Here’s how our favorite rescue piglet Eric stacks up…most people totes want to eat him!!!! Smh.
A research project of The Humane League, Humane League Labs conducts direct testing to discover how we can make vegan advocacy efforts as effective as possible. That sounds like a much-needed resource! From their site: “Our goal is to figure out which images, messages, and approaches inspire the most diet change and spare the greatest number of farm animals.”
A new study focuses on pictures: Which Farm Animal Photos are Most Likely to Inspire People to Eat Vegan?
With all the different pictures we see of animals and all the effort we put towards spreading our message of compassion, haven’t you always wondered which images actually work the best? I def have!
The researchers showed a sample of 800 people various pictures of farm animals and then asked them how likely they are to stop eating animal products based on each picture. They also asked how much the animal suffered and how human-like the animals in each picture were. The conclusion?
The results suggest that when sharing photos of farm animals, vegan advocates will be most effective at inspiring people to want to change their diet when they use: photos of diseased/injured or dead/dying animals; photos of pigs, or of sickly/dead/dying chickens; photos of individual animals; and photos of baby animals.
They noted that when you don’t have a captive audience (say, while leafleting) graphic images may turn people away. But if you do get someone to listen, graphic images are the most persuasive. Happy rescue photos? They don’t do much.
I spared you from the most “successful” images, but you can see them in this report summary. The full study is linked at the bottom.
Humane Labs ends the summary with this note:
Lastly, as all of the photos tested in this study are usable by vegan advocacy groups (after securing permission from the advocacy group, photographer, or stock site that owns them), we encourage vegan advocates to consider using several or many of the top-ranked photos in their advocacy materials.
You can check out their previous studies on their homepage. I have a suggestion for a future study: the long-term effects of fat-shaming as a vegan advocacy tool! Not that a positive result would make exploiting fat-phobia ok, but I would be interested to see if it’s even effective at all—as that’s often used as a justification.
What future studies would you like to see?