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ToolsShulman, Deborah, Shnitzer-Akuka, Mor and Reifen-Tagar, Michal (2021) The cost of attributing moral blame: Defensiveness and resistance to change when raising awareness to animal suffering in factory farming. PLoS One, 16 (8). ISSN 1932-6203
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Abstract
Social change campaigns often entail raising awareness of harm caused by people’s behavior. For example, campaigns to reduce meat eating frequently highlight the suffering endured by animals. Such messages may simultaneously attribute moral blame to individuals for causing the harm described. Given people’s motivation to protect their moral self-image, we expected that information about the suffering of animals in the meat industry presented with a blaming (versus absolving) frame would generate greater defensiveness and correspondingly resistance to change in support of veg*nism (veganism/vegetarianism). We ran three studies to test this expectation. In two studies, we found that raising awareness of animal suffering using a blaming frame increased defensiveness, leading to lower veg*n-supporting attitudes and behavioral intentions. In one study, our hypothesis was not supported, however, a mini-meta analysis across the three studies suggests the overall pattern is robust. This work expands our understanding of the role of moral self-image preservation in defensiveness and resistance to change, and has applied relevance for the development of effective communication strategies in social and moral campaigns.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Data Availability: The data underlying the results presented are available in a public repository (OSF) and can be found at: https://osf.io/eavwt/. Funding: D.S, M.S & M.R.T Animal Advocacy Research Fund. https://researchfund.animalcharityevaluators.org/ M.R.T Israel Science Foundation (2436/19). Sponsors did not play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology |
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| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 27 Nov 2024 10:46 |
| Last Modified: | 30 Nov 2024 01:45 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/97769 |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0254375 |
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