Talk:Psychology of eating meat

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More masculinity sources[edit]

From a paper on meat an muscular christianity:

Eating meat has also long since been an activity through which men have defined their masculinity (Buerkle, 2009; Gal & Wilkie, 2010; Parasecoli, 2005; Parry, 2010; Potts, & Parry, 2010; Sobal, 2005; Stibbe, 2004) in contexts as diverse as American firemen (Deutsch, 2005), the Baltic States (Prättälä, et al., 2007), Finnish carpenters and engineers (Roos, Prättälä, & Koski, 2001) and India (Roy, 2002).

FourViolas (talk) 01:41, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

General note: unmined sources[edit]

Most of the article's sources were added only to support whatever information they supported in the review article which made me aware of them. I've read all of their "discussion" or "introduction" sections, but so far have not fully mined most of them. I know there's lots of useful information sitting unused in many of them. There's gold in them thar links! FourViolas (talk) 03:47, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Consumers and meat[edit]

Font-i-Furnols 2014 seems to be a more or less ideal—broad and deep, secondary—source for the consumer psychology perspective on meat. Might be a good idea to at least partially restructure that subsection based on her priorities and WEIGHT choices. FourViolas (talk) 06:19, 14 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Font is the meat quality program director for a Catalonian regional agricultural development organization, and has many degrees and publications. At a glance, well-cited and well-published; prominent but not necessarily preeminent in her field. In any case worth listening to for weight guidance. Guerrero is an active meat scientist too. FourViolas (talk) 06:28, 14 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Addressing OR[edit]

Many thanks to Tokyogirl79 for their time and comments. The problem, if I understand, is a WP:SYNTHy "vibe", evidenced by red flags such as excessive "for example"s. I'll start a threaded discussion here to facilitate resolution of these concerns. FourViolas (talk) 13:22, 29 August 2015 (UTC) repinging with apologies: Tokyogirl79, not Tryptofish 14:54, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"For example"[edit]

I don't have time to address each of the six times I use the phrase, so I'll try to explain myself re: the first:

Studies in personality trait psychology have found that individuals' values and attitudes affect the frequency and comfort with which they eat meat.[1] For example, those who value power more highly tend to eat more meat, while those who prefer self-transcendence values tend to eat less.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b Hayley, Alexa; Zincklewicz, Lucy; Hardiman, Kate (October 2014). "Values, attitudes, and frequency of meat consumption. Predicting meat-reduced diet in Australians" (PDF). Appetite. 84: 98–106. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2014.10.002. Retrieved 6 August 2015.

Here we have a primary research report, which also contains two dense pages of review and synthesis of available literature (the "Introduction" section). I used this as a poor-man's secondary source to give an overview, with synthesis, of the research on values/attitudes/beliefs in relation to meat. Wanting to be cautious because Hayley isn't an internationally renowned expert like Rozin, I created the understated first sentence. Then, the report states that one of its aims was "to model the values–attitude–behaviour connection to better understand cognitive predictors of MRD for each common meat type", so I considered its result ("Four value priorities were indirect predictors of self-reported frequency of meat consumption" et seq) to be a "for example" of the very broad class of results the article initially discussed ("values and attitudes affect the frequency and comfort with which people eat meat").

If this kind of reasoning—classifying particular results as examples of broader theories, per RS explanations—is inappropriate in general, let me know and I'll fix all of them. FourViolas (talk) 13:22, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To address the concern more directly: when I write, "General observation A; for example, specific illustration B," it's because I believe all of the following statements are directly supported by the sources I cite:
  1. A.
  2. B.
  3. B is an illustration of A.
As I understand WP:SYNTH and WP:NOTSYNTH, NOTOR only applies if 3. or especially 1. are absent from the sources. If this reading of policy is acceptable, I'd love to hear suggestions on how to rephrase those sentences to avoid giving off OR vibes. FourViolas (talk) 16:08, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Introduction[edit]

The introduction section certainly does sound discursive, especially compared to the rest of the article. Placed early, it also sets the tone for the article.

The problem is that many sources do in fact include such a section, particularly the tertiary sources I referred to for organizational suggestions. See Wilson & Allen, paragraphs "As well as the social importance…" and "What motivates people…"; Rozin et al 2012, beginning of meat-specific section;[n 1] Rozin 2006; Beardsworth and Keil, with a whole chapter on this which is often cited by psychologists like Wilson & Allen, Grunert, and Bastian; and Rozin again—he's a leader in the field, per Loughnan etc., and his ideas have set the programme for decades of research. Secondary and primary sources, too, often begin with an introductory nod to the cultural, social, and historical imortance of meat: see Bastian Bratanova Ruby.

Overall, I think it would be an active and questionably NPOV decision to disregard these introductory components. FWIW, my own perspective on meat is not at all the one presented in the intro. FourViolas (talk) 13:22, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Meat is a major commodity and a very important aspect of human existence. In many ways, meat is the preferred food of humans, as well as a fundamental source of energy and nutrients. The average American consumes 195 pounds of meat per year, with men, on average, consuming more than women (USDA 2002). Perhaps more than any other food, meat is laden with meanings because of its association with higher status and the killing of animals (Fiddes 1991; Rozin 2004; Twigg 1979). The ability to obtain meat also plays a major role in human evolution. Meat has a great deal to do with human sociality since the hunt often involves complex social coordination. The hunt, the kill, and the sharing of meat with family and nonfamily members have all been highly regulated.

Request on 03:16:14, 31 August 2015 for assistance on Draft:Psychology of eating meat by FourViolas[edit]

[Section copied from Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk/Archives/2015 August 31 by FourViolas (talk) 01:58, 8 September 2015 (UTC)][reply]

It appears the draft I've written gives off SYNTHy "vibes", and reads like an essay or research paper. Per my reasoning on the talk page, I believe the specified problems are stylistic rather than substantial, but I'd love fresh eyes and evaluations either way. If you have spare time, you could look over some of my non-AfC submissions to check for similar problems: Graham technique, Hedareb people, Giordano Dance Chicago, Mary Cannon. Thanks! No need to {{talkback}}, or to wear your usual kid newbie gloves. FourViolas (talk) 03:16, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think the problem with that draft is that you have not taken a topic and written an article about it, you have taken an essay you wanted to write and given it a title. I have looked very briefly at the other articles you list, and while I can't vouch for their quality, I am confident that they don't suffer from that particular problem: they are all about definite topics. Maproom (talk) 21:57, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your time and perspective. Does the fact that all of the following are peer-reviewed published articles, written by research psychologists and specifically studying meat consumption, affect your impression that this subject does not exist as a "definite topic"?
They do not change my impression. Likewise, a dozen authoritative articles by respected journalists with titles like "Why you should vote Democrat" would not convince me that the topic was worthy of an encyclopedia article. Maproom (talk) 21:20, 1 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
How is that analogy relevant? These sources are not hortatory opinion pieces; they are refereed analyses and surveys of rigorous research into the psychological factors of the act of eating meat, and are published in academic journals which could not long survive if they published partisan propaganda. They are scientists who are, according to expert peer review, objectively researching the psychology of eating meat or reviewing the work of other scientists in this field. WP:GNG requires, as I'm sure you know, significant coverage in reliable secondary sources; by any definition, the first source above, along with others from the article (Rozin 2010, Ogden 2010, etc), satisfy this criterion, which may not be refuted by WP:IDONTLIKEIT.
For parallel examples on which you're likely to have less of a personal opinion, compare the sources above and the 92 sources currently in the draft to Traffic psychology#References, Police psychology#References, Filipino psychology#References, and Indigenous psychology#References. FourViolas (talk) 00:57, 2 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. I am mostly convinced. Maproom (talk) 21:04, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's great to hear! I'd love any advice you could offer about how to improve the tone and content. FourViolas (talk) 22:49, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I still see vegetarian PoV in the article. I'll give just one example. "Use of non-animal words such as "sirloin" and "hamburger" for meat helps to reduce the salience of meat's origins in animals". Yes, that's true, but the article is written as if their use is part of a strategy for dissociation. It isn't, it's just how language works. Wheat products also have names that people might not associate with wheat, such as "bread" and "flour", and that's not part of any sinister strategy. I suspect that the writer is a vegetarian, and is therefore poor at recognising vegetarian PoV, they just think they are right (and may well be right, I won't argue on that). Maproom (talk) 18:51, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I actually agree that the article could be read as anti-meat, and I'd welcome advice on how to improve that while staying true to sources. To give you an idea of how this might be hard, here's the relevant section of the peer-reviewed paper cited for that statement:

Dissociation

Individuals can also psychologically alter how much meat they perceive themselves to consume by dissociating the animal from the food product. According to Adams (1990), one way that individuals render animals absent from their consciousness is to change language about them as food products. Words like bacon, hamburger, and sirloin become substitutes for the animal flesh people consume, allowing omnivores to maintain the illusion that animals are not involved. As Bandura (1999) notes, such euphemistic labeling is often used to disguise objectionable activities.

Supporting this dissociation strategy, many consumers do not like to think that meat comes from a live animal (Mayfield et al., 2007), and this explains why the more meat resembles the actual animal, in terms of being red, bloody, and fatty, the more individuals are disgusted by it (Kubberod, Ueland, Tronstad, & Risvik, 2002). Pieces of meat that clearly remind consumers that they were from an animal (e.g., eyes, tongues, brains, etc.) are unwillingly handled by consumers (Kubberod et al., 2002). Explicit reminders of the animal origins of meat led shoppers to purchase less meat or prefer free range and organic meat (Hoogland et al., 2005).

You can see that the phenomenon is indeed presented as part of a "dissociation strategy" used to make meat less animal-related and less problematic, and it would be inaccurate and OR-ish to take it out of that context, even though your wheat example is well taken. Would it help to WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV, as the above author did? I don't think the situation rises to the level of WP:Inaccuracy, so NPOV ought to be enough to resolve this. FourViolas (talk) 20:22, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm copying this section to the talk page. FourViolas (talk) 01:52, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Having stumbled across this draft article while disambiguating, I noticed the discussion on this very detailed article. My own POV is that of a male omniovore. Despite this, I find the article well-referenced (I have randomly check several of the cited peer-reviewed papers) and presenting logically coherent discussion that can be read as neutral. I agree that some of the truths might be uncomfortable to us omnivores (eg that others consider as less virtuous!), but the supports the text. In terms of quality, this well exceeds that for most newly-created pages, and I feel it would make a useful encyclopaedic contribution.Klbrain (talk) 13:26, 14 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Look alive[edit]

Go for mainspace. Viriditas (talk) 11:53, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion about this has happened in several places, so I'm pinging FourViolas, DrChrissy, Tokyogirl79, Sammy1339, Timtrent, Boing! said Zebedee.
As I've said elsewhere, if everyone else wants this, I'm not going to stand in the way, and I have no interest in working on it. But it's worth knowing that the article was created as a fork of Carnism to remove it. Chunks were copied over (e.g. here), sources were copied, etc. Perhaps that aspect has been sorted out since then. Another problem is that it reads like a personal essay and would need a lot of work. SarahSV (talk) 17:11, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I am a little confused here. Is there a proposal to lose Carnism?DrChrissy (talk) 17:15, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I have no views on the issue of a fork, save that if it is a true POV fork rather than a content fork, it should be sent to WP:MfD, a discussion I will not participate in. To me, as a draft, it met the simple rules of having a better than 60% chance of surviving an immediate deletion process. Your mileage may vary. Fiddle Faddle 17:18, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict). DrChrissy, not yet, but as I recall that was the point, or at least will likely be the next step. I'd have no problem with that if this were written differently, but it reads to me like a personal essay and it would be hard to fix. SarahSV (talk) 17:21, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I see Tim has created Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Psychology of eating meat, so I'll probably bow out of this now and let others decide. SarahSV (talk) 18:07, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Viriditas, FourViolas, DrChrissy, Tokyogirl79, Sammy1339, Boing! said Zebedee, and SlimVirgin: I have made a neutral nomination at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Psychology of eating meat for this to be thrashed out. This seems to me to be the best formal way to resolve this deadlock. If it is for deletion then there is no kindness in raising false hopes in the main contributing editor. If it is for acceptance, let it be so. SV, bowing out at this stage is your free choice, but you brought us to this deadlock by re-creating the redirect and your opinion thus matters. Please lodge it at the discussion. Fiddle Faddle 18:11, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's alive![edit]

I've nominated it for Did You Know. I think it qualifies. Jonathunder (talk) 00:34, 6 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Are these MEDRS appropriate sources?[edit]

Hi all, per my DYK Review for this article, I want to clarify if this article is running afoul of MEDRS as it applies to psychology? Rather than secondary sources or literature reviews, it seems to be built largely on what MEDRS would consider unacceptable primary sources. Basically, until we have a broad overview to analyze the experiments being described in this article, we should avoid putting these experiments forward as consensus. That's WP:UNDUE, right? I don't want to be a rabble-rouser, but this seems pretty clear to me, the only question is, is there some reason we shouldn't hold a psychology article to the regular standards of MEDRS? ---Owlsmcgee (talk) 05:52, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Owlsmcgee, thanks for your attention. Most of the article is ultimately built from the secondary sources (among them Font-i-Furnols 2014, Rozin 2004, and Garnier 2003, Loughnan 2014); I was instructed by an experienced editor that it was preferable to cite primary academic sources directly, after determining their due WEIGHT and respectability in a secondary source.
However, I really don't think MEDRS applies to this article. (I admit I didn't even consider the possibility while writing it.) There is a section in Consumer preferences#Extrinsic factors discussing health-related motivations, but they are almost all of the form "consumers think X about meat and health and respond positively/negatively", because that's what the psychological research here discusses. I agree that the exception, where I summarized the Background section of a paper writing that opinion is divided on whether meatless diets are correlated with eating disorders, should probably be upgraded to MEDRS or removed.
But most of the article is social psychology, not clinical psychology at all, and has no medical implications. You wouldn't go to your doctor and say, "I need help; I don't usually think about animal suffering when buying meat." No pseudoscience or snake oil is being peddled here, because this is not biomedical information. It just happens to be discussing the mind, an entity which sometimes requires medical attention. Surely you don't think Political psychology, Psychology of religion, and Legal psychology may only be sourced to review papers from the last five years? FourViolas (talk) 06:33, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, this is a common problem, owing to the title of MEDRS and the somewhat obscure locations in which community discussions which surround it take place, but MEDRS is often considered a reliable proxy for sources relating to scientific research broadly. In any event, there is also the reading of WP:RS itself, particularly WP:SCHOLARSHIP; numerous sections advising against primary sources in contexts like those here exist on that policy page, but some of the most on-point language comes from the scholarship section:
"Isolated studies are usually considered tentative and may change in the light of further academic research...Studies relating to complex and abstruse fields, such as medicine, are less definitive and should be avoided."
and:
"Care should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view. A claim of peer review is not an indication that the journal is respected, or that any meaningful peer review occurs. Journals that are not peer reviewed by the wider academic community should not be considered reliable, except to show the views of the groups represented by those journals."(emphasis added)
Human psychology and behaviour and their attendant fields of cognitive science are amongst the most complex research fields in existence. Further, many of the journals used here (and the sources taken from them) do not represent consensus positions in these areas, but rather constitute niche, non-replicated research conducted by scholars with a particular (and not broadly-tested or evaluated) set of theories and research interests. We have to be very careful about not presenting their ideas in contexts where they are not supported by substantial WP:WEIGHT, especially when they are piled together as they have been here. And all of this is without applying the still-more-stringent MEDRS standards. It can be difficult to make the appropriate distinctions when you come from a particular research field and trust a certain line of research/researchers, I know, but our neutrality and verification standards require us to treat even those primary sources we trust (by academics we broadly respect) with a healthy degree of skepticism in terms of how we present them here, until such time as they are strongly reflected in secondary sourcing--or at least until they have been repeatedly replicated and supported elsewhere in the literature by parties which did not originate the theories or models. Snow let's rap 07:45, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'll take your word for most of that, I guess, but I have no reason to think that Appetite (journal), Food Quality and Preference, Current Directions in Psychological Science, European Journal of Social Psychology, and the like are "not peer reviewed by the wider academic community" or "exist mainly to promote a particular point of view". FourViolas (talk) 08:02, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) No, I'm afraid I have to thoroughly agree with you here Owlsmcgee. I feel very miserable in saying as much, because FourViolas specifically solicited my insight and involvement with regard to these matters during her initial drafting of this article, but, do to time constraints and burn-out, I failed to submit any kind of substantial insight on the matter. I'm happy to see that she persisted in getting the article into mainspace (as it is undoutably a notable topic) but I'm afraid that many of my initial concerns (which I failed to adequately voice in detail at the time) remain very much in evidence here. Primarily, these problems are in exactly in the area you have pointed out; not just the presence of primary sources in an article in which they are altogether inappropriate even for minor points, but indeed a situation in which they are the overwhelming majority of sources and have been combined together into a massive framework of synth that extends across entire sections of the article which largely or altogether lack secondary reliable sourcing to support broad implications about human nature.
The reason Wikipedia does not broadly allow primary sources for anything but niche contexts (which do not apply here) and pretty much wholly proscribes them from articles on scientific/empirical topics is so that one pet theory of a given researcher, academic or author is not presented as consensus science/a broadly accepted and rigorously-tested theory. Actually, that's just one of many reasons that primary sources are generally disallowed, but with regard to to MEDRS-reliant articles, I'd say it's the most significant concern. What we have here is not just an article where dozens upon dozens of these primary sources have been used to support claims that are presented in a straight-forward fashion as if they were referenced to secondary sources, but, even much worse, dozens of these individually-unacceptable primary-sourced statements are clustered together to support complex implications about human nature which are either not found in secondary sourcing at all, or are blown up well past the WP:WEIGHT that can be ascribed to them using secondary sourcing. I know it's very late in the day to be pointing this out, after the amount of labor that 4V and her collaborators have put into this issue, but community consensus and a respect for WP:V, WP:WEIGHT(/WP:NPOV broadly) and WP:RS/WP:MEDRS pretty much require that we strip out virtually all of the primary sourcing, and any contentious claims which they presently support. It's not an ambiguous case that allows much leeway, I'm afraid. I want the article to remain, but a draft should be made which uses only sourcing which match our RS standards, which of course means a substantial reduction of content.
I rather suspect that FourViolas will be disheartened to hear that (and I wouldn't blame her for feeling a bit miffed at me with my come-lately outlook after the energy that has been expended here) but I also know that she's a Wikipedian in the truest sense and suspect she can be convinced of the necessity after full exploration of the policies and content issues. I suspect though that some other personalities which have become invested in this article and the related Carnism will resist more strongly; I don't mean to antagonize or "draw battle lines" by saying so, but I must be honest. However, the broader community/policy principles relevant to this matter are fairly straight-forward and concrete, so we can always take the matter to any number of central discussion spaces concerned with RS to break any deadlock that may result. In any event, I don't think anyone is going to see you as a rabble-rouser; you're just calling it as you see it, and I have to agree that what you see is a very real issue here, under basic content/verification guidelines as they stand today. But for my part I feel very lousy: I now have to push hard against content that I know is the result of extensive good-faith effort by editors I broadly like and respect, and I maybe could have saved the trouble if I'd responded to repeated pings to the draft discussion... :/ Snow let's rap 07:10, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the response. I am not for or against this article and only came across it in a QPQ DYK review, so I have no horse in this race, but I found the DYK review a bit agonizing. I absolutely assume good faith here and I think it's a tricky question. But FourViolas, I know it sounds silly, but in the examples you just cited, particularly Political Psychology, many of the references are from secondary sources. But my concern with this article is that it takes a lot of experimental studies and presents them as conclusive. The real application of MEDRS to me isn't so much about Bio-medical implications but about respecting scientific process. In Psychology and Medicine, experimental bias is rampant and ought not to be reported until there is some consensus among experts, and if there is not, there must be equal weight provided to both sides. This article predominantly has one side and no counterweight. You're right that the articles you selected are acceptable reviews, so those may be acceptable cornerstones for a revision. However, I suspect that the best improvements will come from incorporating a wider diversity of NPOV. I can tell you've put tremendous work into this article and I don't think you're ill-intentioned, so perhaps instead of being disheartened, you can simply see it as a stepping-off point for crafting an even stronger article? ---Owlsmcgee (talk) 07:21, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Huh.
Well, I don't want to make a scene. This is the first large article I've written, and I appreciate the possibility that I went about it wrong. There's a substantive question about whether "background" and "introduction" sections of peer-reviewed papers are generally RS, and I recall that's controversial. Also, as I said, a lot of material is in fact found in secondary sources but currently cited one level down; maybe some month when I have time and energy I can fix that, reconstructing an improved version of the article. In any case it's been a wonderful research project.
There are, however, other editors with more or less investment who deserve a chance to weigh in before any decision is made. Owlsmcgee, I would certainly have included "counterweights" if I knew of any: I chose my sources without prejudice through Google Scholar and the Works Citeds of other sources. I submit that any perceived one-sidedness is a consequence of the topic itself: "discussing the impacts of current meat production and consumption patterns with people who eat meat may have the potential to induce a state of cognitive dissonance"[1], so perhaps merely discussing the topic of how we think about meat may be inherently uncomfortable for one side of what seems to be a messy culture war. Anyway, thanks for your input. FourViolas (talk) 08:02, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MEDRS definitely does not apply to social psychology. It applies to psychiatry. See the essay Wikipedia:Biomedical information. --Sammy1339 (talk) 14:38, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't aware of that essay. In its terms everything in this article except that eating-disorder sentence is either Society and culture or Beliefs about meat, nothing about clinical diseases or treatments, and therefore not subject to MEDRS. I would say that's an accurate formalization of the reason I didn't limit myself to MEDRS-compliant sources. FourViolas (talk) 15:14, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
n.b. I've cited the sentence with medical import to this 2011 review in the European Journal of Pediatrics. It seems to disagree with this 2006 review in Harefuah (which I can't read) about whether vegetarianism can predispose to disordered eating. ("There is no proof that a vegetarian diet predisposes to eating disorders" vs. "The vegetarian diet, a selective way of eating, might precede different eating disorders and increase the risk of developing anorexia nervosa.") Does the second deserve due weight, or should I consider it outdated? FourViolas (talk) 16:03, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Per MEDRS the more recent review, with 3 times as many citations, should be given weight. The 2006 review in Hebrew should be deprecated. --Sammy1339 (talk) 16:08, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
First off, that is, as you yourself noted, an essay--it's one person's opinion, not in any sense a reflection of community consensus; as such it has absolutely no relevant authority in a content determination. Second, even to the degree of persuasion, I think you'll find that if you look at its edit history and page statistics (how many discussions link to it, how many times and how often the page has been viewed, number of watchers, ect.) you'll find that it is more or less completely unknown to the community at large. Third, and most importantly, that essay doesn't even say anything that's on-point as to present circumstances; it's long on talking about how to use biomedical sources, but really says nothing about what content actual RS policies apply to. Meanwhile--as I'm trying to tell you on the basis of many years of contributing to this project mainly in the area of science related articles, particularly as a cognitive scientist, which is the greater part of formal background and expertise--that MEDRS is broadly used, on a daily basis, as the template by which scientific sourcing on this project is measured, in conjunction with general WP:RS principles (which actually, in this case would be sufficient in themselves to remove many of the primary sources from this article, given the context of how they are used). And psychological topics are by no means exceptions; human behaviour and cognition in modern research are no longer in any sense separate fields from human biology, behavioural and social psychology included, and this tacitly understood by pretty much everyone who contributes in this area.
You can either trust me on that or choose to follow your own assumptions based on a textualist reading of that policy's name and whatever obscure essays you can dig up that you feel vaguely support those assumptions. But trust me, you'll not be working towards the ends you desire in doing so. I know my own mind on this topic, on this area of research and this topic, and I think I've go a good impression of what Owlsmcgee wants here as well. We just want to tone things down a bit so that some of the wild tangents that don't represent consensus science are omitted or better contextualized. But if we have to seek broader community input in order to overcome your skepticism in order to make any degree of headway in de-synthing the material, I can fairly well guarantee that the cuts will go deeper than the two of are strictly looking for here. I like middle-ground solutions, even when I don't agree 100% with the resultant content; many other editors who work on science articles and in the area of sourcing broadly are more absolutist than I. If this has to be RfC'd bear in mind that it will come primarily to the attention of those who are on the alert lists for science and empirical field-related articles. If it goes to RSN, it will come under the scrutiny of editors used to a very strict reading of reliable sourcing and original research. I'd strongly urge you not view anyone here now as as the "opposition", because I promise you, if you find yourself objecting to the concerns we've raised so far, you're really not going to like what the average editor working in the areas relevant to this topic have to say. Snow let's rap 02:40, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
In the spirit of trying to be clear with what I think needs to be changed, so that we are talking specific and not generalities, I'll get the ball rolling. The first thing that needs to be addressed here is the "meat and masculinity" section, which is basically nothing more than a personal essay, synthesized together pretty much completely from primary sources, including a lead-in/thesis statement that is completely predicated on WP:FRINGE primary research, rather than solid, broadly-drawn secondary reliable sources representing healthy scholarly consensus, as is absolutely necessary for such an exceptional and far-reaching claim. This section is frankly just massively non-neutral, represents a synthed personal perspective on the matter, rather than anything resembling a widely-accepted mainstream notion and, frankly, some of the leaps made make it outright misandrynistic. The irony here is that, in my professional life, like many others who work from principles of biopsychology and nativism, I've often had to fight entrenched ideologies that don't want to acknowledge that there can be fundamental differences in male and female psychology and behaviours. But here, I'm afraid you guys have gone waaaaay too far on what the current empirical research and (more importantly to our purposes here on Wikipedia) the WP:WEIGHT of reliable sources allows. I fully expect I'm going to have to go through this on a sentence-by-sentence basis in order to make my concerns plain, but this is definitely what I see as one of the major neutrality issues of this article as it stands now. Snow let's rap 02:40, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I am not defending everything 4V wrote, but your appeals to authority don't change the fact that MEDRS does not apply to social science. --Sammy1339 (talk) 04:00, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Meat and masculinity[edit]

Well let's discuss it then. I was rather surprised myself to read a lot of these results, so I'm not hostile to the idea that their sources are questionable. Here they are, for ease of reference:

  • Rozin 2010, in "Handbook of Cultural Psychology". Cited 416x (total for book). Tertiary social-psychological source. Meat is psychologically complicated, and in traditional societies often reserved for males.
  • Heinz 1998, "Getting down to the meat: The symbolic construction of meat consumption". Cited 38x. Subjective secondary source, citing sociological books about advertising campaigns.
  • Rothgerber 2012, "Real Men Don't Eat (Vegetable) Quiche." Cited 45x. Presents primary results of two studies, claims to verify Carol Adams's theories.
  • Sobal 2005, "Men, Meat, and Marriage: Models of Masculinity." Cited 137x. Secondary sociological review with lots of material. e.g. "In contemporary Western societies, a particularly gendered connection exists between men and meat—red meat especially—which has been examined from many perspectives (e.g., Adams 1990, 2003; Beardsworth and Keil 1992,1997; Bourdieu 1984; Fiddes 1991; Lea and Worsley 2001; Lockie and Collie 1999; Lupton 1996a; Smil 2002; Twigg 1983)." (Some of those are psychological papers.)
  • Buerkle 2013, "Metrosexuality Can Stuff It: Beef Consumption as (Heteromasculine) Fortification." Cited 29x.Primary sociological analysis of meat practices in American culture.
  • Carolan 2006, "The Sociology of Food and Agriculture." Cited 61x. Secondary scholarly book, supporting the idea that some meat-masculinity connection is a scholarly consensus. “Food, including meat, is also gendered… There is also evidence that men attach special cultural significance to meat by believing a meal is not “real” without meat as the main dish—a finding replicated in such divergent countries as Czechozlovakia (Kilianova et al 2005), South Korea (Lappé 1971) and the USA (Sobal 2005). The perceived masculinity of read meat might explain why, historically speaking, women have tended either to avoid meat entirely (Lupton 1996) or eat seafood or poultry (Dixon 2002).”
  • Pohlmann 2014, "Meat Consumption, Maleness and Men's Gender Identities". Cited0x. PhD thesis, low quality primary source.
  • Ruby 2011, "Meat, morals, and masculinity". Cited 59x. Results of two primary studies. Vegetarian men perceived as less masculine.
  • Gal 2010, "Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche: Regulation of Gender-Expressive Choices by Men." Cited 16x. Summary of a series of primary studies. Men think of meat as masculine and make choices according to such associations.
  • Rozin 2012, "Is meat male?" Cited 39x. Review of six primary studies on meat and masculinity, concluding: "Taken together, these studies present consistent, converging evidence that mammal muscle meat stands in some positive relation to maleness, although maleness is likely not one of the most salient properties of meat." The real point of the paper is to illustrate a schema of social psychological research.

Which ones are problematic, and why? FourViolas (talk) 04:02, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

They're not, obviously. --Sammy1339 (talk) 04:02, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The dialogue in the conversation above makes me think that these sources are fine, but that they're framed in ways that misrepresent the source. As Sammy1339 claims, MEDRS doesn't appear to Social Psychology. And yet, in this article, we're presenting social psychology as if they are the results of clinical psychology research. There's also a few overly-broad readings of the research we're citing. I don't want to be totally negative here, and I think you're clearly dedicated, so I am offering some suggestions below, including some suggested tweaks, in the aim of being constructive. For example:
  1. "Psychological research suggests meat eating is correlated with masculinity, support for hierarchical values, and reduced openness to experience" is cited to a consumer research journal, a social psych journal, and Appetite, which describes itself as documenting "cultural, social, psychological, sensory and physiological influences" on food consumption. That is not psychology as a lay reader would define it, it is better described as cultural anthropology, or cultural theory. (For reference, but not as an influencing factor, my academic work focuses on psychology and the media, but I would never present my research as "a psychological study.")
  2. "Price is often the most important factor affecting consumer choices about meat, especially among males." This is stated as if it is a fact, but it's not supported by the citation. The citation references a paper that studied three countries and concluded that the survey of 291 meat-purchasers. I am very hesitant to read that as "often the most important factor." I don't say this because I see this line or fact as a problem per se, but because it represents the broad generalizations being made about very distinct, focused studies. The language used in reporting these findings is super important, because we don't want to imply that they say anything aside from what they specifically "say they say." Anything else falls under WP:NOR. Later we cite this paper again, tied to the claim that "Consumers tend to prefer meats whose origin lies in their own country over imported products, partly due to the fact that domestic meats are perceived to be of higher quality." This is an overstatement of the study's findings; the study proves that 291 consumers in the three countries prefer these meats.
  3. "The perceived risk of food contamination has a particularly strong effect on consumer attitudes towards meat, particularly after meat-related scares such as those associated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy or avian influenza." This is cited to a source that specifically says "Meat-related food scares such as BSE ... (or) avian influenza... have raised public consciousness and questions about the risks and benefits of meat consumption. However, the healthiness and nutritional properties of meat currently seem to be more important for consumers than safety concerns" and to another paper that makes no mention of these threats, and in fact is about "risk probability" where the "risk" is defined solely as "probability of making a wrong meat choice."
  4. We are using a study that fits into the realm of health advice, but this source does fit into MEDRS because it's a review article. So, no worries here.
  5. "A 2001 study in Scotland found that, although participants cared about animal welfare in general, they considered price and appearance more important than welfare when buying meat.[41] A study of Dutch consumers found that both rational and emotional responses to environmental and other concerns affected purchasing of organic meat.[42]" This is a perfect example of how these types of studies should be described or paraphrased.
  6. "One salient feature of the psychology of eating meat is the meat paradox: most people care about animals, and most people eat animals." This is citing an academic theory and stating it as fact. We would have to cite that "most people care about animals" and "most people eat animals." I'd be most comfortable describing the meat paradox this way: "One question examined in the psychology of eating meat has been called the meat paradox: How can the same person care about animals, but also eat them?" Does that seem like a good compromise? Do you see my concern? I know it's nit-picking, but I want to make sure the text is accurate and doesn't make overtly bold claims. This way, we set it clearly as a rhetorical question.
  7. "Psychologists argue that meat eaters reduce cognitive dissonance by minimizing their perception of animals as conscious..." Again, those cited are social psychologists; we're being imprecise when we say "psychologists," and I worry that we look like we're reflected a broad consensus of clinical research. Can we simply say "Some social psychologists argue..." ?
  8. "Most people do not think about animal suffering when buying meat, and do not like to think about the connection between meat and live animals.[56]" As I go through, I'm picking up on a theme that concerns me: the study cited is not enough for us to say "most people," it is drawn from a paper specifically researching Italy, Sweden and the UK. A claim like "most people" needs a heck of a lot of academic consensus and research to back it up, not a single study, and certainly not a single study of three countries.
  9. "The use of non-animal words such as "sirloin" and "hamburger" for meat can reduce the salience of meat's origins in animals, and in turn reduce perceived consumption of animals.[49][58] Similarly, farmers and hunters use terms such as "processing" and "managing" to replace "killing".[55][n 5] Meat is often packaged and served so as to minimize its resemblance to live animals, and many children do not understand the animal origins of products such as silk and leather;[55] a 1993 study found that one in three American adults did not identify cheese and butter as products of cows.[59]" This strikes me as another break away from NPOV, what do you think? I'm concerned about the word "similarly" to tie one claim to the next, though they don't seem to be connected explicitly in the research (I am getting tired and haven't checked, but I'm concluded based on the way they are cited individually instead of tied together or to a single source).

I'm going to stop here to make sure people are receptive to my suggestions, and perhaps other editors can take the spirit of my concern and have a gander at the rest of this article and make some changes that address the tonal problems. I also want to say that this article is well-researched and fascinating. I'm just worrying that it is stirring up more controversy than it needs to be because of these distractions, when it could be read as a really great resource for social psychologists with an interest in the topic. I know it is frustrating to have your work critiqued (and I see I am not the first!) but I'd love to see this article hold up to scrutiny, since you've put all the pieces here. Hope this is taken in the spirit of assistance in which it was intended! --- Owlsmcgee (talk) 07:52, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Those are very good points, and I think I can accept all of them. I do see your and Snow's points that this kind of psychology is messy, prone to subjective interpretation and sampling biases, and to be treated with much more skepticism and caution than I've been applying.
I think a few of those issues may be fixed by digging up the secondary source I got the information from, rather than giving more details on methods and limitations, and some of the apparent OR is actually not (but may be too weakly supported ayway); for #9, p.513 of this book does support that these are "similar" phenomena. But in general I'd be happy to implement these. I've taken the liberty of changing your bullet points to a numbered list so I can keep track of them: I'll start on that later today. Thank you for your help! I know it must be very frustrating to address such pervasive sourcing concerns, and I appreciate your time and specificity. FourViolas (talk) 13:30, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
All right, I've made a lot of these changes. A few notes:
  • Font-i-Furnols discussing meat price does give an overview of relevant research, writing that people agree at least that it's important. p.444, on the middle left.
  • About safety, Verbeke writes: "In recent years, meat production and consumption was criticised and subject to negative publicity following successive meat safety crises in Europe. Consumers heavily reacted to those crises through changing attitudes, beliefs and be- haviour towards meat (Bernu􏰀es, Olaizola, & Corcoran, 2003; Bredahl, 2004; Burton & Young, 1996; Latouche, Rainelli, & Vermersch, 1998; Verbeke, Viaene, & Guiot, 1999; Verbeke & Ward, 2001; Verbeke, Ward, & Viaene, 2000)." Should I cite those papers directly, or look for other reviews to back Verbeke up/contradict him?
  • Also, MEDRS notwithstanding, I am not myself confident that the masculinity section is solid. I'd welcome specific feedback.
Thanks again for these suggestions; I can see that they are necessary improvements. You are of course welcome to fix things yourself; I'll scan the article for similar problems over the next few days. FourViolas (talk) 00:50, 6 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Why are all these sources except 1 are from the 2000s? Is the field relatively new, or did you just list the most recent sources? If this is essentially a product of the 2000s I and likely others would find it useful to know that. Without doing original research--one of these articles will likely do a literature review indicating the provenance of the field. Likewise with the cultural background of the articles. Is this mostly a Euro-american school of thought, or say California schools.Snarfblaat (talk) 01:44, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This is one of the best reviews, and in its last paragraph it credits the development of the field to a paper by Paul Rozin published in 1996. I've also seen lots of credit go to Nick Fiddes' 1991 dissertation. In any case it does seem to be fairly new. FourViolas (talk) 01:48, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks I'll take a look. I guess the other question I'll put to you, since you've ably fielded so many others on here, is whether there is any critical reviews of this body, or contrary results published.Snarfblaat (talk) 06:30, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Individual points are naturally debated or unclear:
  • This paper's intro cites a lot of inconsistent results about the relationship between vegetarianism and disordered eating.
  • this 1994 primary source claims, based on studies in Malawi, that the "meat=masculinity" connection may be Eurocentric. (Certainly this article is, because the literature is.)
  • Two review papers nearly contradict each other on meat's image in general: Font-i-Furnols says, "Generally speaking and regardless of its traditional character (Guerrero et al., 2012) and established social status, meat tends to have a negative image mainly due its association with the living animal, handling practices and slaughter conditions (Troy & Kerry, 2010), the presence of blood (Kubberød, Uelan, Rødbotten, Westad, & Risvisk, 2002), environmental issues (Povey et al., 2001) and religious, ideological, ethical or moral concerns (Berndsen & Van der Pligt, 2005; Dwyer, 1991)" while Joshua says, "Given its historical value and association with privilege, its association with good nutrition and health, and its central position in our diet, it is not surprising that the consumption of meat has strong ingrained positive associations in much of the world. " Couldn't find a tertiary source to arbitrate, so I just included both per WP:BALANCE.
In general, though, I haven't seen review papers disagreeing with others. There is this review about "meat traditions" which might have some good perspectives to add, but it's not really a psychology paper (it would be much more relevant to a Meat in society article or something), and I've already been accused of drifting away from the stated scope of the article. FourViolas (talk) 17:14, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The controversy here is overblown in my opinion, but you might change the wording to something like "across many cultures, meat-eating is associated with perceived masculinity" rather than "meat-eating is correlated with masculinity". The latter makes it sound like there is some operational definition of "masculinity" that the researchers are measuring. This change would also reveal that this is essentially a cultural issue. I think this field is inherently interdisciplinary - especially given the recent cuts, I would advise broadening the scope of the article. --Sammy1339 (talk) 15:44, 21 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Broadening the scope to "Sociology, anthropology, and psychology of meat" is an option, but it would make a very, very large article and it would become difficult to balance WEIGHT across disciplines. I would rather follow Leroy, Horowitz, Gossard, and related literature in writing an article about how meat fits into culture, in contrast to this article's focus on how meat fits into individuals' minds. But that might well be an artificial distinction brought on by over-familiarity with this article's sources. In any case I myself won't have time for such a project anytime soon. FourViolas (talk) 20:32, 21 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Purpose?[edit]

I fail to see what reason this entry has for existence, other than to advance a polemic.It assumes a priori that there is something immoral or debased about meat consumption, & seeks to justify itself in psychological cant. Why not 'Psychology of drinking Soft Drinks'? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CF99:2080:598F:CCD2:76D8:626D (talk) 00:36, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list.
The motivation for the stacks of research on this topic in particular is manyfold: here's a highly respected food psychologist explaining a few reasons why "meat should be a subect of special interest to psychologists." FourViolas (talk) 01:41, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That just linked to the Google Books page for the book. There was nothing to support your assertion. Daniel Case (talk) 02:32, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
My bad. Of course, the sources in the article are the real argument, per WP:GNG. FourViolas (talk) 02:36, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

meat and "right wing authoritarianism"[edit]

I edited the following: people with "a right-wing authoritarian viewpoint, who value authority and conformity, are also likely to eat more meat" to "people self-identifying as greater meat eaters have greater right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation". 1. The implication in the source (meat-eater -> right-wing) was reversed in the previous article text. 2. The source does not define what it means by "right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation" (it cites another article) and it certainly does not identify it with valuing "authority and conformity". Wherever that identification is coming from should be sourced. Because the article is likely using these terms in a technical way, I quoted them directly. 3. I think it's fair to mention the study was based on self-identification as an omnivore, rather than a direct measure of meat consumption, as the previous text suggested.Snarfblaat (talk) 01:35, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I went and reread the source, and your changes are definitely an improvement. The "authority and conformity" came from the article in which I found the source (Dhont & Hodson), but you seem to be right about this article's own terminology. )FourViolas (talk) 01:41, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"The you are what you eat, and what you eat becomes you" View[edit]

This article fails to mention the viewpoint that, by consuming the life around you, you utilize it to further liberate not only itself but the food by using it as nourishment. If the Truth Project (http://www.truthcontest.com/entries/the-present-universal-truth/) is to be believed, a meat eater aids surrounding life be it plant or animal, by consuming it, assimilating it, and using it as a part of itself to further the goal of spiritual liberation.

This view in which, you are conscious of other consciousness and see it as your duty to assimilate and uplift lower lifeforms to the state of humanity so that you( as a collective of parts acquired through consumption your whole life) may work as a united entity to reach true salvation; has been left out. I believe this viewpoint amongst others too, needs elaboration and mention within the article. It is in line with a hunter thanking its prey for the nourishment it provides. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.75.13.10 (talk • contribs) 14:27, 9 April 2016‎

On this approximate topic, the article has

The idea that "you are what you eat", related to superstitions about sympathetic magic and common in many cultures, may create the perception that eating meat confers animal-like personality attributes.[1]

References

  1. ^ Nemeroff, Carol; Rozin, Paul (1989). ""You Are What You Eat": Applying the Demand‐Free "Impressions" Technique to an Unacknowledged Belief". Ethos. 17 (1). Wiley-Blackwell: 50–69. doi:10.1525/eth.1989.17.1.02a00030. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
A little more material might be added from Nemeroff & Rozin, but in order to include the viewpoint you discuss we would need a high-quality source which discusses it in the context of psychology. The link you provided is unfortunately to a WP:Self-published source, which according to Wikipedia policy doesn't count as highly as the peer-reviewed articles and books which support the rest of the article. Even if it were a better source, its topic seems to be much closer to spirituality or Quantum mysticism than [[psychology] (the scientific study of the mechanisms of the mind). That kind of thing, with a better and more meat-specific source, would be better discussed at Meat#Meat in society.

It's a good idea to cover hunting better. Here are two sources which might be useful in surveying the academic psychological consensus: Hollin 2015 and Wegner 1992 (not exactly scholarly, but a large compendium of research and a starting point).FourViolas (talk) 21:54, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rewrite[edit]

After stepping away for a while for perspective, I've come to understand that Owlsmcgee, Snow Rise and SlimVirgin are right that I've overused primary sources here. With an eye towards an GA nom, I've been preparing a revision of the page by collecting, reading and annotating the WP:BESTSOURCES (secondary, recent, and published in significant books by academic presses or in journals with good impact factors) I could find:

Sources

*Bastian, B.; Loughnan, S. (2016). "Resolving the Meat-Paradox: A Motivational Account of Morally Troublesome Behavior and Its Maintenance". Personality and Social Psychology Review. SAGE. doi:10.1177/1088868316647562.On further review, this is a higher-order primary source, examining lots of meat research to make original arguments about immoral behavior in general. As such, it loses some value as an objective summary of the meat research. Anyway, most material sourceable elsewhere

I recall that among the objections to the creation of this page was the concern that it was part of a plan to circumvent deletion or merge discussions, and ultimately delete worthwhile material from Carnism. This was never my intention (honest), but keeping strictly to the source standards above will require some material to be cut, as Snow observed. I wrote most of this material, but others contributed, mostly to the #Meat paradox section. I'd like to ask you all if preserving that material by spinning out that section into its own article, Meat paradox, and leaving a WP:SUMMARYSTYLE paragraph here, as Adam Cuerden wanted, would be an acceptable solution. Sammy1339, who wrote most of what I didn't of that section, already said this would be fine. FourViolas (talk) 11:45, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What makes meat important?[edit]

Meat is one of the main reasons for the main causes of death (CAD, stroke, some forms of cancer) and its nutritions are - for us humans - completely suppliable by plants, fungis and so on. It is also one of the main reasons for the climate change and contributes significantly to the world hunger, as well as to the animal suffering and the financial burden on the healthcare system as well as on the industrial subsidies, since the energy conversion efficiency is significantly low. How is that important? ShalokShalom (talk)

Highly preferred[edit]

Children tend to show passion with other animals, some cultures refuse it completely to eat and kill animals and killing is in general something that distracts us by nature. Our whole body is focused on the procession of fruit based nutrition, there is no natural born killer instinct in us and we cant even hunt without tools. Plus, the reason why humans eat meat, is indeed a very unnatural one: Dr. Melanie Joy, Psychologist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao2GL3NAWQU ShalokShalom (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:43, 18 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Morality[edit]

Taken to talk page to prevent continuous edits

While the study argues that vegetarians are considered more moral, this doesn't change my point I'd say. The first paragraph argues that meat-eating may have helped humans evolve moral systems by encouraging cooperation. The second paragraph argues that vegetarians are considered more moral. These are not in contradiction - it is entirely possible for meat-eating to encourage the evolution of moral psychology while arguing that vegetarianism is considered more moral (due to greater concern for suffering). The first paragraph essentially argues that meat-eating created principles for just distribution of material assets. This isn't contradicted by the second paragraph's argument that vegetarianism is considered more moral, because the first paragraph is making a factual statement about how morality evolved, which is a different thing. Increased morality doesn't mean that eating meat was (or is) more moral, it means that it helped facilitate moral judgment by encouraging cooperation and thus the just distribution of assets (morality). The morality of eating meat is another matter to what effect eating meat had on the development of human moral psychology. Thus the wording is unnecessary because it implies that meat-eating was once considered more moral than vegetarianism, yet this wasn't asserted to be the case. Indeed even the study cited for vegetarians being regarded as more moral observes this, stating "The sharing of meat resulted in the evolution of a moral system that nowadays sustains human fairness in general." The study itself was also about differing moral foundations and how they realte to dietary choice.

Hence I'd conclude it's unnecessary since there is no indication that vegetarianism was ever considered less virtuous in ages past, only that eating-meat contributed to the evolution of the psychology of fairness. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sdio7 (talk • contribs) 15:30, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I added the transition because De Backer makes it (The sharing of meat resulted in the evolution of a moral system that nowadays sustains human fairness in general. In contrast, in today's modern society those who ban meat from their diet are seen as more virtuous compared to omnivores) and I thought it was a cute contrast. However, on reflection, it is a somewhat astonishing connection to make (WP:LEAST), and not obviously a point of consensus in the field. We should probably either attribute the idea to De Backer (WP:ATTRIBUTE) or just cut it. FourViolas (talk) 17:30, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be fine with either of those approaches I think. Sdio7 (talk) 18:45, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In more recent times[edit]

User:Bondegezou please don't insist on using "in more recent times" - see WP:RELTIME. If you want to make some reference to time, please use concrete dates. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 21:19, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Carnism?[edit]

@FourViolas: Can you explain the encyclopedic value of including a link to a rather questionable political theory created and espoused by people with questionable expertise in the field? I am very familiar with WP:NOTCENSORED, but we don't go about including every obscure political theory simply because those theories exist. Alssa1 (talk) 23:20, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure we can straightforwardly label carnism theory "political" in contrast to apolitical psychology: much of the research discussed in this article makes its policy focus explicit, whether looking for ways to reduce meat consumption to slow climate change [2] or change labeling to help the meat industry meet changing consumer demands [3].
But disregarding that, WP:SEEALSO states that the standard of inclusion is common-sense relevance. Carnism is a social theory built around psychological mechanisms relating to meat eating, so it seems clearly relevant to an article about such mechanisms. Confirming this relevance, the term is mentioned, and Joy's book cited, in many of the papers cited. If your objection is simply that the term is political, NOTCENSORED applies. If you know of other WP articles describing notable social theories of the psychology of eating meat with different political implications, by all means link them. FourViolas (talk) 23:47, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not bothered about this article linking to Carnism. I am bothered that the Carnism article gives a very one-sided presentation of the idea. Bondegezou (talk) 10:52, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This is a tricky situation, and there have been a lot of discussions trying to work out the relationship between the articles. I agree that carnism theorists only pay attention to a subset of meat psychology (‘’viz.’’ the meat paradox and mechanisms for its resolution), and tend to interpret it in a way consistent with the disputed ethical premise that meat-eating is ordinarily immoral. Our carnism article reflects this, appropriately, per WP:DUE and WP:OPINION. However, multiple deletion discussions at both pages have ruled that both topics are independently notable, so we can’t deal with the discrepancy by merging carnism here.
There are definitely other social theories one could spin out of research on meat psychology, including ones with different political commitments, such as Mateo’s “meat made us moral” hypothesis or the idea that veganism is an eating disorder [4]. For example, Leroy & Praet 2015 seem to be working towards an alternative theory integrating biological, cultural, and psychological aspects of meat eating. Linking to an article on an alternative unifying theory of meat psychology would give readers a broader picture of what to think about the research described here. The problem is that I don’t know of any such theory that meets WP:GNG. FourViolas (talk) 12:57, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Carnism is not a broadly held view in food psychology. It is a (to try to use the word non-judgmentally) fringe position connected to a particular ideological view. However, because the only people who talk about "carnism" are those who accept carnism's ideology, the Carnism article lacks balance from other sources putting forward mainstream views on the psychology of eating meat. I wonder whether we need to consider the spirit of WP:PROFRINGE in how it is covered and linked to? Bondegezou (talk) 20:00, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Within the subfield of meat psychology, the concept of carnism as a dominant ideology structuring the psychology of meat-eating actually seems to be taken quite seriously by people with mainstream credentials (full professors of psychology at respected universities).

See Monteiro, Pfeiler, Patterson & Milburn 2017, The Carnism Inventory: Measuring the ideology of eating animals for a sustained engagement, but WP:ONEWAY's requirement that independent reliable sources connect the topics in a serious and prominent way is also met by Dhont & Hodson, 2014; Caviola, Everett & Faber 2018; and Bilewicz et al. 2018, among others. FourViolas (talk) 14:33, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There is some reliable coverage, which is why I concur with you that the article shouldn't be deleted or merged, but it's a minority view connected with pro-vegetarian advocates. As the article says, the term was invented by a vegan activist and first published outside the academic literature. It's not mainstream food psychology. Bondegezou (talk) 14:43, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Prepare yourself my friends, this is a doozie of a true wall of text; self-hatted from the outset as a matter of courtesy to other editors who have to load this page. Snow let's rap 10:04, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The issue I've always had with the carnism entry (which echoes issues I have with carnism as a quasi-empirical term generally) is the manner in which it functions as a neologism, violating semantic norms for similar terms to kind of foist the notion of a framework of subconscious mechanisms and/or an overt ideology on a class of person (to which almost all persons, living and historical belong) who may not really be subject to the proposed framework and virtually all of whom definitely don't see themselves as holding said ideology. That might sound both confusing and hyperbolic, so I'll try to unpack it a little (though I've tried here in the past and failed to move the needle on the perspectives of the main authors of the two articles in question.
The first sign that "Carnism" (as a term and as a theory) has been designed for pseudo-polemical purposes is that it does not behave in the fashion one would expect from its constituent morphemes (carn- and -ism). Consider "vegetarianism", which might fairly be described as the ideology or practice of restricting one's diet via the exclusion of meat (we can't say confining the diet to the consumption of vegetables because, as a matter of historical accident, it doesn't actually mean that). It can be used self-referentially to define ones own beliefs and practices or it can be used descriptively as applied to the description of another. Pretty much all -ism terminology works this way with regard to dietary practices/philosophies. They are used both self-referentially and descriptively/objectively -- and, not for nothing, but pretty much all other variants have broader usage and cultural currency than "carnism" does, both within research and more broadly -- and they are defined by what the practitioner excludes, out of the entire world of consumable substances. "Carnism" doesn't act like that at all. It is not defined by what an individual restricts themselves to -- and no one could be a "true" "carnarian" (carniarian? carnist?) in the way they could be a true vegetarian, or vegan or pescatarian, because an all-meat diet will simply kill you.
So already we have a term which deviates from the way words within its general morphological class typically behave. So why, when discussing the psychology of meat eating, would one anchor their theoretical framework in a term which deviates so strikingly from the linguistic expectations of English speakers with regard to the morphological and semantic classes to which it belongs? Well I believe, (whether the calculation was made consciously or not) it's because utilizing this affix (-ism) in your neologism leverages the semantic associations of that morpheme to mediate the suggestion of an underlying ideology or organized set of practices, which necessarily involve a kind of agency, whether conscious or not -- which is of course the very assertion those who created the term wish to impart. By using a term which maps morphologically to other terms which people willingly adopt to describe their affirmatively attested beliefs and practices, you create the impression that carnism is in fact a belief system in the same way (again, conscious or not). And they are in desperate need of this kind of rhetorical leg-up, because there is not really any direct empirical work involved (or even proposed) to support this abstract speculation about a supposed unspoken-of belief system under which people operate. Which is what gets to the heart of why I don't consider this as fringe science so much as non-science. At the very least, it's more sociological construct-editorializing than empirical psychology.
But the matter gets even more complicated. Because the fact that "carnism" is not a term which is embraced and utilized (or even known about) by the people who are said to be the proponents/adherents of the that exact (supposed) belief system, but rather by those who wish to describe those people, is perhaps the most problematic aspect of the term's usage. This is explained by the fact that these adherents are viewed as being a part of this belief system without being aware that they participate it in it. Well, let's just put the mountain of tautological/epistemological questions that such an assertion raises to the side for a moment, and assume that one can have an affirmatively-asserted belief system which they are unaware of (that's a big ask in my opinion, but we'll go with it for a second); it still raises some pretty profound scientific/empirical/philosophical burden of proof questions with regard to how one goes about verifying (or even falsifying) the existence of this speculated-of philosophy if it is not self-attested by those who are said to be its practitioners. But even more problematic, it leaves the people speculating about the existence of this subconscious belief system to fill in all of the details about how it really works, and how it interfaces with other modules of the human mind and principles of psychology.
And speculate they do. And here's the real danger of the fact that those who propose this framework are (unsurprisingly) almost always dedicated advocates of forbearance from the the very activities they have defined as being signs of this unattested (and, because of the way it is framed, untestable) belief system. I mean, I can't be the only one seeing the snake eat its own tail here, because this is a perfect scenario for rampant confirmation bias and self-fulfilling theories, but not a setup for sound science or arriving at any dependable, concrete conclusions about human behaviour or psychological phenomena. I don't even really disagree with Joy's conclusions in the pragmatic realm; but the problem is that her justifiable moral philosophy and astute approach to pragmatics have been entangled (by herself and other adherents to this framework) with strongly asserted but untestable "scientific"/psychological claims. Is it any wonder then, with this combination of weak empirical regulators and zealous social advocacy that the way the proponents of this theory end describing this supposed belief system of their philosophical opposition comes out as "Carnism is...a dominant belief system supported by a variety of defense mechanisms and mostly unchallenged assumptions."? (That's from the lead on our own article, and I think it's an accurate representation of how proponents for the carnist theory view this strawman ethos that they have created for the people on the other end of the moral debate). And again, as a private individual, I align strongly with their priorities. But as a scientist, it makes me want to gag, this "theory" that so conveniently allows them to dismiss their rhetorical opposition as (almost by definition) irrational and incapable of assessing the predicate assumptions of their own belief systems as they apply to the matter under debate.
So phew, diatribe, I know. But I promise that I didn't go to such lengths just to detail my doubts about this framework as meaningful psychological inquiry, but rather to underpin my concerns with the articles in question here. I personally would be in a favour of a merge, and I'll say as much if the subject is ever revisited at either talk page again, but that does not seem likely any time soon. But in the meantime, there are deep issues with the carnism article. In the past, I have made long-winded posts such as this and then FourViolas has (quite reasonably) pressed me for specific content changes and it's been hard for me to respond to that request, because my underlying feeling is that the article should not exist. I've said before and I'll say it again, it's just a mess of WP:synthesis and WP:Original research; anything in it that is notable and worth saying can be moved to Joy's article or that for the primary work in which it was put forward. The rest that is stitched in there (from sources which mostly don't even feature the word "carnism" or an explicit reference to the theory) is there to try to flesh out what would be an otherwise very bare bones article.
It's a hugely problematic article that I frankly don't think can be salvaged in a fashion where it both A) comports with basic policies on synthesis and neutrality, and B) still has enough to it to warrant an independent article. But any such deletion/merge suggestion has (unsurprisingly, given the context of those inclined to edit these articles) failed to garner a majority consensus for deletion. And to try to overturn that by bringing in broader community oversight would involve a process that would include tearing into the work and perspectives of some of my favourite editors on the project, and I'm just not down for it. But if the article is going to exist, and I have to make what remediating suggestions I can; we've gotta make it clearer that the way the term is used, it refers to a highly speculative notion of a deeply internalized belief system, coupled with some way of impressing the relatively weak WP:WEIGHT and almost non-existent currency this theory has in the broader field. I don't like the idea of what might be involved in those discussions though, because it makes me feel as if it would involve a lot of throwing different kinds of OR up at eachother. ~sigh~ All I can tell you for certain is that the topic somehow inexplicably combines A) a set of pragmatic and moral arguments I actually agree with, and then mixes in B) some empirical observations I believe are well-attested, and then somehow garbles them with C) psuedo-scientific gobbledegook social theory, which is now viewed through the lens of D) an article which runs roughshod over policies meant to restrict us from synthesizing our own overarching rational framework for an idea. Snow let's rap 10:04, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Snow Rise. I'll take as agreeing with my basic point! I think the best way forward is to find some balancing literature addressing carnism from a more critical point of view. Bondegezou (talk) 10:14, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If I have this right, your objection is that “carnism,” unlike vegetarianism, is not an ideology claimed by most of those who are alleged to hold it, and this makes it an unsound theoretical framework for psychology. But this is an unsustainanably broad objection.
Vegetarianism, like Buddhism and Nazism, is an ideology originally named and articulated by practitioners. But academics very often posit and defend the existence of ideologies that, like carnism, are denied by most of those who supposedly hold them: white racism, patriarchal sexism, Eurocentrism, homophobia, cissexism, etc., etc. There are indeed “scientific/empirical/philosophical burden of proof questions with regard to how one goes about verifying (or even falsifying) the existence of this speculated-of philosophy if it is not self-attested”, but they have not prevented psychologists from investigating the mental phenomena underlying these (supposed) ideologies, nor Wikipedia editors from writing about their efforts. See Symbolic racism#Evidence, Ambivalent sexism#Empirical support, etc.
If you can’t provide specific suggestions, it would be helpful if you could at least point to claims made in the articles (not the underlying sources, which it’s not our job to refute or defend) that you believe violate WP policies.
I agree that including more RS, in DUE proportion, is always good. FourViolas (talk) 23:08, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think the reason you're not expecting the term "carnism" to work the way it does is that you're interpreting it as referring to merely a "dietary practice/philosophy" and comparing it to things like pescetarianism, when it's meant (and usually used in RS) to refer to a whole worldview on human-nonhuman animal relations, epitomized by the belief that certain animals belong in the category "meat". It's therefore more lexically comparable to ideologies like racism, phallocentrism, etc, and functions pretty predictably relative to these. FourViolas (talk) 22:53, 12 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's a link in 'See also', seems appropriate for a See also section. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:50, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Richardson, N. J. reference[edit]

I think there's a mistake in reference #8 : Richardson, N. J.; et al. (1994). "Consumer Perceptions of Meat" (PDF). Meat Science. 36: 57–65. doi:10.1016/0309-1740(94)90033-7 which links to this, but that article's title is Consumer attitudes to meat eating. The one in the reference resembles this article (UK consumer perceptions of meat) by the same author. I wonder which is the correct one. u v u l u m (talk) 20:48, 17 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing that out! It was actually some of both—I had them both as "Richardson 1994" in my notes, and got mixed up. Clarified now. FourViolas (talk) 23:03, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Duplicated source: Rozin et al. 2012[edit]

Reference #2 : Rozin, Paul; Hormes, Julia M.; Faith, Myles S.; Wansink, Brian (October 2012). "Is Meat Male? A Quantitative Multimethod Framework to Establish Metaphoric Relationships". Journal of Consumer Research. 39 (3): 629–643. doi:10.1086/664970 is also cited in Sources/Research articles. I'm not sure about which one should prevail. Any help? Regards. u v u l u m (talk) 16:40, 15 December 2021 (UTC). Same happens with ref. #1. u v u l u m (talk) 16:49, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Psychology_of_eating_meat&oldid=1206723405"