SoylentNews

lhsi writes:

A look at intergroup judgement between different groups of non-meat eaters (health vegetarians, ethical vegetarians, health vegans and ethical vegans) has found that there is some cross-group hostility. Ethical vegetarians (who are vegetarians for ethical reasons) gave more unfavourable evaluations of health vegetarians (who are vegetarians for health reasons) compared to vegans, whereas vegans did not distinguish between the two sub-groups of vegetarians.

Ethical vegetarians evaluated health vegetarians less favorably than vegans. On a superficial reading, it may appear strange that ethical vegetarians would elevate a group that follows a less similar diet to their own over one that follows a more similar diet. However, it appears that for ethical vegetarians, vegetarianism is about more than the behavior of avoiding meat, but that one's motives are of central importance.

In conclusion, the present research adds to a growing body of literature that despite their shared status as non-meat eating minorities, vegetarians and vegans do make evaluative distinctions between each other. Overall, ethical vegetarians evaluated themselves less similarly to health vegetarians than they did vegans, a group they may assume holds a similar worldview, while ethical vegans in turn rated ethical vegetarians closer to the ingroup than they rated health vegetarians. Health vegetarians were similar to the other groups in exhibiting ingroup bias, but they showed little differentiation between ethical vegetarians and vegans. While a bit of an oversimplification, it appears, then, that what is most important among non-meat eating minorities at least in terms of perceptions of others is one's worldview and philosophical framework. The specific diet chosen to embody one's beliefs seems less critical in these intergroup perceptions. It is understandable that outsiders would focus on the observable behavior of what individuals consume and incorrectly assume that diet is the most important dimension of their non-omnivore status; after all, they likely do not have access to the interior motives of others. However, to those abstaining from meat, the internal motives may constitute a much larger basis of self-definition and in defining others.