Abstract
Modern attitudes to meat in both men and women reflect a strong meat-masculinity association. Sex differences in the relationship between meat and masculinity have not been previously explored. In the current study we used two IATs (implicit association tasks), a visual search task, and a questionnaire to measure implicit and explicit attitudes toward meat in men and women. Men exhibited stronger implicit associations between meat and healthiness than did women, but both sexes associated meat more strongly with ‘healthy’ than ‘unhealthy’ concepts. As ‘healthy’ was operationalized in the current study using terms such as “virile” and “powerful,” this suggests that a meat-strength/power association may mediate the meat-masculinity link readily observed across western cultures. The sex difference was not related to explicit attitudes to meat, nor was it attributable to a variety of other factors, such as a generally more positive disposition toward meat in men than women. Men also exhibited an attention bias toward meats, compared to non-meat foods, while females exhibited more caution when searching for non-meat foods, compared to meat. These biases were not related to implicit attitudes, but did tend to increase with increasing hunger levels. Potential ultimate explanations for these differences, including sex differences in bio-physiological needs and receptivity to social signals are discussed.
Highlights
Across pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer societies (Cordain et al, 2000; Speth, 2010; Psouni et al, 2012), and through into the agrarian age, (Hayden, 2003) meat may have been the most highly prized food
Onesample t-tests, against a test score of 5 revealed that in contrast to implicit measures both women [t(79) = 10.932, p < 0.001] and men [t(42) = 3.060, p = 0.004] ranked the meat as significantly less healthy than the non-meat options, suggesting that the implicit association observed was not solely a reflection of conscious beliefs
These associations did not correlate with the amount of meat that participants reported they had eaten over the last 2 days, suggesting that sex differences in the amount of meat consumed, or in the propensity to be vegetarian, are not likely to be responsible for the greater male propensity to associate ‘meat’ with ‘healthy.’ Lastly, this sex difference was not attributable to sex differences in mood, hunger or body mass index (BMI), as all three of these measures were unrelated to implicit meat/health associations
Summary
Across pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer societies (Cordain et al, 2000; Speth, 2010; Psouni et al, 2012), and through into the agrarian age, (Hayden, 2003) meat may have been the most highly prized food. The expensive tissue hypothesis (Aiello and Wheeler, 1995; Aiello and Wells, 2002) posits that increases in meat and animal fat consumption were central to the evolution of modern humans’ large brain size. Dietary (meat-sourced) fat, beyond the other macronutrients protein and carbohydrate, is important for brain function (Crawford, 1992; Greenwood and Young, 2001), contributes to mental health across the lifespan, and is especially important in early neural development (Cherubini et al, 2007; Innis, 2009; Wainwright, 2002). Meat has a more complete profile of amino acids than do plant-based proteins (Hoffman and Falvo, 2004).
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