Judgemental!
Those judgemental vegans. A charge you’ve probably heard (or perhaps even uttered).
But what is “judgement”? How does it really affect the relationships between vegans and others? What can scientists say about it? And how do vegan activists react to the charge?
Dr Julia Minson explains the science.
Marla Rose explains exactly how Bacon Loving Hipsters Can Kiss Her Vegan Ass.
And Colleen Patrick-Goudreau discusses the psychology and experience of “judgemental vegans”.
(30 min) Play or download (29 MB MP3) (other formats) (via iTunes)
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
The compassionate cook is a leading vegan advocate across several media, including podcasts (VegNews favourite podcast 2011). Another podcast host – Erin Grayson of Red Radio – has a tattoo that asks what Colleen would do.
Just in case you haven’t heard of her, she’s the author of several vegan cookbooks, the producer of the 30 Day Vegan Challenge online course, and a speaker who is famous for espousing veganism in a spiritual and non-judgemental way.
She relates Julia Minson’s research to her experience as an advocate, and discusses how she tries not to be judgemental – even at barbecues.
Marla Rose
Marla Rose practices a range of advocacy.
Her Vegan Feminist Agitator blog and Bacon Loving Hipsters Can Kiss My Vegan Ass Facebook group offer vegans laughs; she’s written a book about a 15 year old vegan superhero with empathy superpowers; and when we called her home was in the midst of preparations for the outreach event Chicago Veganmania.
Diana asks her if her humour is, perhaps, judgemental: and Marla describes how she resented the smug vegan who convinced her to drop animal products.
Dr Julia Minson
Julia Minson is a postdoctoral fellow in social psychology at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
She researches how attitudes change and “moral minorities”, a term which aptly defines vegans. She’s also a vegetarian.
Julia talks with Diana about her research into attitudes to vegetarians, and how insulting vegetarians might make you more likely to adopt their views.
Diana also discussed “Anti-social punishment” with Colleen. This is the phenomenon of punishing people for being too nice. (The more usual kind of punishment, such as jailing bank robbers, is “pro-social”.)
References:
- Julia discusses Do-Gooder Derogation : Disparaging Morally Motivated Minorities to Defuse Anticipated Reproach (PDF) (abstract), Julia A. Minson and Benoît Monin, Social Psychological and Personality Science 2012 3: 200
- For an cultural study of anti-social punishment, look at page 9-10 of The Weirdest People in the World? (PDF) (abstract at cambridge.org), Joseph Henricha, Steven J. Heinea and Ara Norenzayan, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2010 Vol 33: 2-3 pp 61-83
Thanks
Our thanks go to Robb Masters for the music; and a hat tip to Our Hen House for originally mentioning Julia’s study in their own podcast.
Production Note
During our chat with Colleen, we played her Dr Minson’s interview and summarised Marla’s; and then I edited it together. The guests don’t sound like they’re on VoIP because this month all our guests sent us recordings of their side of the conversation. Thanks!
Will (@dysomniak)
October 8, 2012 at 23:27
Good episode, but my iTunes gave me a repeat of the cheese show instead of this one. Maybe it’s just me, but you might want to double check your feed.
Ian
October 9, 2012 at 00:05
Thanks 🙂
I’m sorry to hear that. We knew there was a problem (thanks to Dan from PetaUK), but thought it had been fixed.
When did you make your iTunes refresh its podcast feeds?
(The direct link to the MP3 went to the wrong file. And of the MP3 references it could have chosen, iTunes picked not one in the audio player, nor the one it’s officially meant to pick, but the broken one.)
Also: which national iTunes store are you on? Perhaps yours has not yet refreshed its feed.
Will (@dysomniak)
October 9, 2012 at 02:11
I’m in the US, and I synced sometime around noon Pacific. I just refreshed, and there doesn’t seem to be anything new. I already listened to it but you may want to push out the correct episode for those who are less proactive. Thanks again for the great podcast!
Ian
October 9, 2012 at 07:59
That’s concerning. I know that iTunes preview is playing out the correct episode, so I hoped that iTunes would send the correct episode out.
I’ve changed the episode timestamp. Does that fix it?
Will (@dysomniak)
October 9, 2012 at 13:56
Just checked my computer again and it still hasn’t grabbed the right episode, but I just checked and I was able to download it manually from the itunes store.
Ian
October 9, 2012 at 21:06
I’ve bowed to the inevitable and re-posted the correct link as a separate blog post.
That way, anyone who subscribes via iTunes will automatically download the correct MP3 file as if it’s an entirely new episode of the show. I don’t think it can replace an episode it’s already downloaded.
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