Researcher: Jessica Schiller
Affiliation: Department of Health Psychology, Johannes Kepler University Linz
Favourite animal: Cat
Contact information (email): jessica.schiller[at]jku.at
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-schiller-6508b832b
What is the central topic or question of your PhD research? And what inspired you to pursue this topic/question?
I am doing my PhD in health psychology and I am broadly interested in the psychology of healthy and sustainable eating. A major part of that is meat and animal-product consumption. We know from research that, as a society, we need to reduce meat consumption for health, environmental, and animal-welfare reasons. At the same time, meat plays a central role in many people’s everyday diets. I live in Austria, where average meat consumption is quite high (around 58 kg per person per year), and where people are very culturally attached to meat products.
On a more personal level, I don’t eat animal products myself, which made me curious about how people think about meat, how they justify eating it, and why reducing meat consumption can be so difficult. When I was developing my PhD project, it quickly became clear that I wanted to understand how people can reduce their meat consumption, how they make sense of eating meat in the first place, and what psychological processes are involved. A big part of my work now looks at how people justify eating meat and how they react to different attempts or policies aimed at reducing meat consumption.
You recently published a paper titled, ” A license to eat meat? Exploring processes underlying the effect of animal labels on meat consumption”. Could you tell us a bit about the aim(s) of this study. Which theoretical perspectives did you draw upon and what were some of the key findings?
The main aim of this study was to better understand how animal labels on meat products influence people’s food choices. There is growing evidence that warning labels and graphic images can alter people’s choices – for example, reducing their intentions to purchase cigarettes, meat, or sugary drinks. But much less is known about the psychological processes behind these effects.
A key idea was to use animal images and systematically vary the valence of these to test their impact on purchasing decisions and explore some of the psychological processes that could be involved. The study draws upon theoretical perspectives including moral licensing, meat-animal dissociation, and emotional processes like empathy, guilt, and disgust. We wanted to test whether different types of animal labels might discourage meat consumption or, conversely, make people feel more justified in choosing meat.
In an experimental shopping task, we found that negative animal images reduced meat selection, mainly by disrupting dissociation processes and triggering emotional responses such as empathy and guilt. In other words, the images made it harder to mentally separate the meat product from the animal it came from. Neutral and positive images also reduced dissociation in the sense that people more clearly associated the product with the depicted animal. However, these images did not lower meat choice. In fact, positive images seemed to support justification processes, making it easier for people to feel comfortable choosing meat. Overall, the findings suggest that animal labels can operate through very different psychological mechanisms depending on how animals are portrayed and that only negative images appear to be effective in actually reducing meat consumption.
The labels that you used in your research included an animal welfare rating system (“Haltungsform”) alongside images of animals in neutral, positive or negative environments. Could you say more about this rating system and what it would mean to your Austrian participants. Is this a rating system that they would be familiar with?
The “Haltungsform” rating scale we used was inspired by the upcoming mandatory husbandry label for pig meat in Germany, which classifies farming conditions on a scale from basic indoor housing to organic (“Bio”). At first, we considered using only animal images, but we decided to combine them with a rating scale because we thought this would make the husbandry conditions more explicit and easier to grasp.
This kind of clear, welfare-based labeling does not yet exist in Austria. However, Austrian consumers are very familiar with the “AMA Gütesiegel”, which is widely known and trusted. The “Gütesiegel” is not primarily an animal-welfare label, it mainly signals an Austrian origin and certain quality standards. Consumers are also familiar with systems like the “Nutri-Score,” which provides a comparative evaluation of how healthy a product is within its category. So while Austrian consumers may not know the “Haltungsform” system specifically, the general idea of a rating scale on products is familiar. A more explicit welfare scale could therefore help make actual husbandry conditions more transparent.
Do you have a sense from your study if it was the image or the rating scale – or the combination of the two – that largely impacted on people’s food choices in the shopping task?
We cannot say for sure based on our study, because disentangling the effects of the images and the rating scale would require a different design. My sense is that it was likely the combination of both. The rating scale might have made the husbandry conditions explicit and cognitively accessible, while the images probably made them emotionally salient. The strongest effects were found in the negative condition, which led to the biggest reductions in meat selection. These images were taken from the Farm Transparency Project and show real animals in real farming environments. We deliberately avoided graphic or shocking content, but it was still clearly visible that the animals were not being treated well. The emotional impact is likely very powerful.
At the same time, previous research by Kranzbühler and Schifferstein has shown similar effects using animal images without a husbandry scale, but with “meat shaming” messages (e.g., “Eating meat makes animals suffer”). So my guess would be that the images carried much of the effect, whereas the rating scale may have reinforced the message and made it harder to ignore.
Could you tell us a little about the shopping task you had participants complete. Do you think your results would extend to consumer choices made within a physical store?
Participants completed an online shopping task in which they chose products from six common food categories. We deliberately selected everyday items people would typically encounter in a supermarket, for example, ready-made meals in the frozen foods section or different types of bread and baked goods. To keep things comparable, we used supermarket brands or no-name products across categories.
Of course, this setup differs in important ways from shopping in a physical store. In Austria, most people are not used to doing their grocery shopping online, and we only offered a limited selection of products per category. Some participants also noted that they would normally choose a different brand. So, it is important to keep in mind that these effects were observed within a partly constrained and artificial setting.
That said, there is good evidence that labels – visual information in particular – can influence real-world behaviour. Based on this, I do think that a combination of clear husbandry labels and images on meat packages could meaningfully influence consumer choices in physical stores as well. Yet, that is something future field studies really need to test directly.
Based on your findings, and thinking about food labels more generally, what would be your recommendations for animal-product labels? Are positive welfare labels likely to encourage purchases? Are there other elements of a label, beyond an image or rating scale, worth manipulating to discourage purchases?
Labels should be clear and easy to process. If they become too complex, people may simply ignore them. Generally speaking, visual elements are a good idea, and putting images of animals on products might be one way to make people think more about what they are consuming.
Another element of a label that could be manipulated might be the wording. Previous research by Kunst and colleagues has shown that the language used for meat products can create psychological distance between the animal and the product. This work shows that when the connection between the animal and the product is made more explicit – for example, by using the word “pig” instead of “pork” – people tend to rate the product as less appealing than when the connection is not made. So, a combination of wording, visual elements, and making husbandry conditions explicit might have even stronger effects.
Some of our readers may be opposed to animal welfare labels because they may simply change which animal products are purchased, as opposed to removing animal products from the market. Do you see animal welfare labels as part of a larger campaign that ultimately benefits animals and possibly even reduces the amount of animal products people consume?
I don’t see animal welfare labels as a solution on their own. I agree that, at least initially, they would mainly shift choices within the category of animal products rather than reduce consumption overall. However, this could still have meaningful effects. Products from poor animal husbandry are usually very cheap, and if these cheap products sell less, while higher-welfare products remain more expensive, this could indirectly lead people to buy less meat overall.
Ultimately, I see animal welfare labels as a first step to reduce meat consumption rather than an endpoint. A broader strategy would also need to address pricing, availability, and the attractiveness of plant-based alternatives. At the same time, we still need more research on how people react to more systemic measures, and whether such approaches might increase polarisation between meat-eaters and vegans. So, on their own, welfare labels are unlikely to transform the market. But combined with other measures, they have the potential to contribute to longer-term changes in eating habits.
“Welfare labels are unlikely to transform the market. But combined with other measures, they may have the potential to contribute to longer-term changes.”
Explore Jessica’s research further…
Key Papers by Jessica Schiller
Schiller, J., Ruby, M. B., & Sproesser, G. (2025). A license to eat meat? Exploring processes underlying the effect of animal labels on meat consumption. Appetite, 215, 108242. DOI Link
de Lint, L., Schiller, J., Gagliardi, L., & Sayat, R. A. (2026). Time matters: Temporal dimensions of change in animal-product consumption and animal attitudes. Psychology of Human-Animal Intergroup Relations, 5, e19183. DOI Link
Schiller, J., Northrope, K., Buttlar, B., Kashima, E., Ruby, M B., & Sproesser, G. (2026). Psychometric evaluation of the German version of the Motivations to Eat Meat Inventory (MEMI). Psychological Test Adaptation and Development, 7, 15-26. DOI Link
Blog by Jared Piazza; interview questions by Jared Piazza and Matthew Watkins.
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