This is an excellent post and it is great that we are able to draw such conclusions based on controlled studies rather than vague hypothesis. Some of the results are surprising on first reading but on reflection, it fits in quite well with experience actually. It is true that a lot of people are turned away from messaging that implicates them somehow in all the cruelty and horrors that animals are put through. They become defensive and resort to all forms of mental gymnastics to reject the straightforward realities. And their views go largely unchallenged because society views their behavior as perfectly normal and everyone around them reinforces their beliefs.
As explained in other comments, there are of course people who respond to very direct information on treatment of animals and questions of end consumer culpability. And by all means, we should hold nothing back when engaging with them. But I am afraid these are a small minority introducing selection bias comes into the picture when determining what tactic is more helpful. If the sample space is comprised primarily of such individuals, then direct appeal to anti-speciesism or analogies to racism is helpful but not for the vast majority of people in society.
All these studies have one major limitation: they listen to the oppressors for strategies on how to change them. I'd love to see this contrasted by a study on actual Vegans. I have an inkling many long-term Vegans WERE initially motivated by guilt, because it IS unnecessary, and it IS like paying for slavery. The pain IS the catalyst for change. If you're not hungry, why would you eat? If you don't feel bad, why would you change anything to feel better? I've been doing activism on the streets for years now and have tried every approach mentioned in this newsletter. Clouding the truth of their behaviors with "positive framing" does not work as well as you think it does. You know what works? Telling them the truth and holding them accountable for it.
Thanks for your comment - we appreciate your feedback. Like you, we see street outreach, which exposes the horrific reality of what is happening to other animals, as a vital piece of our movement's communications. After all, people cannot be outraged by animal exploitation if they don't understand what the reality looks like. Many of us in the Animal Think Tank research team have also done street outreach for a number of years. But this type of communication isn't effective for everyone. The people who stop and engage in these outreach conversations are choosing to do so, whereas there are many more who look away and walk by. People who are further long on their 'journey' and are actively contemplating this issue are more open to being confronted with uncomfortable truths than those who haven't been contemplating this issue and who are more likely to pushback or react negatively to these kinds of communications. Whereas more positively framed messages might draw people in who might otherwise not engage. As a movement, we need to keep testing a variety of messages on non-vegans to understand what different audience segments do find persuasive. Because if we only opt for one messaging approach, we're limiting who we're connecting with.
Ultimately, there is no one type of messaging that will work on everyone, as we're all unique, and we're all at different points of our journey. Our research does indicate that focusing solely on the negative might not be the most effective strategy, and highlighting the positives can help people engage with the issue and lower their defences, rather than ignore or dismiss the message/messenger straight away. Extensive research in other social justice areas has also found the same to be true, whether it's marriage equality, abortion rights, detention centres, smoking etc. Communicators found that framing the issue negatively wasn't a persuasive strategy to build public support/encourage action, whereas framing the issue more positively (gains, benefits, connecting with shared values and aspirational identities) encouraged more people to support that particular issue. While they still spoke about the problem and/or the impact that had on those most affected, it was balanced with more positive elements too.
For our movement, showing images of other animals thriving is always a great way to engage and lower people's defences, and showing a vision of what a better future could look like helps inspire people that change is not only beneficial for all of us, it's also possible. Of course we need to show the problem too, but our communications should inspire hope as well. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech is remembered most for the vision of a better future, rather than the nightmare of the present.
We absolutely agree that studying what motivated current vegans to change is really crucial, and we have done some quantitative research on this - and found that most participants stated what primarily shifted their thinking about other animals was having a relationship or positive encounter with them. A fewer - but still large - number of participants also cited documentaries/undercover footage as being a key influence. We intend to do more in-depth qualitative research to understand people's journeys and motivations for changing. From our own personal experience and wider research, it is never one thing that changes someone, but lots of messages/stories/nudges over a stretch of time.
Thanks again for reading the article and engaging with us - we really appreciate your comments.
Damn. Wow. Thank you so much for clarifying everything in this way. You’re right. I made the mistake of forgetting that a major component of street outreach is targeting people who are reachable. This has made me reconsider effectiveness once again. The reference to MLK’s quote and impact was powerful. Thank you.
Sexism and racism, just like speciesism, are claims that one group is superior to another. The human brain makes comparisons when trying to understand something. Therefore, this comparison is an attempt to explain exploitation. Yes, perhaps, as we said, the message is not getting across sufficiently due to the negative impact of anthropocentrism or the perspective of the behaviorist school. However, a Machiavellian attitude is generally evident in your writings. If we tell them to go vegan, they feel bad, and if we compare it to racism, they feel uncomfortable. So how can we embellish frightening truths?
For example, I went to a place where 20,000 chickens were raised in the same place and killed every 45 days. My purpose in doing this was animal photojournalism. How can I explain the suffering and exploitation I saw without offending the other party?
Also, when some people realize that other living beings are being harmed because of their choices, they change their choices. That's all. So are these people better people than the ones you mentioned? Are they more conscious? There are people who overcome the meat paradox by not denying that it harms other animals but by becoming vegan. Everyone's learning and perception may be different, some people may perceive and transform after struggling for a while. I think you want people who care about animal liberation to weaken their arguments because of the articles that mention how the vegan side should soften its language.
Thanks for your comment – as a team of opinion researchers, we're always keen to receive feedback to our articles. The photojournalism work you are involved with – raising awareness of the harms inflicted on other animals – is absolutely essential. Many people, including ourselves, transitioned to veganism after witnessing the horrors of animal exploitation. In no way are we advising that advocates do not show the reality of what is happening to our animal cousins; instead, we're advocating for a reframe of the issue. Our research shows that balancing the problem with values, solutions and vision is more effective at engaging many people who might otherwise turn away from a message centred solely on the problem.
There is never going to be a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to messaging. For example, we've found that negative framing (e.g. speciesism) led to polarisation, with some people moving forward in pro-animal attitudes, and others regressing. But the net effect overall was negative. So while a more negatively framed message will be effective on some people, for many others, it might repel them from our cause and movement even more. The sad reality is that neither veganism nor the movement for animal freedom is accelerating in the way we need it to, and a big part of that is because we are not drawing in enough people to our cause.
Our audience is obviously not one audience – it's made up of diverse people who are at different points of their journey. As you say, some people are 'more conscious' than others, more aware and further along on their journey. A person considering adopting veganism may be open to more direct messaging, while someone still entrenched in an anthropocentric or denial mindset may react negatively. As communicators, we need a diverse toolbox of messaging approaches to reach a diverse audience. And while more negatively framed messages are a needed tool for some audiences, we think more positively framed messages can be overlooked as a tool and could be used to greater effect by our movement.
At Animal Think Tank, we also think we need to be mindful, as a movement, of how we're framing other animals – showing not just how they suffer (which provokes sympathy, a more distancing emotion), but how they are when they're thriving (which provokes empathy, which is more connecting). After all, most people only care about other animals suffering because they already believe they're unique individuals. And a lot of the population, sadly, still needs to be convinced that all animals are worthy of respect and dignity. Our research shows this is also the case for many other social justice movements, who have found more positive framing (of human rights issues and the people affected) leads to greater public support for policy changes than negatively framed messages do.
Thanks again for engaging with the article and taking the time to leave a comment. And for the brave work you do in exposing the reality of what is happening to other animals.
One note: In the perceived harm vs. perceived necessity table, 'farming for food' is shown to be thought of as the most necessary and least harmful. But what is meant is 'farming =animals= for food.' Conflating animal ag with all farming drives the perceptual ruts deeper.
Thanks! Yes, that is a great point. The labels don't indicate the full description that the participants saw - which did include the word 'animals'. We've been talking about referring to either 'arable farming' or 'farming animals' to make the distinction clearer in future studies, to see what affect this might have.
Interesting discussion. It would be nice to know how many people you surveyed and which findings were statistically significant. For example, was the finding about framing humans as good vs bad statistically significant?
The number of participants varied across different studies. The perceived necessity vs perceived harm correlation and the necessity framing experiment had 365 participants. The attitude surveys ranged from 500 to 2,000 participants, depending on the specific study. The humans bad vs humans good framing studies involved several different studies, with typically at least 100 participants seeing each message.
Some of these framing studies found statistically significant effects, while others did not. In the final plot, each data point represents the overall agreement from approximately 100 participants who saw a particular message. There is considerable variability, but on average, the humans bad framing tends to perform worse. We're conducting further analysis to understand what specific aspects of the messages influenced responses.
Kudos for showing the individual data points in the necessity study, but its clear the results are not statistically significant, so the conclusions you've made based on the results are not supported by the data.
Thanks for engaging with the data. The plot includes data from several different studies—some reached statistical significance, while others did not. Each individual data point represents the overall agreement from around 100 participants who saw a particular message, and while there is quite a bit of variability, the ‘humans bad’ framing tends to perform worse on average. Overall, there is a statistically significant difference. We’re continuing to analyse the results to better understand what aspects of specific messages influenced responses.
This is an excellent post and it is great that we are able to draw such conclusions based on controlled studies rather than vague hypothesis. Some of the results are surprising on first reading but on reflection, it fits in quite well with experience actually. It is true that a lot of people are turned away from messaging that implicates them somehow in all the cruelty and horrors that animals are put through. They become defensive and resort to all forms of mental gymnastics to reject the straightforward realities. And their views go largely unchallenged because society views their behavior as perfectly normal and everyone around them reinforces their beliefs.
As explained in other comments, there are of course people who respond to very direct information on treatment of animals and questions of end consumer culpability. And by all means, we should hold nothing back when engaging with them. But I am afraid these are a small minority introducing selection bias comes into the picture when determining what tactic is more helpful. If the sample space is comprised primarily of such individuals, then direct appeal to anti-speciesism or analogies to racism is helpful but not for the vast majority of people in society.
All these studies have one major limitation: they listen to the oppressors for strategies on how to change them. I'd love to see this contrasted by a study on actual Vegans. I have an inkling many long-term Vegans WERE initially motivated by guilt, because it IS unnecessary, and it IS like paying for slavery. The pain IS the catalyst for change. If you're not hungry, why would you eat? If you don't feel bad, why would you change anything to feel better? I've been doing activism on the streets for years now and have tried every approach mentioned in this newsletter. Clouding the truth of their behaviors with "positive framing" does not work as well as you think it does. You know what works? Telling them the truth and holding them accountable for it.
Thanks for your comment - we appreciate your feedback. Like you, we see street outreach, which exposes the horrific reality of what is happening to other animals, as a vital piece of our movement's communications. After all, people cannot be outraged by animal exploitation if they don't understand what the reality looks like. Many of us in the Animal Think Tank research team have also done street outreach for a number of years. But this type of communication isn't effective for everyone. The people who stop and engage in these outreach conversations are choosing to do so, whereas there are many more who look away and walk by. People who are further long on their 'journey' and are actively contemplating this issue are more open to being confronted with uncomfortable truths than those who haven't been contemplating this issue and who are more likely to pushback or react negatively to these kinds of communications. Whereas more positively framed messages might draw people in who might otherwise not engage. As a movement, we need to keep testing a variety of messages on non-vegans to understand what different audience segments do find persuasive. Because if we only opt for one messaging approach, we're limiting who we're connecting with.
Ultimately, there is no one type of messaging that will work on everyone, as we're all unique, and we're all at different points of our journey. Our research does indicate that focusing solely on the negative might not be the most effective strategy, and highlighting the positives can help people engage with the issue and lower their defences, rather than ignore or dismiss the message/messenger straight away. Extensive research in other social justice areas has also found the same to be true, whether it's marriage equality, abortion rights, detention centres, smoking etc. Communicators found that framing the issue negatively wasn't a persuasive strategy to build public support/encourage action, whereas framing the issue more positively (gains, benefits, connecting with shared values and aspirational identities) encouraged more people to support that particular issue. While they still spoke about the problem and/or the impact that had on those most affected, it was balanced with more positive elements too.
For our movement, showing images of other animals thriving is always a great way to engage and lower people's defences, and showing a vision of what a better future could look like helps inspire people that change is not only beneficial for all of us, it's also possible. Of course we need to show the problem too, but our communications should inspire hope as well. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech is remembered most for the vision of a better future, rather than the nightmare of the present.
We absolutely agree that studying what motivated current vegans to change is really crucial, and we have done some quantitative research on this - and found that most participants stated what primarily shifted their thinking about other animals was having a relationship or positive encounter with them. A fewer - but still large - number of participants also cited documentaries/undercover footage as being a key influence. We intend to do more in-depth qualitative research to understand people's journeys and motivations for changing. From our own personal experience and wider research, it is never one thing that changes someone, but lots of messages/stories/nudges over a stretch of time.
Thanks again for reading the article and engaging with us - we really appreciate your comments.
Damn. Wow. Thank you so much for clarifying everything in this way. You’re right. I made the mistake of forgetting that a major component of street outreach is targeting people who are reachable. This has made me reconsider effectiveness once again. The reference to MLK’s quote and impact was powerful. Thank you.
Sexism and racism, just like speciesism, are claims that one group is superior to another. The human brain makes comparisons when trying to understand something. Therefore, this comparison is an attempt to explain exploitation. Yes, perhaps, as we said, the message is not getting across sufficiently due to the negative impact of anthropocentrism or the perspective of the behaviorist school. However, a Machiavellian attitude is generally evident in your writings. If we tell them to go vegan, they feel bad, and if we compare it to racism, they feel uncomfortable. So how can we embellish frightening truths?
For example, I went to a place where 20,000 chickens were raised in the same place and killed every 45 days. My purpose in doing this was animal photojournalism. How can I explain the suffering and exploitation I saw without offending the other party?
Also, when some people realize that other living beings are being harmed because of their choices, they change their choices. That's all. So are these people better people than the ones you mentioned? Are they more conscious? There are people who overcome the meat paradox by not denying that it harms other animals but by becoming vegan. Everyone's learning and perception may be different, some people may perceive and transform after struggling for a while. I think you want people who care about animal liberation to weaken their arguments because of the articles that mention how the vegan side should soften its language.
Thanks for your comment – as a team of opinion researchers, we're always keen to receive feedback to our articles. The photojournalism work you are involved with – raising awareness of the harms inflicted on other animals – is absolutely essential. Many people, including ourselves, transitioned to veganism after witnessing the horrors of animal exploitation. In no way are we advising that advocates do not show the reality of what is happening to our animal cousins; instead, we're advocating for a reframe of the issue. Our research shows that balancing the problem with values, solutions and vision is more effective at engaging many people who might otherwise turn away from a message centred solely on the problem.
There is never going to be a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to messaging. For example, we've found that negative framing (e.g. speciesism) led to polarisation, with some people moving forward in pro-animal attitudes, and others regressing. But the net effect overall was negative. So while a more negatively framed message will be effective on some people, for many others, it might repel them from our cause and movement even more. The sad reality is that neither veganism nor the movement for animal freedom is accelerating in the way we need it to, and a big part of that is because we are not drawing in enough people to our cause.
Our audience is obviously not one audience – it's made up of diverse people who are at different points of their journey. As you say, some people are 'more conscious' than others, more aware and further along on their journey. A person considering adopting veganism may be open to more direct messaging, while someone still entrenched in an anthropocentric or denial mindset may react negatively. As communicators, we need a diverse toolbox of messaging approaches to reach a diverse audience. And while more negatively framed messages are a needed tool for some audiences, we think more positively framed messages can be overlooked as a tool and could be used to greater effect by our movement.
At Animal Think Tank, we also think we need to be mindful, as a movement, of how we're framing other animals – showing not just how they suffer (which provokes sympathy, a more distancing emotion), but how they are when they're thriving (which provokes empathy, which is more connecting). After all, most people only care about other animals suffering because they already believe they're unique individuals. And a lot of the population, sadly, still needs to be convinced that all animals are worthy of respect and dignity. Our research shows this is also the case for many other social justice movements, who have found more positive framing (of human rights issues and the people affected) leads to greater public support for policy changes than negatively framed messages do.
Thanks again for engaging with the article and taking the time to leave a comment. And for the brave work you do in exposing the reality of what is happening to other animals.
Another fine read.
One note: In the perceived harm vs. perceived necessity table, 'farming for food' is shown to be thought of as the most necessary and least harmful. But what is meant is 'farming =animals= for food.' Conflating animal ag with all farming drives the perceptual ruts deeper.
We need farming.
We don't need animal farming.
Thanks! Yes, that is a great point. The labels don't indicate the full description that the participants saw - which did include the word 'animals'. We've been talking about referring to either 'arable farming' or 'farming animals' to make the distinction clearer in future studies, to see what affect this might have.
Interesting discussion. It would be nice to know how many people you surveyed and which findings were statistically significant. For example, was the finding about framing humans as good vs bad statistically significant?
The number of participants varied across different studies. The perceived necessity vs perceived harm correlation and the necessity framing experiment had 365 participants. The attitude surveys ranged from 500 to 2,000 participants, depending on the specific study. The humans bad vs humans good framing studies involved several different studies, with typically at least 100 participants seeing each message.
Some of these framing studies found statistically significant effects, while others did not. In the final plot, each data point represents the overall agreement from approximately 100 participants who saw a particular message. There is considerable variability, but on average, the humans bad framing tends to perform worse. We're conducting further analysis to understand what specific aspects of the messages influenced responses.
Kudos for showing the individual data points in the necessity study, but its clear the results are not statistically significant, so the conclusions you've made based on the results are not supported by the data.
Thanks for engaging with the data. The plot includes data from several different studies—some reached statistical significance, while others did not. Each individual data point represents the overall agreement from around 100 participants who saw a particular message, and while there is quite a bit of variability, the ‘humans bad’ framing tends to perform worse on average. Overall, there is a statistically significant difference. We’re continuing to analyse the results to better understand what aspects of specific messages influenced responses.