Monthly Archives: May 2011

ALLEN, WILSON, NG AND DUNNE (2000) ARGUED that the values of vegetarians/vegans differed most obviously from those of omnivores when considering the symbolic meaning of meat in regards to hierarchical domination (pp. 407-408). Using Altemeyer’s (1981) Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale and Sidanius’s 16-item Social Dominance Orientation Scale (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994) and correlating it to diet preference, Allen et al found a positive correlation between both social dominance and right-wing authoritarianism and diet preference, with a much higher correlation for authoritarianism (Allen, Wilson, Ng, & Dunne, 2000, p. 411). They postulate that vegetarians and vegans have restored the missing referent and do not see meat as anonymous or objectify food animals in the ways that omnivores do (p. 420). Filippi et al (2010) found that adult vegetarians and vegans who made their food choices for ethical reasons showed different brain responses than omnivores… Read more