Matthew B. Ruby’s research while affiliated with La Trobe University and other places

It is unclear how pet ownership is related to mental health, with some previous research suggesting pet owners have better mental health, while other research suggests they have worse mental health. Some researchers have suggested that it may be more useful to investigate the bond people feel with their pets and how this may impact mental health; however, this too has led to mixed results. This study examined how owners’ attachment to their dogs was associated with mental health and how this compared to their attachment relationships with other humans in a sample of 607 dog owners. Our findings indicate that both strong and insecure attachments to dogs are linked to poorer mental health outcomes, as was having an insecure attachment style in their human relationships. The adverse impact of strong attachment to dogs on mental health was mediated by these owners having an anxious attachment style toward other people, which in turn was associated with poorer mental health. The relationship between a strong attachment to dogs and poorer mental health was also moderated by gender, with this relationship being significant in women but not significant for men. Together, these results suggest a possible risk to mental health for owners who form a strong attachment to their dogs to compensate for anxious attachments in human relationships.

While globalisation brings opportunities for cultural enrichment, it may also present challenges as individuals attempt to make sense of and integrate fragmented and often conflicting cultural influences into a coherent self‐concept. A qualitative inquiry into contemporary Australians' cultural identity experiences indicated that some people perceive themselves as a product of multiple influences from diverse contacts and learnings, and they mix and reconcile these influences into their self‐concept. Building on this prior work, the current study developed and tested a new quantitative measure of polycultural identity. Using two diverse Australian samples ( N = 301; N = 525) recruited from Prolific, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a single‐factor structure and a high Cronbach's α among the final 10 items. Correlational analyses revealed that, as expected, the Polycultural Identity Scale (PIS) was more strongly linked with the endorsement of polycultural ideology than multicultural ideology and was uncorrelated with colourblind ideology. Also, as expected, the PIS correlated moderately with generalised identity blendedness, interest in diverse contact and endorsement of global citizenship but not with identity compartmentalisation or generalised identity harmony. The PIS has the potential to provide valuable insights into the dynamics of multifaceted cultural identity and how individuals organise and synthesise a breadth of cultural influences into a meaningful self‐concept.

Patients’ expectations are a major contributor to the unnecessary prescribing of antibiotics, yet limited research has examined how physicians can calibrate these expectations. The studies we conducted tested how varying messages could impact patients’ expectations for antibiotics and their experience of medical appointments. All the participants read a short scenario about an appointment for mild sinusitis symptoms, with the patient’s expectation of antibiotics. In Study 1, the participants (n = 1069) were randomly assigned to read a positively framed, neutral, or negatively framed message regarding unnecessary antibiotics. In Study 2, the participants (n = 1073) read a message emphasizing either the societal or personal harms of unnecessary antibiotics, or a message without additional rationale. None of our pre-registered hypotheses were supported, but our exploratory analyses indicated that the societal message increased concern about antibiotic resistance. The participants who were more concerned about resistance were less likely to ask for antibiotics, more satisfied when the physician did not prescribe them, and more likely to recommend the physician to a friend. Discussing the consequences of the different courses of action did not appear to negatively impact physician–patient rapport. These studies demonstrate an inexpensive method with which to pre-test various messages about antibiotic consumption, and suggest that such messages are not negatively received by patients.

Many people care about animals and do not wish to cause them harm yet continue to eat them. Past research, largely in Western cultural contexts, has found that people’s meat consumption is negatively related to how much they know about animal farming practices, and positively related to their endorsement of speciesism (the assignment of moral worth based on species membership). Little is known, however, about how these variables are related to meat consumption in non-Western samples. The present study aimed to determine to what extent perceptions of farming practices and speciesism predict meat consumption among people living in Australia and Hong Kong. Participants were recruited through Facebook advertising and asked to complete a questionnaire that measured speciesism, animal farming perceptions, meat consumption, and meat reduction intentions. Speciesism and perceptions of animal farming practices significantly predicted meat consumption and meat reduction intentions in the Australian sample, but only predicted some of the outcomes in the Hong Kong sample.

Portion size is recognized as a major determinant of food intake, at least over the short term, and could be related to overconsumption and obesity. In this study, we developed and evaluated a new visual measure of portion size (PS), examined whether the PS of chicken, ice cream, and soda varied among people in Brazil, France, and the USA, and tested whether PS was related to gender, body mass index, body weight, and socioeconomic status. We conducted a cross-sectional study using online convenience samples of university students (total N = 1391). Across all three foods, French personal and country PSs were significantly smaller than the other three countries. Estimated country PS was reliably larger than personal PS. Women’s personal PSs were smaller than men’s, but women’s and men’s estimates for country PS were similar. French personal and country PSs were the lowest. Some PSs had a weak but significant correlation with SES but were not significantly related to either weight or BMI. The study confirms French-American differences in personal PS and demonstrates that perceived norms correspond to individual PS.

Entomophagy is the technical term for eating insects and traditionally a part of daily diet in many tropical and subtropical countries. The rapidly increasing world population, industry and human-induced environmental pollution, and global warming reduce agricultural lands and clean water resources and make it difficult to produce sufficient food and therefore protein. Although edible insects are a promising opportunity as they require fewer natural resources than other animal foods, they are not considered as the food of the future in many Western countries for reasons such as disgust. A growing body of research in a diverse array of cultural contexts has examined people’s attitudes towards eating insects, but this work has not yet included Türkiye, a country with a well-established traditional cuisine and where entomophagy is highly novel. This study examined attitudes toward eating insects, and predictors thereof, in a large Turkish community sample (n = 914). For willingness to eat whole insects, age was a significant positive predictor, and food neophobia, disgust sensitivity, and being female were negative predictors for both whole insects and insect flour foods. For both types of insect foods, disgust was a negative predictor and belief in the benefits of eating insects was a positive predictor. This pattern of results is concordant with work from many other cultural contexts in the Americas, Asia, and Western Europe, providing further evidence for the importance of reducing food neophobia and disgust sensitivity and providing information about the benefits of insect foods in order to improve attitudes toward entomophagy.

Despite concerns about animal welfare, and health and environmental issues associated with eating meat, meat consumption has continued to increase worldwide, including in Australia. One exception to this is Germany, with 2021 meat consumption levels being the lowest in the last 30 years. This pre-registered study investigated socio-cultural variables associated with meat consumption in Germany (n = 399) and Australia (n = 399) in a cross-sectional online survey. Participants reported levels of current and intended meat consumption, and they completed measures of speciesism, motivations to eat meat, empathy, animal farming perceptions, perceived behavioural control (PBC) over meat eating, and avoidance and dissociation regarding the animal origins of meat. In both Australia and Germany, enjoying the taste of meat positively predicted consumption and empathy towards farmed animals negatively predicted consumption. PBC was a strong positive predictor of intentions to reduce meat consumption in both countries. Empathy and liking the taste of meat were among the best predictors of red meat and poultry consumption, suggesting that interventions to reduce meat consumption may work best by targeting these factors while also increasing people’s sense of control over their food choices.

Market actors have a role to play in enabling sustainable food transitions. One challenge for these actors is how to promote plant-based foods in ways that appeal to a growing number of consumers. Here we test how different plant-based related labels affect consumer appraisals of a range of foods (cookies, sausages, cheese, chocolate, pasta). In two studies (pre-registered; NUSA=1148, NGermany=491), we examined the effects of a ‘vegetarian’, ‘vegan’, or ‘plant-based’ label (compared to no label) on five attributes (healthy, tasty, ethical, pure, environmentally friendly) related to the products. We also measured self-reported likelihood to purchase the products. Overall, the results indicated that the ‘plant-based’ label was slightly more appealing toparticipants than the ‘vegetarian’ and ‘vegan’ labels. However, contrary to our expectations, neither consumers’ information-seeking tendencies nor their pre-existing attitudes toward plant-based foods influenced (i.e., moderated) the effects of the labels. Anticipated taste was a strong and consistent predictor of purchase likelihood for all labelled products, but the ethical and pure attributes also accounted for unique variance in this outcome variable. Taken together, our findings and discussion provide insights into the role of labels and label terminology on consumer appraisals of plant-based foods.