Vegetarians have stronger desire to wield power than meat eaters, finds study. But why?

The long-held belief of vegetarians being peace-loving, gentle, and kind-hearted idealists is just a myth and no longer holds true, says a new research.

The findings of the study further suggest that vegetarians aren’t just interested in protecting the planet—they’re also eager to take charge of it.

Vegetarians possess a stronger yearning to wield power than their meat-eating counterparts. They also value social status more and are less inclined to hold dear virtues like kindness and conformity.

The variance in the attitude of meat eaters and non-meat eaters was relatively small, but Professor John Nezlek of SWPS University in Warsaw, who led the study, stresses that the findings are important since they dispute the outdated 1970s stereotype of vegetarians being gentle, tofu-eating pacifists.

Rather, compared to their meat-eating counterparts, they were more inclined to embrace values traditionally associated with masculinity.

“There’s this long association between meat and masculinity. It’s far more common for women to adopt vegetarianism than men, and there are three main reasons that people become vegetarians: health, the environment and animal welfare ethics,” said Nezlek.

“When you pile all of that together, you might start to think that vegetarians would be more benevolent, a little less assertive, generally more ‘huggy’ people — but I found the complete opposite.”

The study surveyed the values of over 3,500 adults from the United States and Poland, including around 800 vegetarians. Participants were shown brief profiles of fictional characters, accompanied by statements like, “Being very successful is important to him. He likes to impress other people.”

When they were asked, “Do you see yourself in that person?”, they responded on a scale from one (they are not like me at all) to six (they are very much like me).

In both the countries, the vegetarians were aligning themselves more with values linked to power, indicating the desire for control over people and resources. They also exhibited traits signifying higher levels of personal ambition and a stronger appetite for “excitement, novelty, and challenge in life”.

In sharp contrast, meat eaters tended to prioritise values like benevolence (caring for loved ones), security (safety and societal stability), conformity (avoiding conflict), and tradition (honouring established norms).

However, the study, published in the journal PLOS One, did not find a big variation in the personal values of vegetarians and meat eaters, and the average difference between them was just “small to moderate”.

“These are small differences, but small effects can have large outcomes over time and accumulatively,” Nezlek said, while believing that the results reflect how vegetarians have historically felt like a “besieged minority” in Western societies.

“If you look at it through that lens, it starts to make sense: to maintain a vegetarian diet, a certain psychological toughness might be required,” he said.