifestyle or the food – it really is all in our heads.

A Dash of Negative Cognitive Bias

There’s one other thing we want to mention in this blog, because it does play a role in meat-eaters the resistance to trying vegan foods – even if it’s minor.

Negative cognitive bias is what happens when you have a negative experience, and it impacts your decisions about everything from then on. It can also become a defence mechanism to stop you from encountering the same bad thing again. Most people will recognise this experience in either food or alcohol. Anyone who does drink alcohol probably has that one drink they can’t stand anymore because they overdid it once and were very ill. Or you may have eaten something and then been struck down by norovirus, so now you can’t eat that thing again – even if it wasn’t what made you sick. It’s the association with the negative experience that makes you avoid it in the future.

What’s That Got To Do With Food?

With vegan food, this is usually because someone tried vegan food when it was in its infancy. The early attempts at commercial vegan meat-replacement products weren’t really developed to mimic the taste or texture of real meat products. Instead, they were often chewy, tasteless, dry, or tasted overwhelmingly of mushrooms (since it was mushroom protein a lot of these early vegan products were built on). If someone’s first experience with vegan food was this, then that perception sticks and becomes a negative cognitive bias. They don’t want to eat vegan meat substitutes again because they don’t want to repeat the experience.

With both of these issues, your biggest hurdle is getting people to try vegan products. Once they’ve done that, it becomes easier for them to see the benefits and slot them into their life – even if it’s just for one month out of the year. But those are some big biases to overcome, so how do you do it? Well, the easiest way is with food sampling.

At Fizz, this is one of the things we can help you with. Because we have so much experience in the industry, we can help you plan out the perfect strategy for in-store sampling and improve your chances of success. Giving people vegan food to try during these key months is a great way to introduce them to the vegan lifestyle and overcome some of those cognitive biases around vegan foods. If you’d like to know more about capitalising on the Veganuary buzz, just get in touch with the team today.