I am interested in the most effective ways of converting people to become vegetarian or vegan (veg*n).
People are often different, and there may be a need for a few different approaches to getting people to become more/completely vegetarian/vegan, but it is likely that some people (college students?) on average are easier to convince, and some approaches/arguments are better at the task. I would like to hear people's suggestions based on personal experience and preferably scientific research.

1) What kind of individuals are more likely to become veg*n?
2) What are some of the best approaches you know of making someone veg*n?

Of all the vegetarians/vegans I've interacted with (almost all college students/graduates), they all seem to have ethical treatment of animals as the basis of their (non)action, though my sample is not representative of the population. I'd be curious to know what the primary reasons vegetarians have for joining and for sticking to not eating meat (I suspect the two answers may diverge). Answering this question may point to answers to the two questions.

It may be best to follow the approaches various animal rights organizations take to influence people. Though they mostly make and try to popularize videos and spread leaflets, the reasons they focus on these activities may simply be that these are cheap, easy to do (etc), not because they are most effective. Though I do suspect the two activities may be some of the best ways to spread the message and get people to think, it's possible that 1-on-1 discussions convert more people per time-period (maybe leaflets are the best way to start such a conversation). Maybe the best way is to start with friends rather than strangers.

As I once pointed out on the forums, overly aggressive messages may be counter-productive (I was thinking PETA were a bunch of loons from the leaflet comparing nazi concentration camps to farm animals today; though I now see the point and actually rather agree that the comparison should not be offensive at least upon careful reflection, I still think their approach may have been a little worse than if they'd tone down the message).

I'm still thinking about these issues from time to time - I'm a little puzzled how seemingly good people (my friends who seem to be nice people otherwise) continue to eat meat when several other friends and I in our company (almost) never do - explicitly on ethical grounds. I'll keep pushing from time to time, I suspect getting friends to change may be easier than it is to change strangers.

One of the main approaches I have when talking about veg*nism is to emphasize that there is a continuum between eating as much meat as humanly possible all the time and not eating any: by simply eating a little less meat even once a week, one already makes it so that less animals suffer.

I may be mistaken about my demeanor as I speak, but I think I come off (reflecting my true position) as fueled by caring about the welfare of the animals, rather than by indignation or moral disgust over those who are still eating meat. Furthermore I emphasize how I too once ate meat at the beginning of college, and how initially I thought vegetarians to be pseudo-crazy, yet I began to see their point of view upon careful reflection and over time slid towards the veg*n edge of the continuum.

I don't know if this point hurts my case, but sometimes I share how it seems peculiar that so many (otherwise) good people continue to do something I am arguing is morally very problematic; to show how this is common I bring the analogy about holding slaves. At a certain time it would have been very easy to think holding slaves was morally unproblematic, and any one person who would choose to abstain from the action would lose out financially and would look ludicrous in the eyes of others.

I think it's right that changing friends is easier than changing strangers. It's also more likely to be something you can do casually. Converting strangers will require dedicating a lot of time and resources, which you need to weigh against the other things you could be doing with it - one of which is earning money to pay people who're better at converting people to vegetarianism than you. Alan has found what he argues is a pretty good cause, but IMO promoting animal welfare for its own sake isn't as good a prospect as it looks at first. I've lost the post where I argued this, but the gist is aside from its low impact on existential risk, it loses a lot of the viral benefit of promoting happiness elsewhere - where if you make a person happier, they're then better disposed and in a better position to pass the happiness on to others.

There are some general statistics on what demographics are more likely to become veg*n. For example, 2/3 of vegetarians are female. Vegetarians had an average of 5 points IQ above average as kids (though it might not be a causal relationship). Sourced from wikipedia.

Anecdotally, gay men seem more likely to become vegetarian. I must stress this too is anecdotal: they also seem more likely to be interested in engaging with the topic and admitting that the suffering is bad, straight men sometimes seem more likely to believe that eating meat is a sign of masculinity

So those are the demographics you might want to concentrate on if you want to make more veg*n's. I don't know about strategies for converting because I've never successfully done that.

I don't know about strategies for converting because I've never successfully done that.

Ditto. It seems worth keeping in mind that religious people who dedicate their lives to converting people in developed countries have a very low hit rate, and probably have a more appealing concept to promote. IMO the best bet might be buying a couple of copies of Peter Singer's Practical Ethics (a much more interesting read than Animal Welfare IMO, which I barely got through the first chapter of) to lend out to anyone who's interested in the subject.

I think, prima facie, the approach of Vegan Outreach is pretty sound. Their leaflets appeal to the emotions with graphic evidence, then follow up with rational argument (no PETA-style theatrics). They put their front line on campuses and have them engage with the significant minority of students who care about animal welfare and are close to a tipping point to becoming vegans.

Contrarily, when I engage with friends about veg*nism, they are usually nowhere near that tipping point. Asking them to care about animal suffering is more or less futile because they have a deep seated belief animals are subhuman and outside our circle of moral consideration. The result has been many awkward social interactions, which have probably only entrenched their opinions that veg*ns are preachy.

While I think Vegan Outreach is doing a good workhorse job, I think there's still a lot of room for innovation in getting the message out. Fertile ground may be the tactics of online social movements like Avaaz or GetUp in Australia, or more recently the gay group All Out, which utilise social media to build awareness, spread memes and pressure governments into action (all are, to my knowledge, social justice based but still speciesist). I think there's probably room for a broad-based animal rights based online social movement along these lines. Veg*nism tends to attract young, savvy college students, but also those who are not necessarily committed to political action; I think messaging should reflect this. For example, online petitions, games, memes and so on.

PETA is good on innovating at messaging (though its effectiveness is, of course, open to question) and should not be disregarded.

if you make a person happier, they're then better disposed and in a better position to pass the happiness on to others

Hmm. But what about the impact on animals of raising the human standard of living? For example, China's increasing prosperity has been a disaster for factory farmed animals.

Contrarily, when I engage with friends about veg*nism, they are usually nowhere near that tipping point.

Agreed. I've had similar experiences with friends and family. Extremely difficult to even get an engagement on the topic.

I think, prima facie, the approach of Vegan Outreach is pretty sound. Their leaflets appeal to the emotions with graphic evidence, then follow up with rational argument

Yeah, I think that the best approach if you wanted to minimize animal suffering would be to donate to a charity like vegan outreach. Much more likely to convert people. If you want to have veg*n friends then it would be much easier just to make new friends who are already veg*n.

Hi yboris.

I have been a vegan activist for the last years.

You ask two hard --but interesting-- questions:


1) What kind of individuals are more likely to become veg*n?

There can be a lot of surprises, but:

- Females are more likely to become vegan than males.
- Young people are more likely to become vegan than old people.
- Cultured people are more likely to become vegan than non-cultured people.


2) What are some of the best approaches you know of making someone veg*n?

Documentaries like "Earthlings" are a very effective way of making someone vegan. But there is problem: most people don't want to watch to these documentaries.

There are several tools than can be combined: documentaries, leaflets, stalls, performances, professional websites, Facebook...

On the other hand, I think the most effective way isn't always to speak with the people. Activism is more effective when it's well organizated. Animal rights charities need designers, lawyers, journalists, writers, marketing advisors, economists, donors, translators and so on. If you are good in a task, you can offer your services to a charity for free, and you will be doing a lot for the animals.


There are another topics you mention:

"One of the main approaches I have when talking about veg*nism is to emphasize that there is a continuum between eating as much meat as humanly possible all the time and not eating any: by simply eating a little less meat even once a week, one already makes it so that less animals suffer."

True, but I want to get animal advocates. Nearly all the most involved people in animal defense that I know are all vegans. I prefer one animal advocate than ten people eating less meat. So I think it's not a bad idea to push vegetarians into veganism.



"As I once pointed out on the forums, overly aggressive messages may be counter-productive (I was thinking PETA were a bunch of loons from the leaflet comparing nazi concentration camps to farm animals today; though I now see the point and actually rather agree that the comparison should not be offensive at least upon careful reflection, I still think their approach may have been a little worse than if they'd tone down the message)."

IMO veganism isn't "the last step". It's important to make vegans, but it's even more important to make anti-speciesists. There is a lot of suffering in the wild, and it's a lot of more likely to reduce that suffering in a less-speciest world.

The campaign that you mention was a hardcore anti-speciesist one. It brought bad reactions, but it attacked the root causes of the problem.

I live in Spain, where anti-speciesism is found among a lot of animal advocates. And I can see that there are a lot of activists with a more-advanced position than most of American and British activists. There are a lot of Spanish animal advocates buying vegan pet food or defending ethical interventions in the wild, what is pretty strange among American and British animal advocates.

Question. You say:

Cultured people are more likely to become vegan than non-cultured people.

What do you need by "cultured people"?

Earthlings looks good, I'll have to watch/buy that!

There are a lot of Spanish animal advocates... defending ethical interventions in the wild, what is pretty strange among American and British animal advocates.

Seriously?!!? We need to find out what you guys are doing that we aren't! Do you think it's likely to be a "hardcore" anti-speciesist campaign or a cultural difference or what?

David Pearce's approach worked very well with me (and would probably work better on the average person, who is more driven to action by emotion and less driven to action by rational argument than me):
1. You conveniently let people know that you're vegan (e.g. "Thanks for the offer, but I'm a vegan")
2. You bring up the topic with them in a gentle, non-preachy, not-too-pushy way ("Have you ever thought of becoming a vegetarian/vegan?" "Yeah well I've been one for a few years. Why? Well, you know, I just think it's really bad the way factory-farmed animals are treated.")
3. Keep the conversation like this for a while, fairly light.
4. Deliver a powerful, cutting, emotionally-loaded, and preferably original, line (at the right moment!) I'd been pushing Dave for some more substance/detail to his reasons until he eventually said quite solemnly something like, "It's the animal equivalent of the Holocaust."

And just to echo what other people have said: females, friends, students, videos, leaflets, are particularly good IMO

From my medical teaching, I've learnt that the best way to achieve a change is motivational interviewing. I doubt the ability of activists to persuade others' is studied very much. So maybe activists can learn from a much more closely scrutinised practise, the effort of a doctor to elicit a behaviour change in a patient. This set of skills comes naturally to a very lucky few people. Most of us mere mortals, who read about motivational interviewing would think 'yes, I do this', 'oh, I have seen that work in the clinic', 'yes, this could persuade me', 'oh, maybe i should try that'. I'll disclaim that although the typical examples in a medical text are abstaining from alcohol, drugs, and so forth, obviously that doesn't mean I'm trying to equate meat to an addictive drug. So here are some handy exerpts from the first couple of sections of this page

Ambivalence: If you interpret ambivalence as denial or resistance, friction between you and your client tends to occur. Rather, you have to regard mixed feelings as natural.

Five principles:
Express empathy through reflective listening.
Develop discrepancy between clients' goals or values and their current behavior.
Avoid argument and direct confrontation.
Adjust to client resistance rather than opposing it directly.
Support self-efficacy and optimism.

Empathy:
Be accepting, nonjudgemental, supportive and knowledgeable. Listen rather than telling, make sincere compliments and gently persuade with an understanding that the decision to change is the client's, providing support through the change process. Reflect on what the client says e.g. "so you want to change, but you see significant obstacles"

Avoid:
> Ordering or directing.
> Warning or threatening.
> Giving advice, making suggestions, or providing solutions prematurely or when unsolicited. The message recommends a course of action based on the clinician's knowledge and personal experience. These recommendations often begin with phrases such as, "What I would do is...."
> Persuading with logic, arguing, or lecturing. The underlying assumption of these messages is that the client has not reasoned through the problem adequately and needs help to do so.
> Moralizing, preaching, or telling clients their duty. These statements contain such words as "should" or "ought" to convey moral instructions.
> Judging, criticizing, disagreeing, or blaming. These messages imply that something is wrong with the client or with what the client has said. Even simple disagreement may be interpreted as critical.
> Agreeing, approving, or praising. Surprisingly, praise or approval also can be an obstacle if the message sanctions or implies agreement with whatever the client has said. Unsolicited approval can interrupt the communication process and can imply an uneven relationship between the speaker and the listener. Reflective listening does not require agreement.
> Shaming, ridiculing, labeling, or name-calling.
Interpreting or analyzing. Clinicians are frequently and easily tempted to impose their own interpretations on a client's statement and to find some hidden, analytical meaning. Interpretive statements might imply that the clinician knows what the client's real problem is.
> Reassuring, sympathizing, or consoling. Clinicians often want to make the client feel better by offering consolation. Such reassurance can interrupt the flow of communication and interfere with careful listening.
> Questioning or probing. Clinicians often mistake questioning for good listening. Although the clinician may ask questions to learn more about the client, the underlying message is that the clinician might find the right answer to all the client's problems if enough questions are asked. In fact, intensive questioning can interfere with the spontaneous flow of communication and divert it in directions of interest to the clinician rather than the client.
> Withdrawing, distracting, humoring, or changing the subject. Although humor may represent an attempt to take the client's mind off emotional subjects or threatening problems, it also can be a distraction that diverts communication and implies that the client's statements are unimportant.

If you're interested in reading the detail of the next four principles, then follow the link.

I would like to know whether people have considered a more minimal, easy target, such as a getting people to not eat chicken. Since >90% (I think) of farm animals are chickens and chickens suffer among the most for farm animals, this would let us get much of the benefits of having veg*ns. I would be primarily interested in hearing about the results of anyone actually trying this strategy. I would be even more interested in hearing from someone who has a lot of experience with this kind of thing. (For what it is worth, I got a friend to stop eating "small animals" by making this argument, though he will still eat beef. I do not think I would have gotten him to go veg.)

Gedusa wrote:Question. You say:

Cultured people are more likely to become vegan than non-cultured people.

What do you need by "cultured people"?

Educated people. University students and so on.

Gedusa wrote:

There are a lot of Spanish animal advocates... defending ethical interventions in the wild, what is pretty strange among American and British animal advocates.

Seriously?!!? We need to find out what you guys are doing that we aren't! Do you think it's likely to be a "hardcore" anti-speciesist campaign or a cultural difference or what?

Perhaps "a lot of" is a bit of an exaggeration. But I know several Spanish and South-American vegan activist defending that wild-animal suffering matters. Some of them are members of the boards of organizations.

Several Spanish and South-American animal organizations are very influenced by consequentialism and hardcore anti-speciesism. Most of English and US animal organizations are very influenced by rightism (Vegan Outreach is an exception), and anti-speciesism isn't present among most of English and US animal advocates. They are just vegan. I think this is the key.

I agree with Vice_Regal and Gedusa that it tends to be easier to change minds by finding the right people rather than trying to find the right arguments with people you already know. People's personalities and world views are more fixed than they appear, often largely determined by genetics or early upbringing. I agree with others that the Vegan Outreach approach of finding the sliver of students on the border is probably the most cost-effective.

On utilitymonster's point about encouraging people to give up small animals, I do like that idea, and when I talk with friends, that's basically what I suggest. Unfortunately, I'm told that animal-advocacy groups that tried to adopt such a message would summarily lose much of their funding.

An interesting quote from Wikipedia's article on the Humane Slaughter Act:

The first version of the HMSLA was passed in 1958. Public demand for the act was so great that when asked at a press conference whether he would sign it, President Dwight D. Eisenhower stated, "If I went by mail, I’d think no one was interested in anything but humane slaughter."

I'm surprised there was so much public enthusiasm, even in a pre-Animal Liberation world. I would assume passion would be at least as high today?

(Needless to say, the Humane Slaughter Act, even if properly enforced, is extremely inadequate, since it doesn't apply to birds [~98% of land farm animals killed in the US], nor to fish.)

There is a chance that some people tend to view vegetarians unfavorably (feel they are crazy, and thus may feel alienated form them); if that is the case, there are good reasons to think that announcing yourself to be a vegetarian immediately upon meeting someone is a bad move tactically.

Relevant paper (though it requires an argument to generalize to the vegetarian version):
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com ... ality.html
Summary:
Men are often homophobic and thus will be uneasy in meeting a gay male; if they hear the gay male talk (videotape) about themselves and only later mention being a homosexual, perhaps due to seeing the person as "mostly like me", the men were less anxious in meeting the person on tape. Whereas if the person in the video said they were a homosexual first, males viewing the video persisted in anxiousness.
Implication:
Make people see you're like them first (build rapport) before you share possibly unpleasant details (I think this will work for atheism very much too).

Cheers!

Interesting! I would expect this to generalize to many minority beliefs/lifestyles.
What the study doesn't seem to say which would be very interesting is how long the time interval has to be. The study implies that a relatively short interval (the length of a video) was enough to cause decreased hostility. If so, I wonder how long you need to wait to disclose vegetarianism, presumably the longer the better, but just leaving things for a few minutes would seem to help a lot.

Oh, and this provides yet evidence that women are a better bet for this sort of thing.
I'm going to keep this in mind for the future.

Gedusa wrote:...Oh, and this provides yet evidence that women are a better bet for this sort of thing.

Why do you think this article I posted provides "evidence that women are a better bet for this sort of thing"?

By "this thing" I suppose you mean "converting people to being veg*n". I'm not sure I see how this article provides evidence to think women would be better . Could you elaborate your reasoning?

Forty-five heterosexual male and female undergrad students and non-students took part in what they thought was a study of first-time social interactions... Among the male participants only, the timing of the disclosure made a big difference... Once again, for the male participants only, the timing of the man's disclosure about his gay status made a big difference

You have to read into it a bit, but it appears that they're saying that the male participants were the only ones affected by the time at which sexual orientation was revealed. So, women seem to be less likely to be prejudiced against minority beliefs/lifestyles and therefore more likely to be in favor of veg*nism. That was my line of reasoning, I'll admit it's a bit ropey.

So, women seem to be less likely to be prejudiced against minority beliefs/lifestyles and therefore more likely to be in favor of veg*nism.

...not that women are just less likely to be prejudiced against gay men? The stereotype sees women loving gay men so that they can have a "gay best friend" to share fashion tips with etc., with the men being afraid that their gay male friend will try it on with them. Huge generalisation of course but there's some truth in it.

not that women are just less likely to be prejudiced against gay men?

Yeah, that's the biggest flaw in my reasoning. I don't know of any other studies which might settle the question.

I just finished reading Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change, which has a lot of relevant ideas. The author is Nick Cooney, the founder & director of The Humane League. He doesn't have a lot of psychology credentials, so I'm not sure of his ability to critically assess the research (he relies a lot on pop-psych books such as The Tipping Point, Influence, Made to Stick). But there's no other book that I'm aware of that applies psychological-research findings to changing people's attitudes about animal welfare (animal welfare accounts for maybe 2/5 of his examples; he also mentions environmental, labor, gay rights, etc.).

I thought it would be useful to summarize the book. What I wrote is a bit long, but much shorter than the book itself. If you want any of his references, I'd be glad to send them to you. And please criticize anything you disagree with. I tried to put things in my own words, but there is probably some unintentional plagiarism. Antepenultimate caveat: These techniques are not magical. It might be better to try to influence many people in low-quality interactions (e.g., passing out leaflets [or earning money to donate to Vegan Outreach]) than a few high-quality interactions. Penultimate caveat: Who knows whether laboratory findings will hold up in the real world‽ Final caveat: I haven't tried most of these things out.

Empathy
Empathy avoidance is the tendency to avoid empathy-inducing experiences that will cause you to act in a costly way. For example, you might cross the street to avoid a beggar instead of continuing on your way and rejecting his pleas. In animal advocacy, people try to avoid media that show animal suffering if they are aware that a costly change (i.e., vegetarianism or veganism) will be asked of them.

An experience I had with my sister illustrates this phenomenon. She watches those Animal Planet shows in which the animals are rescued from abusive owners (including Pit Boss, a show about midgets [!] who rescue pit bulls). She feels bad for the animals, but no behavioral change is demanded of her. But when I tried to give her one a Vegan Outreach pamphlet, she refused to even look at it, because she knew it would demand a costly behavioral change on her part.

We should strive to get people to feel empathy with animals, not just to feel bad.

Guilt/Blame
It's not effective to blame people for the suffering caused by their diets. So don't say, "In the last year, you've been responsible for the death and suffering of thirty-five chickens, etc." Guilt isn't effective at persuasion; making strong moral accusations usually just leads people to defend themselves. Instead, direct blame toward factory farms and frame veganism in terms of helping animals, as in one of the Vegan Outreach pamphlets: "By avoiding the meat of chickens, turkeys, and pigs, you can prevent the suffering of more than two thousand of these animals during your lifetime!" (It might be better to use smaller numbers, e.g., one animal every ten days or whatever, because of scope insensitivity.)

Attitude-Behavior Gap
Even though less than four percent of Americans are vegetarian, twenty-five percent say that animals deserve the same rights as humans. Most people find the conditions that factory-farmed animals are kept in abhorrent, but few change their behavior because of it. Oftentimes, it's not people's attitudes that need changing; it's their behavior.

Social Norms
People tend to go along with the behaviors that are well established in their society. Few people are vegetarians, so don't draw attention to this fact. Instead, say that 97% of Americans believe that animals deserve (at least some) protection and that the number of vegetarians is increasing. Organizations like PETA seek endorsements from celebrities in part to make vegetarianism and animal rights seem more normal. The problem with this approach is that it gets people to do the right thing for the wrong reason; to spread concern for wild animals, it's better to get people to stop eating meat because they empathize with animals. But see Cognitive Dissonance below.

If you're passing out leaflets and people are dropping them on the ground, pick them up: If people see that others have left them on the ground, they'll be more likely to do the same. And if several consecutive people have refused to take a leaflet, wait awhile; people are more likely to refuse if they've seen someone else do the same.

Cognitive Dissonance
People usually see their behavior as consistent with their beliefs. (The reason that people care about animal welfare but still buy factory-farmed meat is probably that they just don't think about the issues, or they think about them in silly ways.) If you tell someone that eating meat is wrong, she'll probably think, "But I eat meat, and I'm a good person. So eating meat can't be wrong!" And then she'll raise some bogus objection that just occurred to her off the top of her head.

Cognitive-dissonance theory predicts that attitudinal change will often follow behavioral change. If you can get someone to go vegetarian for any reason, she will probably be more sympathetic to animal-welfare issues because anti-speciesist beliefs will not conflict with her behavior. Vegetarians of all stripes (save deep-ecologists and perhaps those intent on "honoring God's creation") should be more open to the idea of preventing wild-animal suffering. (I think Alan Dawrst has had some experiences that conflict with this theory; I remember his writing that some of the non-vegetarians he's talked to have been more ready to acknowledge the badness of wild-animal suffering and our duty to prevent it than some vegetarians on online forums.) Nevertheless, it's better to focus on the arguments from animal welfare: Ethical arguments are more likely to produce lasting change than appeals to self-interest (i.e., health), and environmental arguments are likely to be counterproductive regarding concern for wild-animal suffering.

Costs/Benefits
Don't tell people that vegetarianism is hard. People don't want to do things that are hard. Tell them that it requires virtually no effort after you've been at it a few months (that's my experience, anyway). Once somebody gets started, she'll (usually) realize that it's easier than she thought, so the first step is key.

Emphasize that concern for animal welfare isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. Eliminating poultry, eggs, and fish from one's diet is almost as good (maybe better in terms of tangible consequences, given wild-animal suffering) as going vegan.

Availability Bias
I'm always surprised when people tell me how hard veganism is. Part of the reason non-vegans think veganism is hard is that they don't know what foods they would eat. They think, "Yesterday I ate a steak for dinner. If I took away the steak, what would be left? Vegans must eat only lettuce." That's why the Vegan Outreach pamphlets include information on animal-product substitutes and meal ideas. Mercy for Animals offers a vegetarian starter kit that includes several pages of recipes; many more are available online (I haven't tested any of them yet).

Surprises
If you want to get someone's attention, surprise her. When someone asks you why you're a vegetarian, tell her—then ask why she eats meat. One of Vegan Outreach's full-time leafleters says things like "That's a lovely smile you have" and "You look compassionate." That takes some serious cojones.

Monitoring/Feedback
People are more likely to stick with a goal if they receive feedback about how they're doing. Cooney suggests using widgets that display the number of farmed animals that the user has spared owing to her dietary choices. Does something like this exist? I'm aware only of the slaughter tracker, which is just depressing, on Gary Francione's website.

Gaps
When people realize they don't know something, they become more interested. So you might ask someone to guess how much space a hen in a battery cage has, or what a gestation crate is, instead of just telling her.

Plans
If you convince someone to go vegetarian, the battle is only half won—there are a lot of former vegetarians. If you've had a successful animal-welfare talk with someone, ask her if she intends to eat fewer animals and eggs in the future: Making a verbal commitment increases the chance that she'll follow through. (If you haven't been successful, don't ask; she'll probably say "no," and that will make it harder to change her attitude in the future.) Public commitments (telling friends) about a goal of becoming vegan can help. So can making concrete plans.

Foot-in-the-Door
If someone consents to a small request, she'll be more likely to consent to a larger one later on. For example, if you get a friend to commit eating less poultry, she'll be more likely to be persuaded to go vegetarian later on. And from there, she's just a hop, skip, and a jump away from veganism, donating most of her income to Vegan Outreach, and becoming an evangelist for wild animals. However, you must make a follow-up request for this technique to be successful; don't expect people to go further on their own.

Reciprocity
People feel compelled to reciprocate (it has something to do with evolution). If you concede some side arguments, they'll be more likely to be persuaded of your main point. Giving ground on one or two issues will also make you seem more credible.

Reciprocity is also at work in the door-in-the-face method, which consists of following a demanding request that's almost certain to be turned down with a more moderate request. So you could ask a meat-eater to go vegan. When she refuses, ask her instead to reduce the amount of poultry she eats by half.

Credibility
Making the same claim several times over the course of the conversation causes it to be perceived as more credible.

If your intent is seen as to inform rather than persuade, you'll be more persuasive. If you emphasize that you're trying to persuade somebody, she'll activate her cognitive defenses. So avoid saying things like, "I hope I'll persuade you to stop eating animals."

Bearing
Be nice. Be friendly. Look happy.

Look good. Comb your hair; pop your zits. (Attractive people are more persuasive.)

Method of Inquiry
Phrase things as questions.

Don't use systematic logical argument. Thinkers as diverse as David Hume, Jonathan Haidt, and Dale Carnegie have observed that people rarely change their attitudes because of argument. If somebody's views are contradictory, don't point that out directly; instead ask questions that lead her to question her beliefs (like Socrates!).

Emphasize areas in which you agree.

Don't—DON'T—present your argument in a myths—facts format. After a few days, people tend to forget which was which. Just say what is the case. Instead of saying, "Lots of people believe that farm animals are kept in idyllic pastures, given individual names by the farmer, and sung to daily by beautiful shepherdesses, but this simply isn't the case," say, "Farmed animals are kept in execrable (EK-si-kruh-bul), despicable (DES-pik-uh-bul), miserable (MIZ-ur-uh-bul) conditions."

Social Contagion IS WRONG WRONG WRONG
The book contains a chapter on social contagion. The research, widely reported on in the media, has been called into question. We do have an influence on our friends and co-workers, but it isn't magical.

If we have a choice, though, it does make sense to try to influence people who are better connected.

P.S. Mercy for Animals has a good video called "Farm to Fridge" at http://www.meatvideo.com.

Thanks for that, Pat!

Supersummary:
Acquaintance: "Why are you a vegetarian?"
Vegetarian: "How much do you know about factory farming?"
A: Umm, not a lot...
V: *Shows From Farm to Fridge* "Horrible, right?"
A: "Woah. Yeah. But that still won't make me a vegetarian because I don't think that my not eating that chicken sandwich will change anything."
V: "Yeah it probably won't. But there's a small chance that it will. What do you think about this essay?" *Links to Alan Dawrst's Does Vegetarianism Make a Difference?
A: "Yeah I suppose that makes sense."
V: "I guess you could think of it like this: You can prevent a lifetime's suffering of three factory farmed animals every month by going vegetarian. Why don't you give it a go for a month? There's lots of vegetarian recipes available online due to the growing number of vegetarians." *Links to vegetarian recipes.*
"Hmm no."
"What about halving your chicken consumption and saving a chicken every month?"
"Hmm ok."
"Great! I'll see how you're getting on next week."
Next week: "How's it going?"
"Well I've managed to keep it up."
"Great! Think of it as 2 years of suffering in a factory farm prevented!"
3 weeks later: "You're still on half your previous chicken consumption - great! You gonna continue? Or why not try going vegetarian for the next month?"


P.S. From Farm to Fridge is what pushed me over the edge in deciding to become vegan.

One of the next book I'll read will be "The Animal Activist's Handbook: Maximizing Our Positive Impact in Today's World"; it was endorsed by Peter Singer! It will certainly have good advice.

In an unrelated note, I had an "Epic Veggie Time" party in September and made a video promoting the exciting vegetarian cusine. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxG9KGEQyhQ or embedded:



Cheers

LadyMorgana wrote:A: "Woah. Yeah. But that still won't make me a vegetarian because I don't think that my not eating that chicken sandwich will change anything."
V: "Yeah it probably won't. But there's a small chance that it will.

I think you can afford to be more explicit about this. For one thing a chicken isn’t that big, so you only have to have a couple of sandwiches to amount to one whole chicken bought, if that’s the metric you’re using. For another, people eat a lot of sandwiches, so actually if you switch to being veggie for a year it seems very likely you *will* make a difference. There are hundreds of possible ways you could do so, from the grandiose – dissuade a farmer from extending his battery barn, allow a veggie friendly farmer to expand his farm and perform better relative to his competition, dissuade someone thinking about carrying on the family farming tradition from thinking that the income was worth the hours – to simply persuading one farmer to buy one less chicken when he’s estimating how many he’ll be able to sell.

yboris wrote:One of the next book I'll read will be "The Animal Activist's Handbook: Maximizing Our Positive Impact in Today's World"

Has been on my to-read list as well.

Another book that has received high praise recently is Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change by Nick Cooney. See also NIck's essay for Vegan Outreach.

Arepo wrote:to simply persuading one farmer to buy one less chicken when he’s estimating how many he’ll be able to sell.

Nice point. I'm not sure if production decisions are actually made with this degree of granularity. Same with store purchase amounts in response to surpluses / deficits. It's probably getting better now that each purchase is tracked electronically at most stores.

Sounds likely. Where they're not made so precisely, it seems like the '1 chicken' argument still applies, but reverts to being a more abstract expectation - ie the farmer who doesn't account for your nonpurchase is that much less likely to stay in the chicken business than the farmer who does.

In any case, I was thinking mainly of the rhetorical use of being able to tell people that they *are* making a difference with reasonable confidence.

Arepo wrote:Where they're not made so precisely, it seems like the '1 chicken' argument still applies, but reverts to being a more abstract expectation

Exactly. 1 chicken not eaten translates into roughly 1 expected chicken not raised (maybe very slightly less due to price elasticity). However, the distribution can have high variance, and most of the time, the actual number of chickens not raised may be 0.

Yeah, the difficulty of expressing this rhetorically comes when people feel less motivation for high-risk gambles than for certain gambles with the same expected value....

The best book I've read; highly urge you read it too:

The Animal Activist's Handbook

http://animaladvocacybook.com/

It changed my perspective by reminding me about why I'd want to talk to people about animal rights. Being kind, smiling, understanding are qualities that will make you more persuasive. And the book reminds us that if we are publicly overly strict with our diet we may discourage others from trying being vegan. The authors are even aware of the effective altruism concept - earning money and giving to charities can have a bigger impact than working for the charity yourself.

They also suggest that most people are more receptive to trying being vegan when you offer solutions to their dietary preferences. So don't tell them about some fancy new cuisine, tell them about the nearly indistinguishable veggie patties, veggie hot-dogs, etc. It makes their plate look more familiar = more likely to try = more likely to decrease meat consumption.

A thing we all know but may forget: becoming vegan is good, but converting a person to a vegan lifestyle instantly doubles our positive impact. This book shows you how to do this effectively.

Pat wrote:Cognitive-dissonance theory predicts that attitudinal change will often follow behavioral change. If you can get someone to go vegetarian for any reason, she will probably be more sympathetic to animal-welfare issues because anti-speciesist beliefs will not conflict with her behavior.

This would seem to indicate that it is worthwhile to encourage people who want to become veg*n for health reasons. If you're starting from scratch it's obviously better to try to motivate someone from an animal-welfare perspective, but if I have a friend who wants to become veg*n for health reasons, I should encourage him, should I not?

Pat wrote:Cognitive-dissonance theory predicts that attitudinal change will often follow behavioral change. If you can get someone to go vegetarian for any reason, she will probably be more sympathetic to animal-welfare issues because anti-speciesist beliefs will not conflict with her behavior.

This is why I believe vegetarianism is less a way of spreading concern for animals than a way of enabling such concern to be spread. On this view, the actual process by which people decide to stop eating meat is not very important; what is important is to get folks to abstain from consuming animal products so that their minds become receptive to the meme that animal suffering matters morally.

MTGandP wrote:This would seem to indicate that it is worthwhile to encourage people who want to become veg*n for health reasons. If you're starting from scratch it's obviously better to try to motivate someone from an animal-welfare perspective, but if I have a friend who wants to become veg*n for health reasons, I should encourage him, should I not?

The available evidence indicates that health and animal concerns are the top two reasons why people become vegetarian, and also why they stay vegetarian. See Rozin, P., Markwith, M., & Stoess, C. (1997). Moralization and becoming a vegetarian: The Transformation of Preferences Into Values and the Recruitment of Disgust. Psychological Science, 8(2), 67–73 [pdf] and Fox, N., & Ward, K. (2008). Health, ethics and environment: a qualitative study of vegetarian motivations. Appetite, 50(2-3), 422–9.[pdf]. Thus, unless we are sufficiently antecedently confident that a particular person will be much more open to one of these reasons, I think we should mention them both, so as to maximize the chances of conversion.

There are good research-based health reasons that may be sufficient for some people to stay vegetarian; in time they might find other reasons besides health with which to justify their own behaviors. Self-perception theory is a (research-based and a reasonable) hypothesis that people first observe their behaviors and then find reasons/attitudes for them. So once they stop eating animals, they might think "and animal rights is an excellent reason I do it" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-perception_theory

Here's a bombshell: the puzzle of how a plant-based diet can shut down cancer growth is finally solved in today’s NutritionFacts.org video-of-the-day:
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-ans ... in-puzzle/

Arepo wrote:

LadyMorgana wrote:A: "Woah. Yeah. But that still won't make me a vegetarian because I don't think that my not eating that chicken sandwich will change anything."
V: "Yeah it probably won't. But there's a small chance that it will.

I think you can afford to be more explicit about this. For one thing a chicken isn’t that big, so you only have to have a couple of sandwiches to amount to one whole chicken bought, if that’s the metric you’re using. For another, people eat a lot of sandwiches, so actually if you switch to being veggie for a year it seems very likely you *will* make a difference. There are hundreds of possible ways you could do so, from the grandiose – dissuade a farmer from extending his battery barn, allow a veggie friendly farmer to expand his farm and perform better relative to his competition, dissuade someone thinking about carrying on the family farming tradition from thinking that the income was worth the hours – to simply persuading one farmer to buy one less chicken when he’s estimating how many he’ll be able to sell.

As I understand it, there's a high probability that you will never change anything with a lifetime of veganism (although the expected value of chickens saved per chicken not eaten is still 1). A chicken farm contains about 50,000 chickens at a time (which means many more throughout a person's lifetime), and most people only eat about 2,000 chickens in their lifetime—so a decrease in supply by 2,000 won't be enough to justify shutting down a CAFO (unless you're lucky enough to hit a threshold).

Anyway, I think we should focus our arguments here not on "you actually do make a difference", because you probably don't, but instead on "the difference you make has a high expected value". But how do you do that? I've tried explaining how this works to a number of people, and they don't seem to get it**. Perhaps someone else has had more success? If so, how do you explain it to people?

** I think part of this is that they don't want to get it. Lots of people have no trouble understanding basic economic principles like supply and demand, but then when you explain them in the context of preventing animal suffering, suddenly all those principles are wrong and it actually doesn't make a difference.