Dating a vegetarian? Perception of masculinity, attractiveness, and the willingness to date vegetarians

The study examined how following a vegetarian diet affects the attractiveness of a potential dating partner among those who do not follow a vegetarian diet. Participants, 404 heterosexual meat-eaters, took part in an online experiment in which they evaluated the dating profile of a target person who was described as following a vegetarian diet for health, ethical, or environmental reasons, and a control condition that had no description of the target’s diet. Participants rated the target in terms of a feeling thermometer, willingness to date, gender congruence, and possession of masculine and feminine traits. Participant’s level of identification as a meat-eater was also measured. A series of two (participant gender) by four (target diet) ANOVAs found significant interactions in the analyses of the feeling thermometer ratings, showing that women viewed ethically motivated targets less positively than men did. We also found significant main effects of target diet in willingness to date, gender congruence, and possession of feminine and masculine traits. Meat-eaters evaluated targets with no diet information more positively than the health-motivated target. Controlling for identification as a meat-eater, women evaluated ethically-motivated targets as having less feminine traits than men did. The present results suggest that being a vegetarian makes a person less attractive as a potential partner among omnivores, who constitute the majority of people in most Western, industrialized countries. This work was supported by the Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, from the funds awarded to Dominika Maison by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in the form of a subsidy for the maintenance and development of research potential in 2022 (501-D125-01-1250000 zlec5011000246) and by grant 2018/31/B/HS6/02822 from the Narodowe Centrum Nauki (Polish National Science Centre). reviewed acceptedVersion