Content uploaded by Ryan L. Boyd
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Ryan L. Boyd on Aug 31, 2023
Content may be subject to copyright.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
Available online 1 July 2022
0195-6663/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
‘Against the cult of veganism’: Unpacking the social psychology and
ideology of anti-vegans
Rebecca Gregson
a
,
*
, Jared Piazza
a
, Ryan L. Boyd
a
,
b
,
c
a
Lancaster University, Department of Psychology, Lancaster, LA1 4YF, United Kingdom
b
Security Lancaster, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
c
Data Science Institute, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
Text analysis
Social media
Reddit
Group identication
Veganism
ABSTRACT
Despite the established health and ecological benets of a plant-based diet, the decision to eschew meat and
other animal-derived food products remains controversial. So polarising is this topic that anti-vegan communities
— groups of individuals who stand vehemently against veganism — have sprung up across the internet. Much
scholarship on veganism characterizes anti-vegans in passing, painting them as ill-informed, uneducated, or
simply obstinate. However, little empirical work has investigated these communities and the individuals within
them. Accordingly, we conducted a study using social media data from the popular platform, Reddit. Specically,
we collected all available submissions (~3523) and comments (~45,528) from r/AntiVegan subreddit users (N =
3819) over a ve-year period. Using a battery of computerized text analytic tools, we examined the psychosocial
characteristics of Reddit users who publicly identify as anti-vegan, how r/AntiVegan users discuss their beliefs,
and how the individual user changes as a function of community membership. Results from our analyses suggest
several individual differences that align r/AntiVegan users with the community, including dark entertainment, ex-
veganism and science denial. Several topics were extensively discussed by r/AntiVegan members, including
nuanced discourse on the ethicality and health implications of vegan diets, and the naturalness of animal death,
which ran counter to our expectations and lay stereotypes of r/AntiVegan users. Finally, several longitudinal
changes in language use were observed within the community, reecting enhanced group commitment over
time, including an increase in group-focused language and a decrease in cognitive processing. Implications for
vegan-nonvegan relations are discussed.
1. Introduction
Despite the established health and ecological benets of a plant-
based diet (Willett et al., 2019), the decision to eschew meat and
other animal-derived food products remains controversial. So polarising
is this topic that anti-vegan communities, groups of individuals who
stand vehemently against veganism, have sprung up across the internet.
To date, very little is known about these communities and the in-
dividuals who join them. Accordingly, in this study, we take a close look
at the r/AntiVegan community on the popular platform, Reddit, and the
social psychology of its members publicly identifying as anti-vegan. We
use anti-vegans’ own words to understand their beliefs and motives and
establish some implications for vegan-nonvegan relations.
1.1. Veganism
Veganism is a term coined by Donald Watson in 1944 to describe the
voluntary abstention from animal derived food-products and a lifestyle
governed by non-violent philosophy (The Vegan Society, 2021). In
recent years, veganism has become increasingly mainstream in western
societies, with the Economist declaring 2019 the “year of the vegan”
(Parker, 2018). This increasing popularity of vegan diets has paralleled a
rise in selective eating habits (Fischler, 2015), leading to the common
misperception that veganism is a new-age fad diet (Cole & Morgan,
2011). Far from short-lived, the concept of abstaining from
animal-derived food products for ethical reasons, is said to date back
some 5000 years to Ancient Egypt, was later popularised by Greek
philosopher Pythagoras in around 500 BCE (Zaraska, 2016) and has a
rich tradition among several world religions, including Jainism,
* Corresponding author. Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YF, United Kingdom.
E-mail address: b.gregson@lancaster.ac.uk (R. Gregson).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Appetite
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/appet
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2022.106143
Received 22 January 2022; Received in revised form 14 June 2022; Accepted 15 June 2022
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
2
Hinduism, and Buddhism (Kumar, 2021).
A recent study which sampled 28 countries from all six inhabited
continents, estimated that the average global prevalence of vegan diets
is approximately 3%, with a range of 0–19% (IPSOS Mori, 2018). As
such, vegans represent a minority who deviate from the social norm,
which is to consume animal products. Particularly in the West, vegans
are demographically more likely to be female, younger, highly educated
and politically left-leaning individuals (Asher et al., 2014). Their moti-
vations for following a diet free from animal products are numerous,
typically incorporating moral, health and environmental considerations
(Zur & Kl¨
ockner, 2014). Relative to other groups who eschew meat, such
as vegetarians and pescatarians, vegans hold stronger personal, proso-
cial, and moral motivations (Rosenfeld, 2019). Vegans also consider
their dietary choices as more central to their identity and tend to be
more critical of people who, unlike themselves, do not abstain from
animal products (Rosenfeld, 2019).
1.2. Anti-veganism
Recent western history offers abundant evidence that people strongly
dislike those who eschew meat (Chiles & Fitzgerald, 2017). In the 19th
century, people who refrained from meat were ridiculed and ostracized
from mainstream culture for being ‘odd’, ‘eccentric’ and ‘half-crazed’
(Iacobbo & Iacobbo, 2004). In the counterculture era, spanning the
1960–70s, vegetarians were readily viewed as an absurd and socially
problematic movement, synonymous with the views that the main-
stream public held for hippies (Iacobbo & Iacobbo, 2004). Such senti-
ments which we see documented throughout Western history have since
been echoed in the discourse analyses of news outlets in Australia
(Ragusa, Crampton, & Masterman-Smith, 2014) and the United
Kingdom (Cole & Morgan, 2010).
Today, with the growing popularity of meat-free diets (The Vegan
Society, 2021), anti-vegan sentiments have become increasingly
apparent (Dhont & Stoeber, 2020). This has led scholars and legal bodies
to recognise anti-veganism as a prejudice (MacInnis & Hodson, 2015),
resulting in the protection of “ethical veganism” under the UK Equality
Act 2010 (Casamitjana v. League Against Cruel Sport, 2020). Some ev-
idence, reported by The Times, even suggests that vegan-related hate
crimes may be on the rise in theUK (Nachiappan, 2020). According to
the article, there were 172 instances of vegan hate crimes between the
years 2015–2020, one-third of which occurred in 2020 alone.
1.3. Anti-veganism and social media
Social media has transformed the way humans communicate and
interact, which has attracted the attention of psychologists (Wallace,
2015). Although social media may be lauded as an essential tool for
social interaction, some researchers suggest that it supports particularly
antisocial behaviour (Trindade, 2020), including cyberbullying (Whit-
taker & Kowalski, 2014) and the dissemination of hate speech (Casta-
˜
no-Pulgarín et al., 2021). Online communication at times lends itself to
the expression of extreme behaviour because of the anonymity it offers
the perpetrator (Branscomb, 1995), the invisibility of the victim (Lap-
idot-Leer & Barak, 2012) and the instantaneous nature of posting
(Brown, 2017), which can disinhibit an individual to convey thoughts
they might not express in person (Suler, 2004).
Social media has provided a platform for those who stand against
veganism to connect and identify with others who share in their oppo-
sition. Since early 2000, pockets of anti-vegan communities have begun
to spring up across the internet, from Reddit’s r/AntiVegan to Facebook’s
Anti-Vegan Club and Flickr’s Anti-Vegan League. It is possible that these
communities have become intertwined with alt-right ideology and
discourse (Gambert & Linn´
e, 2018; Reynolds, 2019). For example, the
slang term “soy boy” which is said to have originated from alt-right
online discourse on 4 chan, is used to describe men who lack tradition-
ally masculine qualities (Gambert & Linn´
e, 2018). Alt-right community
members have also been active in organising anti-vegan demonstrations
at vegan food festivals and privately owned vegan cafes, which involve
activities such as performatively consuming raw meat on the premises
(Reynolds, 2019).
1.4. Existing lines of research on anti-veganism
Given that plant-based diets offer a potential solution to the health
and ecological challenges posed by our current food system (Willett
et al., 2019), there has been a considerable amount of research con-
ducted to understand why people denigrate those who eschew meat (e.
g., see De Groeve & Rosenfeld, 2021). Research in this area has largely
focused on the form and content of anti-vegan prejudice. Characteristic
of such attitudes is the perception that people who identify as vegans
tend to be militant, hostile, overly sensitive, hypocritical, annoying,
self-righteous, opinionated, inexible, and judgmental (Cole & Morgan,
2011; De Groeve et al., 2021; Markowski & Roxburgh, 2019; Minson &
Monin, 2011). Generally, this arm of research converges on the
conclusion that moralistic impressions of vegans seem to account for the
bulk of antipathy and discrimination against them (see De Groeve et al.,
2021).
A second arm of this research has sought to understand the psy-
chosocial and demographic characteristics of those most likely to ex-
press anti-vegan sentiments. This largely survey-based body of research
has found that those more willing to denigrate vegans are typically male
(Vandermoere et al., 2019) and lower-educated individuals who hold
traditional views on gender (Earle & Hodson, 2017) and politics (Dhont
& Hodson, 2014). The degree of hedonic pleasure that people derive
from eating meat, particularly red meat, has also been shown to predict
prejudice toward vegetarians across several countries (Earle & Hodson,
2017; Ruby et al., 2016), suggesting that prejudice toward those who
abstain from animal food products may be a reactive expression aimed
at defending traditional cultural values linked to food choice.
1.5. A new line of research on anti-veganism
The research conducted to date has been invaluable in advancing
scientic understanding of anti-vegan sentiment. However, this research
has largely focused on the nature of anti-vegan sentiments expressed by
members of the general public when solicited by questions or measures
within a study or experiment. Thus, much of what we know about anti-
veganism has come from those who express anti-vegan sentiment,
reactively, when solicited under experimental conditions.
As such, the research in this area has moved toward studying anti-
vegan ideology organically, using samples of people who actively iden-
tify as anti-vegan and chose to participate in the relevant anti-vegan
behaviour. In new research by Aguilera-Carnerero and Carreter-
o-Gonz´
alez (2021), anti-vegan sentiments were studied across three
anti-vegan Spanish Facebook pages (namely; El mito del veganismo, Reich
Animalista and Vida Naturopat´
etica). The authors acquired a multimodal
dataset, containing language, image and video data for their discourse
analysis. Their ndings were conrmatory of the ndings from previous
controlled experimental and self-report research in English speaking
samples. For example, it was conrmed that in Spanish culture, typical
anti-vegan expressions share in the perception of vegans as fanatic,
radical and crazy. However, their unique approach to the study of
anti-vegan attitudes via the medium of social media allowed for novel
insights. For example, the nding that members of these communities
often draw on the lived experiences of ex-vegans as shared on YouTube
and public gures, including academics and television presenters, to
legitimize their anti-vegan sentiments. In addition, the view of veganism
as cult-like (both in a literal and metaphoric terms) and vegans as
misanthropic.
R. Gregson et al.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
3
1.6. Current study
In the current study, we sought to move away from traditional
methods of study and adopt a novel approach to understanding anti-
vegan sentiment. Accordingly, we take a “big picture” look at the so-
cial psychology of those publicly identifying as anti-vegan. We use the
public discourse of anti-vegans to better understand why they believe
what they believe, and to try to establish some implications for vegan-
nonvegan relations. We apply methods of computerized text analysis
to language data derived from a social media community of self-
identied anti-vegans.
Specically, we analyse social media data from Reddit, a popular,
anonymous online discussion forum comprised of sub-forums (“sub-
reddits”) within which users communicate through submissions and
comments. We chose Reddit because of the anonymity it offers its users
and its relative popularity in the world of social media. At the time of
writing, Reddit reports over 52 million daily active Reddit users
worldwide, ranking as one of the ten most popular and widely-used
websites on earth (Pew Research Center, 2021).
Here, we collect data from the subreddit r/AntiVegan, a community
with over 19,400 members. According to their strapline, r/AntiVegan is a
community of people ‘Against the cult of veganism’. More descriptively,
the community dene themselves as:
… a place to share and discuss content that opposes the ideology of
veganism. We are a community of omnivores, carnivores, ex-vegans,
vegetarians, and pescatarians. Food porn, recipes, news and nutrition
articles, stories, rants, and humor are all welcome.
Such an approach affords the opportunity to understand (a) the
prole of individuals who participate in online anti-vegan groups, and
(b) the nature of the commentary that occurs within such groups, and (c)
the long-term, motivational consequences of participating in such
groups. Thus, our three research questions are as follows:
•RQ1: How do r/AntiVegan users differ from the general population on
Reddit?
•RQ2: What are the most prominent topics of discussion among users
of the r/AntiVegan community?
•RQ3: Does engagement with the r/AntiVegan community precipitate
social psychological change, as evidenced by changes in users’ lan-
guage use?
1.6.1. RQ1: How do r/AntiVegan users differ from the general population
on Reddit?
We pose our rst research question with the aim of understanding
more about the psychosocial characteristics of individuals who actively
engage in a group organised around anti-vegan discussion: the r/Anti-
Vegan community. Treating Reddit as the baseline population (the
closest approximation to a ‘general population’ available within this
online context), we want to know what, if any, psychosocial charac-
teristics differentiate r/AntiVegan users from the general population on
Reddit.
1.6.2. RQ2: What are the most prominent topics of discussion among users
of the r/AntiVegan community?
It is unknown whether anti-vegan impressions, uncovered in survey
studies, will be shared among individuals who actively participate in
anti-vegan behaviour. It is also unclear what sorts of ideas and modes of
thinking typify the discourse of such communities. Accordingly, we pose
our second research question with the aim of understanding what the r/
AntiVegan community discusses as a window into the beliefs and motives
characteristic of anti-vegan identiers. In doing so, we seek to under-
stand anti-vegan beliefs and opinions as they choose to discuss and enact
them.
1.6.3. RQ3: Does engagement with the r/AntiVegan community precipitate
social psychological change, as evidenced by changes in users’ language use?
Despite anti-vegan sentiment being commonplace across the
internet, anti-veganism phenomena have yet to be studied through the
lens of group processes. Past research has shown that interaction with an
online community strengthens group-identication and, once a social
identity is formed amongst an online group, its members may be
increasingly susceptible to group inuence, stereotyping and discrimi-
nating against outgroup members (Postmes et al., 1998). Accordingly,
we pose our third question with the aim of understanding the social
psychological effects of r/AntiVegan membership by examining longi-
tudinal changes in language-based measures of group members’ traits
(e.g., Lam, 2008, pp. 2859–2869; see also: Boyd & Pennebaker, 2017). In
line with past work on group members aligning their linguistic styles,
goals, and norms, we explore whether r/AntiVegan users experience
something of a group acculturation process, exhibiting more
group-identication signatures over time, and whether the community
itself develops more group-like qualities, for example, more hierarchical
structures or leadership-followership distinctions.
2. Method
2.1. Sample overview
For this research, we used a custom pipeline, built around the
Pushshift database (Baumgartner et al., 2020), to collect data from the
subreddit r/AntiVegan. We collected all available posts, including both
“submissions” (i.e., posts that users made to the forum containing a link,
text, or other content) and “comments” (i.e., posts made in response to
other users’ posts) made in the r/AntiVegan subreddit between March
2014–December 2019. The nal database included a total of 48,909
posts, comprised of 3,523 submissions and 45,386 comments produced
by 3,819 unique users. Each post represented a unique data point and
was associated with the language content of the post, the date and time
the post was made and the username of the account which made the
post. To better understand r/AntiVegan users and their wider interest, we
additionally tallied the frequency of posts that each user made across all
other publicly visible subreddits.
2.2. Text analytic approach
We adopted multiple text analysis methods for quantifying the con-
tent of posts made to the r/AntiVegan subreddit, ranging from well-
established word counting methods to topic modelling and corpus lin-
guistics. Below, we briey describe each method and outline the mea-
sures provided by each. In the Results section, we included details of the
question-specic analysis to help illuminate the results.
2.2.1. Meaning Extraction Method
To understand what motivates Reddit users to participate in r/Anti-
Vegan, we used topic modelling to objectively extract and quantify the
central topics discussed within the r/AntiVegan community. For this
task, we employed the Meaning Extraction Method (MEM; Chung &
Pennebaker, 2008), a topic modelling technique which statistically
identies, from a list of high frequency words, those that tend to
co-occur into psychologically meaningful themes. This method is well
suited to addressing social scientic research questions and has been
used to understand the content of discourse in a wide range of topics,
including relationship problems (Entwistle et al., 2021), food cognition
(Blackburn et al., 2020), dehumanization (Markowitz & Slovic, 2021),
and climate change denialism (Shah et al., 2021), to name a few.
Briey described, the MEM is conducted in a series of steps: rst,
high frequency words within a corpus of text are identied and each text
is then scored (in either binary or relative frequency fashion) for the
presence or absence of each high frequency word. This part of the pro-
cedure has, more recently, been automated by the development of the
R. Gregson et al.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
4
Meaning Extraction Helper (MEH; v2.2.03; Boyd, 2020). The nal step is
to perform a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) with the data,
conceptually a method for nding groups of correlations, here a method
for nding groups of words that tend to co-occur. For in-depth treat-
ments of common MEM procedures, we refer readers to Boyd and Pen-
nebaker (2016) and Markowitz (2021).
2.2.2. Linguistic inquiry and word count
To explore the psychological consequences of r/AntiVegan member-
ship, we quantied longitudinal changes in users’ linguistic markers of
psychosocial traits. We employed Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC;
Pennebaker et al., 2015), a well-validated tool in computerized text
analysis, underpinned by the extensive research demonstrating that the
high occurrence of certain words is reliably indicative of corresponding
psychological processes (Boyd & Schwartz, 2021). LIWC consists of two
parts: a dictionary and a software program. The dictionary is comprised
of word-to-category mappings for 82 categories, including common
content (e.g., related to biology, power, family) and function words (e.
g., pronouns, conjunctions, articles). The program itself calculates the
percentage of words that belong to each of the dictionary categories,
hence, scores for each variable (excluding word count) range from 0 to
100. This method of text analysis has been applied to a wide range of
psychological research including personality, patterns of thought and
social processes (Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010).
3. Results
3.1. RQ1: How do r/AntiVegan users differ from the general population
on Reddit?
Without standard demographic information (e.g., age and gender) at
our disposal, we adopted a behavioral approach to identify those posting
characteristics that were more prevalent in r/AntiVegan users relative to
the overall population of Reddit users. We investigated the wider Reddit
activity of r/AntiVegan users, with the assumption that the kinds of
subreddits frequented by such users would be revealing of their psy-
chosocial characteristics
1
. Our approach to analysing these data was
thus twofold. First, we sought to understand how the posting activity of
r/AntiVegan users differed from that of the general population on Reddit.
Secondly, we sought to make a qualitative interpretation of the nature of
those subreddits highly frequented by r/AntiVegan users.
To address the rst aim, we compared the wider Reddit activity of r/
AntiVegan users against that of a sample of r/askreddit users (N =9500).
With over 33 million users, r/askreddit is one of the most popular sub-
reddits on Reddit. Given its popularity and the neutrality of its content,
this subreddit has often been used as something of a “control group” for
group-based comparisons (see, e.g., Bagroy et al., 2017). To determine
which subreddits were more associated with r/AntiVegan users, we used
the Basic Unit Transposable Text Experimentation Resource (BUTTER;
Boyd, 2018) an open-source software and text analytic system that
performs several text analytic and statistical functions. Specically, we
used the “compare frequencies” tool, which allows the user to calculate a
series of pairwise comparison statistics.
Here, we report the %DIFF values (Gabrielatos & Marchi, 2011), an
effect-size metric which indicates the proportion (%) of the difference
between the normalised frequencies of any one subreddit, across two
samples; the study sample of interest (here: r/AntiVegan) versus the
reference sample (here: r/askreddit). The formula for %DIFF is as fol-
lows, where NF refers to normalised frequency, SS study sample and RS
reference sample:
%DIFF =(NF in SS −NF in RS) × 100
(NF in RS) + .0001
In our case, positive %DIFF values indicate that a particular subreddit
has a higher normalised frequency in the study sample (r/AntiVegan)
and negative values a higher normalised frequency in the reference
sample (r/askreddit). Large values indicate that the subreddit is more
highly representative of the sample, relative to the other. These values
are not associated with a signicance outcome and so to make an
inference of the statistical signicance of the observed difference, we
draw on log-likelihood (LL) and employ the following threshold: LL ≥
15.13, p <.0001 (see, e.g., Rayson & Garside, 2000).
Our analysis revealed meaningful differences in the wider Reddit
activity of r/AntiVegan and r/askreddit users. Table 1 displays the 10
subreddits with the highest normalised frequency amongst r/AntiVegan
users, relative to r/askreddit users and vice versa.
A qualitative inspection of the way in which the subreddits, most
strongly associated with r/AntiVegan users, describe themselves
revealed several insights (see Table 2 for the community descriptions of
each of the ten subreddits with the highest normalised frequency
amongst r/AntiVegan users). First, r/AntiVegan users extend their dis-
cussions around veganism to other areas on Reddit, including r/Deba-
teAVegan and r/vegancirclejerk. This suggests that vegan opposition is a
key social motive for many r/AntiVegan users. r/AntiVegan users also
frequent r/carnivore, a subreddit dedicated to discussion around the
carnivore diet, a diet entirely reliant upon animal-derived products, and
one which excludes all other food groups, including vegetables and
carbohydrates. These users nd entertainment in shocking (r/Make-
MeSuffer) and socially taboo topics (e.g., r/AccidentalRacism). They
adopt a style of humour which is both self- (r/suicidebywords) and other
deprecating (r/darkjokes). Taboo topics represented within these fre-
quented subreddits include rape, miscarriage, suicide, and racism.
Oppressed minority groups like women and people of colour feature
heavily in both r/AccidentalRacism and r/darkjokes. Lastly, the activity
featured in r/AskDocs and r/youtube suggests that r/AntiVegan users
appreciate both rational and anecdotal argumentation, respectively.
3.2. RQ2: What are the most prominent topics of discussion among users
of the r/AntiVegan community?
To better understand the topics that r/AntiVegan users discuss within
their community, we conducted a MEM analysis on the language data
generated within the r/AntiVegan subreddit. Specically, we used the
MEH to analyse the r/AntiVegan posts with a word count ≥100 (N =
3253). Following standard MEM procedures, we then performed a PCA
Table 1
The Ten Subreddits with the Highest Normalised Frequency Amongst r/Anti-
Vegan and r/askreddit Users.
Subreddit r/AntiVegan
frequency
r/askreddit
frequency
%DIFF Log Liklihood
DebateAVegan 46872 1 626044.90 11734.97***
carnivore 7094 3 31488.67 1739.20***
AntiVegan 46902 61 10171.24 11089.85***
darkjokes 120146 174 9124.05 28250.19***
youtube 240237 432 7328.78 55766.29***
vegancirclejerk 23636 52 5972.00 5409.13***
AskDocs 202089 450 5899.17 46205.39***
suicidebywords 36311 104 4564.08 8124.34***
MakeMeSuffer 94436 299 4119.18 20920.12***
AccidentalRacism 32923 157 2701.31 6934.34***
Subreddit r/AntiVegan
frequency
r/askreddit
frequency
%DIFF Log Liklihood
CFB 0 38634 −99.99 165217.38***
n 0 33009 −99.99 141160.59***
reddevils 0 21747 −99.99 92995.80***
counting 0 21065 −99.99 90079.06***
hockey 0 20797 −99.99 88932.89***
SquaredCircle 0 19577 −99.99 83715.27***
BattleeldV 0 18627 −99.99 79652.37***
GlobalOffensive 0 17285 −99.99 73912.99***
DestinyTheGame 0 15938 −99.99 68152.24***
Gunners 0 14762 −99.99 63122.81***
R. Gregson et al.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
5
with varimax rotation on the binary word output generated using the
MEH, to extract common themes of r/AntiVegan discussion. The diag-
nostic Bartlett’s Sphericity Test (
χ
2
=50796.805, p <.001) and the
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure (KMO =0.807) indicated that a component
type model was an acceptable t for these data. A 5-component solution
was selected as the best t for our data, considering a trade-off between
breadth and depth of coverage; each component had an eigenvalue ≥2
and together the 5-component explained 10.82% of variance in the data,
well within the expected range for a PCA on language data (see, e.g.,
Ikizer et al., 2019; Kilimnik et al., 2018). Thus, a 5-component solution,
with factor loadings of ≥2.5 was retained for further inspection.
In order to further inspect the 5 components that of our PCA, we
selected a sample of the 10 highest-scoring comments on each compo-
nent. Where interpretations were more difcult, we additionally looked
at the ten lowest-scoring comments for comparison. The MEM-derived
word clusters revealed ve distinct themes of discussion: 1) health, 2)
rationalism, 3) animal death, 4) experiential accounts, and 5) morality
(see Table 3 and Fig. 1). The verbatim quotes that we present in the
following subsections were taken from these samples and are intended
to be most representative of the component.
3.2.1. Health
The rst theme captured discussion around the negative health
consequences of a vegan diet, relative to a meat-based diet. Hence,
emergent word loadings included: protein, nutrient, health, fat, and body.
Many r/AntiVegan users see veganism as nutritionally inadequate, a
“slow form of starvation” and vegans themselves as being “sick all the
time”, having weak bones, poor memory and a low libido. Some users
saw veganism as disguising a disordered relationships with food, namely
eating disorders like orthorexia nervosa: “We [r/AntiVegan users] look at
it [veganism] like an eating disorder, like anorexia”. As a result of these
perceived nutritional deciencies and the subsequent need to supple-
ment, a vegan diet is also seen as unnatural. r/AntiVegan users are of the
opinion that were veganism a natural diet for humans, it would “… not
have to be monitored, adhered to or supplemented”.
The discussion around the negative health consequences of a vegan
diet takes a holistic and sophisticated look at the absence of essential
nutrients, the complex interplay between certain nutrients, their meta-
bolic proles and absorption. r/AntiVegan users see a vegan diet as
“decient in a lot more than just b12” and introduce into their discussion
nutritional elements such as omega 3, carnitine, taurine, iron, Vitamin
A, and Coenzyme Q10. Some r/AntiVegan users explain that because of
the complex metabolic proles of certain nutrients, the body is more
heavily taxed when trying to convert plant sources: “there is additional
conversion needed within the body to metabolize many nutrients from their
plant form to animal form. The body has a limited capacity to do this”. In this
way, r/AntiVegans see meat-based diets as conveniently healthy; both
nutritionally superior to a vegan diet and able to provide equal or better
nutrition at a smaller density of food intake: “Plants don’t have the same
bioavailability as animal products do, so you would have to eat far more
whole plants than you would animal products”.
The Health discussion theme was heavily populated with ex-vegans.
An analysis of the posts made by ex-vegans that fall under this theme
implicate the motivation to both share and seek advice about the nega-
tive health consequences of a vegan diet: “Would love to hear advice or
Table 2
The Community Descriptions of each of the Ten Subreddits with the Highest
Normalised Frequency Amongst r/AntiVegan Users.
Subreddit Community Description
DebateAVegan A place for open discussion about veganism and vegan issues,
focusing on intellectual debate about animal rights and welfare,
health, the environment, nutrition, philosophy or any topic
related to veganism.
carnivore A subreddit about the elimination and way of eating known as
the carnivore diet.
AntiVegan /r/AntiVegan is a place to share and discuss content that
opposes the ideology of veganism. We are a community of
omnivores, carnivores, ex-vegans, vegetarians, and
pescatarians. Food porn, recipes, news and nutrition articles,
stories, rants, and humour are all welcome.
darkjokes #BLM Chapo Reddit Takeover: Guess Which Sub Is Next
youtube r/YouTube is for meta-discussion about YouTube as a platform -
its features, bugs, business decisions, etc. This is a fan sub, not
run or owned by YouTube!
vegancirclejerk Veganism is a way of living that is just awesome, plus we totally
get enough protein! Also, we totally get enough oral sex.
Probably more than you, to be honest. Not bragging, just stating
facts.” - The Vegan Society
AskDocs Having a medical issue? Ask a doctor or medical professional on
Reddit! All aired medical professionals on this subreddit are
veried by the mods.
suicidebywords A sub about self-inicted insults.
MakeMeSuffer If it hurts to look at, post it.
AccidentalRacism This is where you can post all the accidental racism pictures.
Table 3
Themes Extracted by the MEM on r/AntiVegan Submissions.
Component 1 Component 2 Component 3 Component 4 Component 5
Health Rationalism Animal death Experiential accounts Morality
diet .560 study .451 animal .467 time .352 vegans .476
meat .521 science .344 farm .454 day .294 argument .419
eat .521 large .312 live .434 post .285 moral .414
food .446 level .311 kill .428 comment .280 vegan .412
fat .426 source .297 cow .406 start .275 veganism .367
egg .420 high .293 wild .389 said .272 animal .310
protein .417 research .292 human .379 give .271 debate .295
product .412 due .286 species .351 talk .266 argue .275
nutrient .391 point .284 die .349 see .264 wrong .257
plant .381 number .280 death .319 look .260
body .368 fact .273 feed .309 read .256
vegetable .363 system .270 farmer .306 thought .251
health .357 case .269 produce .295
healthy .337 true .262 chicken .293
vegetarian .332 amount .262 hunt .292
dairy .324 link .253 raise .287
amount .294 grow .273
sh .283 small .272
consume .282 suffering .261
milk .265 life .251
high .265
vegan .263
R. Gregson et al.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
6
similar experiences … And happy to answer any questions”. Common
health-related reasons for leaving veganism include both physical and
mental health issues, namely: a lack of energy or fatigue, racing heart,
high blood pressure, anaemia, iron deciencies, anxiety depression, and
recovery from disordered eating. Many advice-seeking ex-vegans were
looking to validate their own personal health concerns and to under-
stand how to re-introduce animal-derived food products into their diets.
Both advice-seeking and advice-giving ex-vegans used r/AntiVegan as a
social support forum and as a personal diary of the process involved in
returning to their omnivorous diet: “Checking in after two months of ex-
veganism … I have gained weight … Oh, I also got my period”.
3.2.2. Rationalism
The second theme captures discussion around logic-driven argu-
ments, underpinned by scientic research and reason. Hence, the words
study, science, research, fact and true emerged as key word loadings here.
Discussion around logic-driven arguments occurred in two unique ways.
First, the reference to scientic research can be understood as a tool used
in anti-vegan argumentation; r/AntiVegan users appealed to the au-
thority of scientic research to support their claims: “You can literally
nd all I’ve said on Wikipedia and you can nd there all the sources linked to
studies by experts”. Second, r/AntiVegan users denigrated vegans for their
use of scientic research. For instance, some users accused vegans of
committing the fallacy of incomplete evidence — “Idiot vegans that
cherry-pick sources to push propaganda” — or drawing on research with
awed assumptions or methods — “trusting groups like the AHA who still
spout the thoroughly debunked ‘high cholesterol causes heat disease’
nonsense for health recommendations is a recipe for suicide.” r/AntiVegan
users also criticise prominent vegan advocates, like YouTube personality
Mic The Vegan and American physician Dr. Greger, founder of Nutrition
Facts.org, questioning their expertise and objectivity on the subject.
Though r/AntiVegan users might be criticised for engaging in
“myside bias”, the evaluation of evidence in a manner biased toward
one’s own opinions (Baron, 1995; Stanovich et al., 2013), they none-
theless present relatively well-reasoned critiques of scientic research.
For example, those that call attention to the issues associated with the
use of non-comparative control groups, the over-generalising of ndings
from small samples, and averaging data while neglecting individual
differences and outliers. Where meta-analyses can often overcome these
types of issues, r/AntiVegan users often make the valid claim that
aggregating awed research only leads to awed conclusions: “if a meta
study compiles data from awed studies, then it’s also just as awed”. Dis-
cussions also touch on the recent crisis of reproducibility through talk of
publication bias (“Who funds the studies can and does very often determine
what we end up learning”) and scandals of data fabrication which suggest
that r/AntiVegan users remain on the pulse of the most recent goings on
in scientic culture.
Talk on this theme is not restricted to vegan-related content and
merges into discussion around other topics, for example, vaccine
research. While anti-vaccination views are said to occupy a small space
online, research has shown that such discussion has seen recent explo-
sive growth, which at times spills into adjacent topics (Johnson et al.,
2020). Here r/AntiVegan users critically discuss vaccination, in
particular the risk-benet approach taken in vaccination research (“The
very science of vaccination requires there to be a trade-off between safety and
effectiveness”) and the issues around dening risk specically (“If you
can’t properly dene the risk, then that calculation cannot be made”). Much
of the same evaluations that are used to critique the science in support of
plant-based diets (e.g., non-comparative controls, here ‘placebos’) are
applied here. Though, it is important for us to note that, elsewhere in the
discourse on vaccination, some r/AntiVegan users can be seen holding
more favourable views on vaccination and equating vegans with
“anti-vaxxers” about whom they hold particularly negative views. This
critical and nuanced discourse suggests that r/AntiVegan users’ may be
well versed in scientic inquiry and critical evaluation.
3.2.3. Animal death
The discussion that underpins theme three takes a matter-of-fact
approach to animal death, and argues that regardless of an in-
dividual’s dietary choice, animal suffering and death is inevitable:
“Death is certain. Suffering is part of life”. Hence, prominent word load-
ings include: animal, kill, death, suffering and life. Construing animal
death in such a way may be intended to rebuff the belief commonly
attributed to vegans that killing an animal is always wrong. Put another
way, the argument that death is inevitable builds upon the belief that
loss of life is ultimately unavoidable and, particularly in the case of food,
necessary. In this vein, veganism is portrayed as naïvely idealistic; “you
have to understand that ‘no suffering’ is never going to be possible” and
vegans are viewed as disconnected from the natural world: “They have
no hands-on experience with how their existence ts into the food chain, or
indeed how life on earth itself works”. Tied to this, many r/AntiVegan users
nd inconsistencies in the vegan message, as they claim that even non-
animal agriculture kills animals as a by-product of production: “The
number of animals that die to produce vegan food is astonishing”. Though
some r/AntiVegan contributors recognise that with meat there is greater
intention to kill than with plant cultivation, ultimately they feel that “A
death is a death. Suffering is suffering”. For these reasons, vegans can be
painted as “ignorant and hypocritical”.
Importantly, when talking about animal agriculture, many r/Anti-
Vegan users discriminate between killing animals for meat and factory
farming. Indeed, there is a fair amount of consensus within r/AntiVegan
that factory farming is wrong: “I’m not talking about factory farming here.
I don’t think anyone truly disputes that factory farms are unfathomably and
heart-wrenchingly cruel, as well as environmentally catastrophic”. There is
also the strong belief that, outside of factory farming, the killing prac-
tises of the animal agriculture industry are far more humane (“a swift bolt
to the head”) than an animal might expect to endure in the wild (“torn
apart by a predatory wild animal”), and that, in farming animals, humans
provide them a service: “I’d much rather a caged catered life over being a
roaming scrounger”.
As a result of a matter-of-fact approach to animal death, many r/
AntiVegan users feel that their role as animal consumers is to shop
responsibly for high-welfare, environmentally sustainable food prod-
ucts. Many users express the fatalistic, pragmatic belief that, ultimately,
animals are going to die and so the best they can do for animals is to
support an agricultural system that minimises harm and waste: “I believe
Fig. 1. Word Clouds of the Five MEM-Derived r/AntiVegan Components.
R. Gregson et al.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
7
it is every omnivore’s duty to make sure that animal life is not taken in an
inhumane manner and that none of the products from a slaughtered animal
are wasted”. For many r/AntiVegan users, high-welfare farming is
“family-owned, small-scale, organic farms with pasture-raised livestock”.
This preference for purchasing better meat, leads many r/AntiVegan users
to abhor so-called militant vegans, those who hold a rigid view that “all
meat is murder” and do not respect people’s choice to make better rather
than restrictive decisions around food.
3.2.4. Experiential
The words that load onto factor four are indicative of storytelling
semantics: time, day, start, thought, and said. Indeed, this theme relates to
the anecdotal evidence that r/AntiVegan users draw on when discussing
their motivations for identifying as anti-vegan, or for turning to this
community for support. It is striking that this theme is contrasted with
the second theme, a logic-driven argumentation style. Unlike the logic-
driven theme where r/AntiVegan users can be seen as drawing on sci-
entic research to evidence their points, these users draw more on their
own personal experience with veganism. For example, sharing personal
narratives (“I lived and grew up on …“), relational experiences, conver-
sations they have had, videos they have seen and r/AntiVegan discourse
itself. As a result, much of the content seems to be born out of intuition
(e.g., I think, I know, I wonder) and reads like hearsay (e.g., “I hear that
people”, “some people say”). The general tone of this content in relation
to that under theme two is less analytic and less cognitively rigid (e.g.,
should, maybe, might, suppose).
In an experiential fashion, r/AntiVegan users share their stories of the
negative personal experiences with vegan individuals; ranging from
personal relationships that have been destroyed as a result of veganism
and interactions with the general public. The highest scoring submission
on this factor, a 2291-word story which explores how the user’s rela-
tionship was destroyed when their ex-anc´
e made the decision to
become vegan overnight. Not alone, another user explains: “Over a year
ago, my husband watched some documentary on Netix and decided to go
Vegan. We had a blow up ght about it”. In another post, the user, a pet-
shop assistant, narrates a conict with a vegan member of the public
who was insisted on feeding their newly adopted cat a vegan diet. That
r/AntiVegan users revel sharing stories of this nature, suggests that some
of their anti-vegan identity might be underpinned by personal ofine
experiences.
3.2.5. Morality
The last theme reected discussion of the moral arguments that
underpin veganism. Hence, emergent word loadings included: argument,
moral, animal, debate and wrong. Needless to say, r/AntiVegan users are
opposed to the moral arguments that vegans present. Instead, they
believe that “it is morally permissible to humanely slaughter a non-person
animal for its products”. For this reason, they see the moral message as
being ineffective for encouraging people to go vegan: “moral arguments
for veganism will never compel me to go vegan”. We have summarised the
arguments within this theme into three strands.
First, many r/AntiVegans view vegans as making indefensible, abso-
lutist moral claims. One user explains: “I’m not anti-vegan per se, but I’m
highly intolerant to people who think they have the ultimate wisdom because
of their belief and dictates their way of life (vehemently) on others”. By
contrast, many r/AntiVegans see morality as a relative construct which
“differs from person to person” believing that not everyone shares the
same moral convictions, nor should they feel compelled to act contrary
to their own convictions: “everyone has different moral values there aren’t
a set of dened rules we must ad-hear to”. The issue of militant vegans re-
occurs in this theme, with “radical” vegans criticised for their inexible
moral absolutism: “Those animals do need to live in better conditions but for
their [vegans] radical minds, they just can’t compromise”.
Second, r/AntiVegan users strongly dislike the ways in which vegan
advocates use the moral message in their campaigns, specically when
drawing comparisons between non-human animals and humans who
represent social minorities. Oftentimes, in their advocacy, vegans can
draw on human examples of rape, slavery and murder to explain animal
agriculture practises like articial insemination, connement and
slaughter. These comparisons are particularly vexing. One user explains:
“I adopt an anti-vegan stance purely to reject the stream of accusations of
murder, rape, holocaust etc”. The r/AntiVegan community believe that
these so-called “emotional shock tactics” are designed to catch non-
vegans acting morally inconsistent (“gotcha type questions”) and are
thus met with particular reproach. Words like ‘murder’ and ‘rape’ are
seen as extreme and this adds to the perception of vegans as being
militant and overly zealous: “Many vegans, like yourself, are overly
aggressive when making your point … You attack people verbally and use
extreme words like ‘murder’ and imply someone is ‘evil”.
Furthermore, many r/AntiVegan users expressed offense at these
comparisons because they see certain animals as distinctly different
from humans due to their lower sapience and inability to conceptualize
abstract concepts like freedom and morality. This explains the nal
strand of argumentation that r/AntiVegans present for opposing the
vegan moral message: they proudly hold speciesist views. Thus, by
comparing the lives of farmed animals to that of humans, vegans are
seen as belittling the plight of many people in society. The vegan
movement is seen as a “cult” that “discriminates a variety of people”.
Vegans themselves are seen putting “animals above people” and as such
are viewed as misanthropists who: “are so far up their misanthropy and,
hilariously, projecting Humanity onto animals that they don’t realize how
absurd comparing slavery to animal domestication is.” Even more extreme
views include seeing vegans as attempting to eradicate human life: “On
a psychological level they think humans are generally bad thus the conse-
quence is the eradication of humans is the logical next step”.
3.3. RQ3: Does engagement with the r/AntiVegan community precipitate
social psychological change, as evidenced by changes in users’ language
use?
To investigate longitudinal changes in the language of r/AntiVegan
users, we computed a variable reecting a unique post made by each
user in a new calendar week. The variable, which we refer to as ‘week’,
worked by scoring each user’s rst post as week one. Every subsequent
post that fell in a new calendar week was assigned an ascending value,
by increments of one. All posts made within the same calendar week
were assigned the same value. This produced a string variable with a
sequence from 1 to 52. By computing a time variable in this way, we
were able to aggregate all posts at the week and user level, holding each
user’s rst post and the year in which it was made, constant.
With these data, we rst sought to identify the rate of attrition within
the r/AntiVegan community and the point at which we lose the majority
of our sample. As is typical in online communities (e.g., Wong et al.,
2015), most users in r/AntiVegan remained active for a relatively short
amount of time (see Table 4). The majority of the sample (62.2%) made
one post in r/AntiVegan, while only a minority (7.15%) remained for a
prolonged period of time, posting for 10 weeks or more. Just two highly
active users consistently posted in r/AntiVegan each week for the
Table 4
r/AntiVegan Users Sample Attrition between Weeks 1–10.
Week Users (N) %
1 3819 100
2 1443 38
3 941 25
4 700 18
5 558 15
6 463 12
7 405 11
8 357 9
9 307 8
10 273 7
R. Gregson et al.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
8
duration of 52 weeks. To map longitudinal changes, an attrition
threshold of 80% was employed, which limited the investigation to the
rst four weeks of activity, a point at which 18.3% (N =700) of the
original sample remained.
All posts with a word count ≥50 occurring between weeks 1–4 were
quantied for analysis using LIWC 2015. We conducted an initial
exploratory analysis to determine potentially meaningful longitudinal
changes in LIWC outcomes. This involved visually inspecting a sample of
18 relevant LIWC outcomes as a guide for later signicance testing. The
18 variables that were selected were those deemed to be relevant to the
topic of anti-veganism (e.g., “Health”, “Body”) or group-processes (e.g.,
“Afliation”, “Power”). All of the 18 variables that were visually
inspected can be viewed via our analysis script (https://osf.io/5xs4a/).
The six variables – “I”, “Cogproc”, “Authentic”, “Clout”, “We”, and
“Anx” (described in turn, below) - were those which evidenced prom-
ising ndings upon visual inspection (See Supplementary Materials B)
and were thus selected for further signicance testing.
The LIWC variable named “I” refers to self-focused language, spe-
cically the use of rst-person singular pronouns such as ‘I’ and ‘me’.
The LIWC variable named “Cogproc” measures language pertaining to
cognitive processing, including insight (e.g., think, know), causation (e.
g., because, effect), discrepancy (e.g., should, would), tentativeness (e.g.,
maybe, perhaps), certainty (e.g., always, never) and differentiation (e.g.,
hasn’t, but, else). The LIWC variable named “Authentic” refers to the use
of authentic language, that which represents honest, unltered, and
spontaneous speech (Jordan et al., 2018). Dimensions that positively
load onto the authenticity index include self-focused language, insight,
words, differentiation words (e.g., but, though, versus) and relative
terms (e.g., above, stop, sudden); dimensions that negatively load include
discrepancies from reality (e.g., hope, must, ought) and third-person
singular pronouns (e.g., she, her, himself). The LIWC variable named
“Clout” can be considered a marker of condence in language (Drouin
et al., 2017; Jordan et al., 2019). Dimensions that positively load onto
Clout include group-focused language (i.e., ‘we’ words) negations (e.g.,
no, not, never) and swear words while dimensions that negatively load
onto Clout include self-focused language (i.e., lower use of ‘I’). The LIWC
variable “We” reects the use of group-focused language, specically
the collective pronoun ‘we’. Lastly, the LIWC variable named “Anx” re-
fers to the use of anxious language, including words like “worried” and
“fearful”.
To determine meaningful differences in each of these six LIWC out-
comes, between weeks one and four; we conducted a series of paired-
samples t-tests using Welch’s Test to control for unequal sample sizes.
Five of these six variables returned signicant ndings, with varying,
relatively small effect sizes (“Anx” was not signicant; see Table 5 for
details).
4. Discussion
The present study applied computerized text analytic methods to
language data produced by self-identied anti-vegans on the subreddit
r/AntiVegan. These methods returned novel insights into the psychoso-
cial characteristics and motivations of individuals actively opposed to
veganism as a social movement and, how such a community evolves
over time. The study represents a novel, large-scale, naturalistic view of
anti-vegan attitudes and argumentation, from the rst-hand perspective
of anti-vegans, within an English-speaking sample. Below we discuss key
ndings relating to our three guiding research questions.
4.1. Who are r/AntiVegans?
Relative to the general Reddit userbase, r/AntiVegan users occupy
spaces in Reddit pertaining to dark humour, that which nds comedic
value in human suffering and topics which are typically considered
taboo (Bloom, 2010). Previous research has shown that the appreciation
of dark humour is more popular amongst males, those high in rebel-
liousness and younger people (Aillaud & Piolat, 2012; Oppliger & Zill-
mann, 1997), which is particularly revealing. Importantly, and in
accordance with the desensitization hypothesis, previous research has
linked violent media (Carnagey et al., 2007) and internet memes that
draw on dark humour (Sanchez, 2020) with psychological desensitiza-
tion to violence. r/AntiVegan users’ interest in dark humour appears
consistent with an unsentimental attitude towards animal slaughter and
death.
Here, dark humour is a tool used to denigrate both the self (r/
MakeMeSuffer) and others (r/AccidentalRacism). We see the use of other-
deprecating or disparagement humour as particularly revealing of psy-
chosocial characteristics of r/AntiVegan users. Disparagement humour is
any attempt to amuse through the denigration of an individual or social
group (Janes & Olson, 2000). Disparagement humour can be an op-
portunity for people who harbour prejudicial attitudes to express them
(Ford & Ferguson, 2004). Many of the subreddits that r/AntiVegan users
frequent, particularly r/darkjokes and r/AccidentalRacism, include the
expression of prejudicial attitudes towards groups including (but not
limited to) women and people of colour. Previous research has found
that generalized ethnic prejudice, speciesist attitudes towards animals,
and antipathy towards vegetarians share ideological roots, specically,
social dominance orientation (SDO; Dhont & Hodson, 2014; Dhont et al.,
2016). Our analysis would thus suggest that r/AntiVegan users would
score high on measures of SDO relative to the general population of
Reddit users.
A prominent demographic amongst r/AntiVegan users was a group of
ex-vegans seeking health advice and social support from the community,
despite ex-vegans having their own home on Reddit (r/exvegans). The
nding that former vegans are motivated by health concerns and a
Table 5
Linguistic Inquiry Word Count t-test Analysis.
Mean (SD)
LIWC Category Variable Week 1 Week 4 Mean Difference (Week 1 - Week 4) 95% Condence Interval t p d
I 4.06 (3.57) 3.31 (3.13) −0.75 0.41, 1.08 4.37 0.000 0.21
Cogproc 15.10 (4.73) 14.42 (4.69) −0.68 −0.18, 1.16 2.69 0.007 0.14
Authentic 39.53 (29.9) 35.77 (27.4) −3.76 0.86, 6.65 2.54 0.011 0.13
Clout 51.25 (25.7) 54.39 (24.2) +3.14 −5.68, −0.59 −2.42 0.016 0.12
We 0.57 (1.18) 0.72 (1.36) +0.15 −0.28, 0.01 −2.09 0.037 0.12
Notes: p values were not corrected for multiplicity.
LIWC Category Variables: “I” refers to self-focused language, “Cogproc” cognitive processing, “Authentic” authentic language, “Clout” condent language, and “We”
group-focused language.
Degrees of freedom were as follows: I (778.26), Cogproc (703.3), Authentic (748.79), Clout (730.57), We (637.17).
d refers to Cohen’s d.
R. Gregson et al.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
9
desire for greater social connectedness is consistent with past research
(Asher et al., 2014; Barr & Chapman, 2002; Hodson & Earle, 2018). That
these motivations would push former vegans to stand with those advo-
cating against veganism was documented here and in the work by
Aguilera-Carnerero and Carretero-Gonz´
alez (2021). While these results
highlight why many ex-vegans join anti-vegan communities, the extent
to which ex-vegans endorse anti-vegan sentiments remains unclear.
Drawing insights from the wider literature on religion, we know that
when an individual leaves a group, they may often continue to exhibit
many of the behaviours and cognitions typical of their former group – an
effect known as religious residue (Van Tongeren et al., 2021). From this
perspective, one might predict that ex-vegans will endorse anti-vegan
sentiments to a much lesser extent than those who have never been
vegan. Though, these assumptions would require further investigation.
Despite using scientic evidence to support their own arguments, r/
AntiVegan users denigrate vegans for their supposed misuse of scientic
evidence and question the research underpinning vegan advocacy. This
may be evidence of a motivated cynicism toward, or denial of, the sci-
ence in support of veganism. Indeed, the dismissal of well-established
scientic evidence for non-scientic motives (Prot & Anderson, 2019)
is particularly common when such evidence threatens cherished values
(Cofnas et al., 2017) like the consumption of meat (e.g., Dhont et al.,
2021). Since meat consumers at times experience dissonance with
regards to their meat consumption (Rothgerber, 2020), this raises the
provocative question of whether their distrust is partly fuelled by efforts
to redress meat-oriented dissonance.
4.2. r/AntiVegan beliefs and opinions
Contrary to the common assumption that anti-vegan views are ill-
informed and mean-spirited, our analysis suggests that anti-vegans are
an interestingly heterogenous group with a varied set of beliefs and
opinions. This includes the view that veganism is nutritionally inade-
quate. Discussion around the negative health consequences of a vegan
diet was highly nuanced, extending beyond the mere absence of food-
derived nutrients, to talk around bioavailability, metabolic proles,
and nutrient absorption. This aspect of r/AntiVegan belief system might
be considered an extension of one of the “4Ns” of meat-eating justi-
cation (Piazza et al., 2015) – the argument that eating meat is necessary
for human health. This argument was also highly entangled with a
second of the 4Ns, the argument that eating meat is natural, as well as
arguments around the nutritional convenience of a meat-based diet.
Further, we noted some discussion of veganism as having links with
disordered eating, which was both an argument against veganism, put
forward by r/AntiVegan users, and part of the lived experience of
ex-vegans active in the subreddit. Although this theme was rare, links
between veganism and disordered eating has been reported elsewhere
by researchers (e.g., Parra-Fernandez et al., 2020). A potential reason
why personal health is such a cardinal line of anti-vegan argumentation
is because arguably, nutritional inadequacy is one of the strongest
counterarguments against veganism. If meat is truly necessary for human
health, then it is unavoidable and a vegan diet unsustainable.
Animal death as an unavoidable reality was also central to anti-vegan
opinion, as was the notion that veganism is an idealistic view of the
natural world. Here, r/AntiVegan users argued that, in so far as humans
do so responsibly, killing animals for consumption is natural and a
service to the animal, whose death would be more brutal in the wild.
This line of argumentation has strong parallels with the less but better
concept, a strategy employed by NGOs (e.g., RSPCA Assured) to promote
more sustainable consumption practises, and one which seems to garner
a good deal of public support (Pohjolainen et al., 2016). Here, r/Anti-
Vegan users can be seen using the less but better concept (albeit, with a
greater focus on better) as a meat-eating justication, to defend their
current practises and offer a counter-solution to veganism. r/AntiVegan
users dene better meat in terms of opposing factory farming and pur-
chasing meat produced on small, family-owned, organic farms from
livestock free from connement and instead raised on pasture. Given the
pervasiveness of factory farmed meat in most countries (Sentience
Institute, 2019), this line of argumentation could reect either an
insensitivity to animal suffering, or an attempt to resolve the cognitive
dissonance that arises when one acknowledges their role in said
suffering (Rothgerber, 2020). Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that
meat consumers engage in wishful thinking by overestimating the
availability of “humanely” produced meat (Cornish et al., 2016; Roth-
gerber, 2020). Regardless, what is clear is that vegans and many
anti-vegans share the central belief that humans have a responsibility to
care for animals, common ground that might be harnessed to facilitate
inter-group relations.
The unpleasant, moralistic tone of vegans was a frequent topic of r/
AntiVegan discussion. This nding is somewhat unsurprising given that
the vast majority of anti-vegan research has converged on the conclusion
that discrimination of vegans is often motivated by impressions of their
“holier than thou” posture (De Groeve et al., 2021; Minson & Monin,
2011; Weiper & Vonk, 2021). Here, the vegan moral argument is
rejected for three reasons: rst, r/AntiVegans tend to be moral relativists
and thus abhor so-called militant vegans who demand that others
endorse their own convictions about animals. Second, r/AntiVegan users
strongly dislike how vegan advocates use moral messages in their
campaigns, specically when drawing comparisons between non-human
animals and minority human groups. Finally, they reject the vegan
critique of speciesism. Some anti-vegans proudly held speciesist views,
which might be additional evidence for proling r/AntiVegan users as
high in social dominance orientation, given the strong empirical overlap
between speciesism endorsement and SDO (Dhont & Hodson, 2014).
4.3. Enhanced group commitments
Our nal research aim was to explore the social psychological effects
of r/AntiVegan membership using longitudinal changes in LIWC vari-
ables. Amongst a subset of committed users, we observed a small
decrease in the use of rst-person pronoun (i.e., “I”), cognitive processing
(i.e., “Cogproc”), and authentic language (i.e., “Authentic”) over time.
In addition, there was a small increase in group-focused language use (i.
e., “We”) and condent language (i.e., “Clout”). Taken together, we see
these ndings as indicative of a strengthening of group processes and
increased group socialisation. As an individual user becomes integrated
with the group they rely less on the rst-person ‘I’ and increasingly the
collective ‘we’ (Lee et al., 2020). Not only do these users reference
themselves less, but over time the authenticity in their speech is reduced
suggesting a move away from valuing what is individual and original
and a move towards group conformity. Users’ persistent activity on
r/AntiVegan increased their condence and certainty (i.e., “Clout”). Such
linguistic displays are characteristic of people with higher social status
or who yield greater inuence over a group (Cassell & Tversky, 2006;
Dino et al., 2009), possibly suggesting that, as time goes on, a hierarchy
of group leadership emerges amongst a subset of highly committed
r/AntiVegan users.
This pattern of increased clout is inversely related to cognitive pro-
cessing (i.e., “Cogproc”). Here we saw cognitive processing decreasing
somewhat over time, suggesting that persistent activity on r/AntiVegan
resulted in a reduction of logic-driven, critical thinking around the topic
of veganism. Though, this is not to argue that anti-vegan argumentation
descends into illogical thought, instead, it is more likely that talk moves
away from defending the anti-vegan position as users’ certainty of their
beliefs in enhanced. Taken together, we see this inverse relationship
between clout and cognitive processing as suggestive that, over time, the
group processes under r/AntiVegan are rened and a hierarchy is
established amongst a subset of committed users who are increasingly
comfortable with their role within the group and more epistemically
certain of their anti-vegan position.
R. Gregson et al.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
10
4.4. Implications
This research offers rich insights into anti-vegan thinking, motives
and behaviour, which has important implications for vegan-nonvegan
relations. While we have predominantly highlighted the ways in
which anti-vegan and vegan ideology diverge, it would seem that the
two are connected in their shared belief that humans have a re-
sponsibility to minimize the harmful impacts that their choices have on
animals and the environment. How the two groups seek to achieve this
goal is where they diverge. While anti-vegans believe it their role to shop
responsibly (i.e., for high-welfare, environmentally sustainable prod-
ucts), vegans believe they should not shop for animal-derived products
at all. All things considered, there may be more common ground to
harness between vegans and anti-vegans than one might otherwise as-
sume outside of the present investigation.
Further, many r/AntiVegan users conne their antipathy towards
vegans to “militants” or the overly zealous (“I don’t hate/dislike vegans”;
“But militant veganism makes me want to dig my heels in”). In fact, some
avow “respect” for the “admirable” work that vegans do and even enjoy
eating vegan or meatless food themselves (“I love a good vegan meal and
I’m really open to eating less meat”). We see this specialised hatred toward
so-called militant vegans as meaningful in explaining much of the hatred
directed towards vegans. Importantly, one of the extreme consequences
of militant veganism that we observed from these data is the perception
of vegans as misanthropists and veganism as a cult (recall the r/Anti-
Vegan strapline “against the cult of veganism”). We conducted further
exploratory qualitative analyses of the anti-vegan perception of
veganism as a cult, which can be viewed in Supplementary Materials C.
We recommend that future research examines the underpinnings and
accuracy of these judgments, particularly claims about vegans as
misanthropes.
Our analysis suggests that r/AntiVegans dene militant vegans as
those who are inexible and particularly aggressive in their moral
thinking. The literature of psychological reactance might help to explain
these ndings. Spelt et al. (2019) have found that highly controlling
language in meat reduction appeals is associated with increased psy-
chological reactance, as measured by scales of anger and perceived
threat to freedom, relative to low controlling language. Thus, vegan
advocacy that is extreme and unforgiving may be damaging to the
progression of the movement insofar as reactance may a barrier to
message receptivity.
4.5. Limitations and future directions
Despite the many strengths of this research, it is not without its
limitations. One such limitation of this work is the inability to differ-
entiate users in our sample who were members of r/AntiVegan from
those who were active in the space, though not members. Thus, the
percentage of users in our sample who do not identify as anti-vegan is
unknown. Despite this, we have a number of reasons to believe that
these numbers are extremely small and add minimal (if any) noise
within our data. First, r/AntiVegan list in their community rules that “no
vegan may troll, preach, or spread misinformation or propaganda”. To po-
lice this rule, r/AntiVegan employ both human moderators as well as a
"bot" to lter out vegan “trolls/brigaders” and remove “pro-vegan sub-
missions” from this space. Hence, we imagine that the number of vegans
present in r/AntiVegan is small. We also have strong reason to believe
that our ndings are reective of the social psychology of anti-vegans,
given that we employed steps to sample data from highly committed
contributors, for example, employing conservative word count thresh-
olds and for RQ3 specically, analysing a subset of highly committed
users. Qualitatively, our ndings also align with this notion. For
example, our user base was active in other spaces on Reddit relating to
anti-vegan ideology (e.g., r/DebateAVegan and r/carnivore), suggesting
anti-vegan ideology to be central to these users’ identity and behaviour
on Reddit. Furthermore, several anti-vegan arguments that are recog-
nised here (e.g., the argument that veganism is inadequate for human
health) also align with previous sentiments communicated by
committed meat consumers (e.g., the belief that meat is necessary to be
healthy; Piazza et al., 2015).
Another limitation is the demographic skew of Reddit users, which
tends to trend in the direction of young, English-speaking males. It is
estimated that approximately 90% of Reddit users are under the age of
35 (Bogers & Wernersen, 2014), 63% identify as males (Pew Research
Center, 2021) and just under half from the US (Statista, 2021). In this
regard, our research is highly skewed toward Western Education
Industrialized Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) populations. Future
research ought to investigate anti-vegan sentiments with other de-
mographic proles, for example countries where the prevalence of
vegetarian and vegan diets is much higher (e.g., India, Israel).
In our analysis, we overlooked a number of dimensions of r/Anti-
Vegan communication, for example, their use of multimedia, upvotes,
permalinks and hashtags. Our dataset affords the opportunity for future
work to study the sharing of multi-media content. Of particular rele-
vance would be to study the communities use of internet memes.
Internet memes, humorous images and videos, can be thought of as a
fast-paced and somewhat competitive style of humour, with memes that
arouse the most attention (measured in likes, comments or in this case
upvotes) typically out-living those that are less impactful. Aguiler-
a-Carnerero and Carretero-Gonz´
alez (2021) found that anti-vegan
memes can range from non-offensive light humour to hate-laden at-
tacks on vegan character and the movement as a whole. Meme-sharing
thus may provide yet another window into anti-vegan thought.
We restricted our investigation to r/AntiVegan, yet there is reason to
believe that anti-vegan attitudes bleed out from this space into other
relevant subreddits: r/VegoonCircleJerk, r/ShitVegansSay, r/CringeyVe-
gans and r/DumbVeganLogic, to name a few. Outside of Reddit, there are
several English-speaking anti-vegan communities on Facebook, which
has more active daily users than Reddit (Pew Research Center, 2021).
Our research overlooks these spaces and in doing may present a limited
view of online anti-vegan attitudes. Future research should widen the
scope by analysing anti-vegan discourse across multiple platforms.
It might be a fruitful endeavour for future research to seek to un-
derstand what motivated Reddit users to join the r/AntiVegan commu-
nity. The authors made an attempt to address this question (detailed in
Supplementary Materials D), however, results from this analysis were no
more revealing of the motivations for joining r/AntiVegan, than were
those from the MEM reported in-text. We report both for the sake of
completeness. Future work could investigate this by mapping an indi-
vidual user’s Reddit journey prior to joining r/AntiVegan, for example,
the subreddits they frequent and any changes in their language style in
the months leading up to joining the community. Previous research
(Phadke et al., 2020) has outlined such an approach and has found
meaningful patterns in what motivates people to join conspiracy com-
munities, speccially. In future research, these methods could be
applied to the study of the formation of anti-vegan attitudes.
Lastly, these methods could be extended to study the inter-group
relations between vegans and anti-vegans. These such interactions are
observable in spaces like r/DebateAVegan, where lines of communication
between vegans and those opposed to veganism is less restricted than in
a space like r/AntiVegan, where vegans are censored. Recent research by
Kumar et al. (2018) has mapped out intercommunity interactions on
Reddit, specically examining cases where one community becomes
mobilized by negative sentiment to comment in another community. In
future research, their methods could be applied to study the intergroup
processes between r/AntiVegans and the vegan (e.g., r/vegan) commu-
nity on Reddit.
R. Gregson et al.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
11
5. Conclusion
In a fast-growing body of literature, academics are seeking to un-
derstand anti-vegan attitudes and what motivates them. The present
study investigated anti-vegan attitudes rst-hand, from the perspective
of a community of individuals who publicly identify as being anti-vegan.
Here, we observed that r/AntiVegan users are unique from the popula-
tion on Reddit in the extent to which they embrace taboo topics and dark
humour, they engage in critical and nuanced discussions of the moral
and health claims of vegans, and show signs of increased certainty and
group commitment over time. The views of r/AntiVegans represent a stiff
challenge to vegan advocacy, but also, we expect, a useful battleeld of
operation for helping vegan advocates creatively rene their arguments
and strategies.
Author contributions
The rst author conducted the analysis and wrote the manuscript.
The second author contributed to writing and editing of the manuscript.
The third author collected the data, informed the analytic method used
and contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript. All authors
read and approved the nal version of the manuscript.
Funding
Ms. Gregson’s contributions were made as part of a PhD at Lancaster
University, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
Ethical statement
Ethical approval for this research was obtained from the Faculty of
Science and Technology Research Ethics Committee at Lancaster Uni-
versity (FST20094) on April 16, 2021.
Declaration of competing interest
None.
Open research statement
This research was not pre-registered. The raw dataset analysed for
this work is not publicly available to protect the privacy of the Reddit
users whose data were used in this study. The public Reddit data can be
made available upon request, subject to an appropriate data use agree-
ment, if applicable. To request these data, please contact b.gregs
on@lancaster.ac.uk. Analysis and output is available and can be ob-
tained from: https://osf.io/5xs4a/
Ethical statement
This research followed all ethical guidelines for human research
participants. Ethical approval for this research was obtained from the
Faculty of Science and Technology Research Ethics Committee at Lan-
caster University (FST20094) on April 16, 2021.
Declaration of competing interest
None.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge Bogna Liziniewicz, Owen
Palmer and Jonjo Murphy for their helpful insights and contributions to
the development of the research reported in this manuscript.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.appet.2022.106143.
References
Aguilera-Carnerero, C., & Carretero-Gonz´
alez, M. (2021). The vegan myth: The rhetoric
of online anti-veganism. In L. Wright (Ed.), The routledge handbook of vegan studies
(1st ed., pp. 354–365). London: Routledge.
Aillaud, M., & Piolat, A. (2012). Inuence of gender on judgment of dark and nondark
humor. Individual Differences Research, 10(4), 211–222.
Asher, K., Green, C., Gutbrod, H., Jewell, M., Hale, G., & Bastian, B. (2014). Study of
current and former vegetarians and vegans. Retrieved from https://faunalytics.org/wp
-content/uploads/2015/06/Faunalytics_Current-Former-Vegetarians_Full-Report.
pdf.
Bagroy, S., Kumaraguru, P., & De Choudhury, M. (2017). A social media based index of
mental well-being in college campuses. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on
human factors in computing systems . CHI conference (pp. 1634–1646). https://doi.org/
10.1145/3025453.3025909, 2017.
Baron, J. (1995). Myside bias in thinking about abortion. Thinking & Reasoning, 1(3),
221–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546789508256909
Barr, S., & Chapman, G. (2002). Perceptions and practices of self-dened current
vegetarian, former vegetarian, and nonvegetarian women. Journal of the American
Dietetic Association, 102(3), 354–360. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0002-8223(02)
90083-0
Baumgartner, J., Zannettou, S., Keegan, B., Squire, M., & Blackburn, J. (2020). The
Pushshift Reddit dataset. In Proceedings of the fourteenth international AAAI conference
on web and social media (pp. 830–839). https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/a
rticle/view/7347.
Blackburn, K. G., Hontanosas, J., Nahas, K., Bajaj, K., Thompson, R., Monaco, A.,
Campos, Y., Tran, T., Obregon, S., & Wetchler, E. (2020). Food foraging online:
Exploring how we choose which recipes to search and share. First Monday. https://doi.
org/10.5210/fm.v25i12.10863
Bloom, H. (2010). Dark humour. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism.
Bogers, T., & Wernersen, R. (2014). How ‘social’ are social news sites? Exploring the
motivations for using Reddit.com. In iConference 2014 Proceedings (pp. 329–344).
https://doi.org/10.9776/14108. Retrieved from.
Boyd, R. L. (2018). MEH: Meaning extraction helper. (Version 2.2.03) [Software].
Available from https://www.ryanboyd.io/software/meh.
Boyd, R. L. (2020). Butter: Basic unit transposable text experimentation Resource. (Version
0.6.6.9) [Software]. Available from https://www.butter.tools/.
Boyd, R. L., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2016). A way with words: Using language for
psychological science in the modern era. In C. V. Dimofte, C. P. Haugtvedt, &
R. F. Yalch (Eds.), Consumer psychology in a social media world (pp. 222–236).
Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Boyd, R. L., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2017). Language-based personality: A new approach to
personality in a digital world. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 18, 63–68.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.07.017
Boyd, R. L., & Schwartz, H. A. (2021). Natural language analysis and the psychology of
verbal behavior: The past, present, and future states of the eld. Journal of Language
and Social Psychology, 40(1), 21–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X20967028
Branscomb, A. (1995). Anonymity, autonomy, and accountability: Challenges to the rst
amendment in cyberspaces. The Yale Law Journal, 104(7), 1639. https://doi.org/
10.2307/797027
Brown, A. (2017). What is so special about online (as compared to ofine) hate speech?
Ethnicities, 18(3), 297–326. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796817709846
Carnagey, N., Anderson, C., & Bartholow, B. (2007). Media violence and social
neuroscience. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(4), 178–182. https://doi.
org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00499.x
Casamitjana, v (2020). The league against cruel sports, UKET 3331129/2018. Norwich
Court https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKET/2020/3331129_2018.pdf.
Cassell, J., & Tversky, D. (2006). The language of online intercultural community
formation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(2). https://doi.org/
10.1111/j.1083-6101.2005.tb00239.x, 00-00.
Casta˜
no-Pulgarín, S., Su´
arez-Betancur, N., Vega, L., & L´
opez, H. (2021). Internet, social
media and online hate speech. Systematic review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 58,
Article 101608. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2021.101608
Chiles, R., & Fitzgerald, A. (2017). Why is meat so important in western history and
culture? A genealogical critique of biophysical and political-economic explanations.
Agriculture and Human Values, 35(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-017-
9787-7
Chung, C., & Pennebaker, J. (2008). Revealing dimensions of thinking in open-ended
self-descriptions: An automated meaning extraction method for natural language.
Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 96–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
jrp.2007.04.006
Cofnas, N., Carl, N., & Woodley of Menie, M. (2017). Does activism in social science
explain conservatives’ distrust of scientists? The American Sociologist, 49(1),
135–148. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-017-9362-0
Cole, M., & Morgan, K. (2011). Vegaphobia: Derogatory discourses of veganism and the
reproduction of speciesism in UK national newspapers 1. British Journal of Sociology,
62(1), 134–153. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2010.01348.x
R. Gregson et al.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
12
Cornish, A., Raubenheimer, D., & McGreevy, P. (2016). What we know about the public’s
level of concern for farm animal welfare in food production in developed countries.
Animals, 6(11), 74. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani6110074
De Groeve, B., Hudders, L., & Bleys, B. (2021). Moral rebels and dietary deviants: How
moral minority stereotypes predict the social attractiveness of veg*ns. Appetite, 164,
Article 105284. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105284
De Groeve, B., & Rosenfeld, D. (2021). Morally admirable or moralistically deplorable? A
theoretical framework for understanding character judgments of vegan advocates.
Appetite, 168, Article 105693. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105693
Dhont, K., & Hodson, G. (2014). Why do right-wing adherents engage in more animal
exploitation and meat consumption? Personality and Individual Differences, 64, 12–17.
Dhont, K., Hodson, G., & Leite, A. (2016). Common ideological roots of speciesism and
generalized ethnic prejudice: The social dominance human–animal relations model
(SD–HARM). European Journal of Personality, 30(6), 507–522. https://doi.org/
10.1002/per.2069
Dhont, K., Piazza, J., & Hodson, G. (2021). The role of meat appetite in willfully
disregarding factory farming as a pandemic catalyst risk. Appetite, 164, Article
105279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105279
Dhont, K., & Stoeber, J. (2020). The vegan resistance. The Psychologist, 34(1), 24–27
(KAR id:80384).
Dino, A., Reysen, S., & Branscombe, N. R. (2009). Online interactions between group
members who differ in status. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 28, 85–93.
Drouin, M., Boyd, R. L., Hancock, J. T., & James, A. (2017). Linguistic analysis of chat
transcripts from child predator undercover sex stings. Journal of Forensic Psychiatry
and Psychology, 28(4), 437–457. https://doi.org/10.1080/14789949.2017.1291707
Earle, M., & Hodson, G. (2017). What’s your beef with vegetarians? Predicting anti
vegetarian prejudice from pro-beef attitudes across cultures. Personality and
Individual Differences, 119, 52–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.06.034
Entwistle, C., Horn, A., Meier, T., & Boyd, R. (2021). Dirty laundry: The nature and
substance of seeking relationship help from strangers online. Journal of Social and
Personal Relationships. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075211046635,
026540752110466.
Fischler, C. (2015). Selective eating: The rise, the meaning and sense of personal dietary
requirements. United Kingdom: Odile Jacob.
Ford, T., & Ferguson, M. (2004). Social consequences of disparagement humor: A
prejudiced norm theory. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(1), 79–94.
https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0801_4
Gabrielatos, C., & Marchi, A. (2011). Keyness: Matching metrics to denitions. Corpus
linguistics in the south 1. University of Portsmouth, 5 November 2011.
Gambert, I., & Linn´
e, T. (2018). From rice eaters to soy boys: Race, gender, and tropes of
‘plant food masculinity’. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/
ssrn.3298467
Hodson, G., & Earle, M. (2018). Conservatism predicts lapses from vegetarian/vegan
diets to meat consumption (through lower social justice concerns and social
support). Appetite, 120, 75–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2017.08.027
Iacobbo, M., & Iacobbo, K. (2004). Vegetarian America: A history. United Kingdom:
Praeger.
Ikizer, E. G., Ramírez-Esparza, N., & Boyd, R. L. (2019). #sendeanlat (#tellyourstory):
Text analyses of tweets about sexual assault experiences. Sexuality Research and
Social Policy, 16(4), 463–475. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-018-0358-5
IPSOS Mori. (2018). An exploration into diets around the world. https://www.ipsos.com/sit
es/default/les/ct/news/documents/2018-09/an_exploration_into_diets_around_th
e_world.pdf.
Janes, L., & Olson, J. (2000). Jeer pressure: The behavioral effects of observing ridicule
of others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26(4), 474–485. https://doi.org/
10.1177/0146167200266006
Johnson, N., Vel´
asquez, N., Restrepo, N., Leahy, R., Gabriel, N., El Oud, S., et al. (2020).
The online competition between pro- and anti-vaccination views. Nature, 582(7811),
230–233. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2281-1
Jordan, K. N., Pennebaker, J. W., & Ehrig, C. (2018). The 2016 U.S. presidential
candidates and how people tweeted about them. Sage Open, 8(3), 1–8. https://doi.
org/10.1177/2158244018791218
Jordan, K., Sterling, J., Pennebaker, J., & Boyd, R. (2019). Examining long-term trends in
politics and culture through language of political leaders and cultural institutions.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(9), 3476–3481. https://doi.org/
10.1073/pnas.1811987116
Kilimnik, C. D., Boyd, R. L., Stanton, A. M., & Meston, C. M. (2018). Identication of
nonconsensual sexual experiences and the sexual self-schemas of women:
Implications for sexual functioning. Archives of Sexual Behavior. https://doi.org/
10.1007/s10508-018-1229-0
Kumar, S., Hamilton, W., Leskovec, J., & Jurafsky, D. (2018). Community interaction and
conict on the web. In Proceedings of the 2018 world wide web conference on world
wide web - WWW (Vol. 18). https://doi.org/10.1145/3178876.318614
Lam, W. (2008). Language socialization in online communities. Encyclopedia Of Language
And Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_214
Lapidot-Leer, N., & Barak, A. (2012). Effects of anonymity, invisibility, and lack of eye-
contact on toxic online disinhibition. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(2), 434–443.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2011.10.014
Lee, S. H., Tak, J.-Y., Kwak, E.-J., & Lim, T. Y. (2020). Fandom, social media, and identity
work: The emergence of virtual community through the pronoun “we.”. Psychology of
Popular Media, 9(4), 436–446. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000259
MacInnis, C., & Hodson, G. (2015). It ain’t easy eating greens: Evidence of bias toward
vegetarians and vegans from both source and target. Group Processes & Intergroup
Relations, 20(6), 721–744. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430215618253
Markowitz, D. M. (2021). The meaning extraction method: An approach to evaluate
content patterns from large-scale language data. Frontiers in Communication, 6.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.588823
Markowitz, D. M., & Slovic, P. (2021). Why we dehumanize illegal immigrants: A US
mixed-methods study. PLoS One, 16(10), Article e0257912. https://doi.org/
10.1371/journal.pone.0257912
Markowski, K., & Roxburgh, S. (2019). “If I became a vegan, my family and friends would
hate me:” Anticipating vegan stigma as a barrier to plant-based diets. Appetite, 135,
1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2018.12.040
Minson, J., & Monin, B. (2011). Do-gooder derogation:do-gooder derogation:
Disparaging morally motivated minorities to defuse anticipated reproach. Social
Psychological and Personality Science, 3(2), 200–207. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1948550611415695
Nachiappan, A. (2020). Experts get their teeth into the idea of vegan hate crime. The Times.
Retrieved 24 August 2021, from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/experts-get-the
ir-teeth-into-idea-of-vegan-hate-crime-65nsf6c02.
Oppliger, P. A., & Zillmann, D. (1997). Disgust in humor: Its appeal to adolescents.
Humor - International Journal Of Humor Research, 10(4). https://doi.org/10.1515/
humr.1997.10.4.421
Parker, J. (2018). The world in 2019. Retrieve from https://worldin2019.economist.co
m/theyearofthevegan.
Parra-Fern´
andez, M., Manzaneque-Ca˜
nadillas, M., Onieva-Zafra, M., Fern´
andez-
Martínez, E., Fern´
andez-Mu˜
noz, J., Prado-Laguna, M., & Brytek-Matera, A. (2020).
Pathological preoccupation with healthy eating (orthorexia nervosa) in a Spanish
sample with vegetarian, vegan, and non-vegetarian dietary patterns. Nutrients, 12
(12), 3907. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12123907
Pennebaker, J. W., Boyd, R. L., Jordan, K., & Blackburn, K. (2015). The Development and
psychometric Properties of LIWC2015. Retrieved from https://repositories.lib.utexas.
edu/bitstream/handle/2152/31333/LIWC2015_LanguageManual.pdf.
Pew Research Center. (2021). Social media use in 2021. Retrieved 26 August 2021, from
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/.
Phadke, S., Samory, M., & Mitra, T. (2020). What makes people join conspiracy
communities? Proceedings Of The ACM On Human-Computer Interaction, 4(CSCW3),
1–30. https://doi.org/10.1145/3432922
Piazza, J., Ruby, M., Loughnan, S., Luong, M., Kulik, J., Watkins, H., & Seigerman, M.
(2015). Rationalizing meat consumption. The 4Ns. Appetite, 91, 114–128. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2015.04.011
Pohjolainen, P., Tapio, P., Vinnari, M., Jokinen, P., & R¨
as¨
anen, P. (2016). Consumer
consciousness on meat and the environment — exploring differences. Appetite, 101,
37–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.02.012
Postmes, T., Spears, R., & Lea, M. (1998). Breaching or building social boundaries?
Communication Research, 25(6), 689–715. https://doi.org/10.1177/
009365098025006006
Prot, S., & Anderson, C. (2019). Science Denial: Psychological processes underlying
denial of science-based medical practice. In A. Lavorgna, & A. Di Ronco (Eds.),
Medical misinformation and social harm in non-science-based health practices (1st ed.).
London: Routledge.
Ragusa, A., Crampton, A., & Masterman-Smith, H. (2014). Reproducing speciesism: A
content analysis of Australian media representations of veganism. In Annual
conference of the Australian sociological association: Challenging identities, institutions
and communities.
Rayson, P., & Garside, R. (2000). Comparing corpora using frequency proling.
Proceedings of the Workshop on Comparing Corpora -, 9, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.3115/
1117729.1117730
Reynolds, G. (2019). The war on vegans. The guardian weekly. Retrieved 26 August 2021,
from https://www.yumpu.com/news/en/issue/9740-the-guardian-weekly-2
019-11-01/read?page=41.
Rosenfeld, D. (2019). A comparison of dietarian identity proles between vegetarians
and vegans. Food Quality and Preference, 72, 40–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
foodqual.2018.09.008
Rothgerber, H. (2020). Meat-related cognitive dissonance: A conceptual framework for
understanding how meat eaters reduce negative arousal from eating animals.
Appetite, 146, Article 104511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2019.104511
Ruby, Alvarenga, R., Kirby, R., & Rutsztein. (2016). Attitudes toward beef and
vegetarians in Argentian, Brazil, France and the USA. Appetite, 96, 546–554.
Sanchez, B. (2020). Internet memes and desensitization. Pathways: A Journal of
Humanistic and Social Enquiry, 1(2), 1–11.
Sentience Institute. (2019). Global farmed & factory farmed animals estimates. Retrieved
26 August 2021, from https://www.sentienceinstitute.
org/global-animal-farming-estimates#ftnt1.
Shah, M., Seraj, S., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2021). Climate denial fuels climate change
discussions more than local climate-related disasters. Frontiers in Psychology, 12,
3741. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682057
Spelt, H., Dijk, E., Ham, J., Westerink, J., & IJsselsteijn, W. (2019). Psychophysiological
measures of reactance to persuasive messages advocating limited meat consumption.
Information, 10(10), 320. https://doi.org/10.3390/info10100320
Stanovich, K., West, R., & Toplak, M. (2013). Myside bias, rational thinking, and
intelligence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(4), 259–264. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0963721413480174
Statista. (2021). Regional distribution of desktop trafc to Reddit.com as of June 2021.
Retrieved 26 August 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistic
s/325144/reddit-global-active-user-distribution/#statisticContainer.
Suler, J. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. CyberPsychology and Behavior, 7(3),
321–326. https://doi.org/10.1089/1094931041291295
R. Gregson et al.
Appetite 178 (2022) 106143
13
Tausczik, Y. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2010). The psychological meaning of words: LIWC
and computerized text analysis methods. Journal of Language and Social Psychology,
29(1), 24–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X09351676
The Vegan Society. (2021). Denition of veganism. Retrieved 27 August 2021, from https
://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/denition-veganism.
Trindade, V. P. L. (2020). The ‘unsocial’ facets of social media platforms - the International
Network for Hate Studies. Retrieved 24 August 2021, from https://internationalhatest
udies.com/the-unsocial-facets-of-social-media-platforms/.
Van Tongeren, D., DeWall, C., Chen, Z., Sibley, C., & Bulbulia, J. (2021). Religious
residue: Cross-cultural evidence that religious psychology and behavior persist
following deidentication. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120(2),
484–503. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000288
Vandermoere, F., Geerts, R., De Backer, C., Erreygers, S., & Van Doorslaer, E. (2019).
Meat consumption and vegaphobia: An exploration of the characteristics of meat
eaters, vegaphobes, and their social environment. Sustainability, 11(14), 3936.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su11143936
Wallace, P. (2015). The psychology of the internet (2nd ed.). Cambridge Core: Cambridge
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139940962
Weiper, M., & Vonk, R. (2021). A communicational approach to enhance open-
mindedness towards meat-refusers. Appetite. , Article 105602. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.appet.2021.105602
Whittaker, E., & Kowalski, R. (2014). Cyberbullying via social media. Journal of School
Violence, 14(1), 11–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2014.949377
Willett, W., Rockstr¨
om, J., Loken, B., Springmann, M., Lang, T., Vermeulen, S., et al.
(2019). Food in the anthropocene: The EAT–lancet commission on healthy diets from
sustainable food systems. The Lancet, 393(10170), 447–492. https://doi.org/
10.1016/s0140-6736(18)31788-4
Wong, J.-S., Pursel, B., Divinsky, A., & Jansen, B. J. (2015). An analysis of MOOC
discussion forum interactions from the most active users. In N. Agarwal, K. Xu, &
N. Osgood (Eds.), Social computing, behavioral-cultural modeling, and prediction (pp.
452–457). Springer International Publishing.
Zaraska, M. (2016). Meathooked : The history and science of our 2.5 million-year obsession
with meat. Basic Books.
Zur, I., & Kl¨
ockner, C. A. (2014). Individual motivations for limiting meat consumption.
British Food Journal, 116(4), 629–642. https://doi.org/10.1108/bfj-08-2012-0193
Further reading
Cassell, J., Huffaker, D., Tversky, D., & Ferriman, K. (2006). The language of online
leadership: Gender and youth engagement on the internet. Developmental Psychology,
42, 436–449.
Kramer, A.D.I., & Chung, C.K. (2011). Dimensions of self-expression in Facebook status
updates. Proceedings of the fth international AAAI conference on weblogs and
social media (pp. 169–176).
Metrics For Reddit. (2021). New subreddits by month. Retrieved 27 August 2021, from
https://frontpagemetrics.com/history/month.
Postmes, T., Spears, R., & Lea, M. (2000). The formation of group norms in computer-
mediated communication. Human Communication Research, 26(3), 341–371. https://
doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2000.tb00761.x
Reddit (2021). Fuelling Reddit’s future. Retrieved 26 August 2021, from https://www.
redditinc.com/blog/fueling-reddits-future/.
2021 RSPCA Assured. (2021). Eat less, eat better | RSPCA Assured. Retrieved 26 August
2021, from https://www.rspcaassured.org.uk/support-us/eat-less-eat-better/.
R. Gregson et al.
