Applying vegan paradox theorizing to inquire animal versus health vegan advocacy

Although vegan advocates may be admired for their morality and commitment, they may also be derogated with moralistic traits such as arrogance and overcommitment. We call this mixed-valence perception the ”vegan paradox” and propose a theoretical framework based on the meat paradox (i.e., caring for animals, but also derogating them) for understanding it. Applying vegan paradox theorizing, we expected that vegans advocating for animal ethics (versus health) reasons would be perceived as more morally committed – which would positively affect their persuasive appeal via perceptions of morality – but also as more arrogant and overcommitted, which would have a stronger negative effect on the advocate’s social attractiveness and their persuasive power. To test our hypotheses, a cross-sectional experiment was conducted using a Qualtrics questionnaire. Using a single factor between-subjects design, we randomly exposed meat-eaters (N = 390) to a vignette describing a vegan advocate motivated by animal ethics or health. We then measured the participants’ perceptions of the advocate (perceived morality, commitment, arrogance, overcommitment, and social attractiveness) and their willingness to change. The study was preregistered. We found that the animal-motivated vegan advocate was perceived as more moral (and less healthy) than the health-motivated vegan advocate, which positively affected their social attractiveness and participants’ willingness to change. Moralistic traits (arrogance and overcommitment) had the opposite effect, but we did not find any differences in moralistic stereotyping between both advocates. Follow-up studies are planned to gain further insight. Our findings inform ongoing debates about the effectiveness of signaling moral commitment in vegan advocacy