Death: Why the Awareness of It May Lead Us to Reject Veganism

By Gabrielle Nieuwoudt | May 11, 2022

Terror Management Theory (TMT), inspired by the works of Ernest Becker, asserts that humans, unlike other animals, have the ability to recognize that one day they will die (Greenberg et al., 1986). The theory proposes that this knowledge has a significant shortcoming: knowing that one is destined to die provides the potential for the experience of death anxiety due to an evolutionary predisposition to stay alive. This death anxiety is managed with cultural worldviews – a set of ideas that provide a sense that life has meaning and standards for which human behaviour can be assessed as having value (Greenberg et al., 1990). 

TMT has garnered empirical support over the last 30 years, with the majority of evidence stemming from the mortality salience hypothesis (Pyszczynski et al., 2015), which suggests that reminders of death increase the need to adhere or defend one’s cultural worldview. TMT has been successfully applied to a variety of topics, though a lack of work has considered it in relation to veganism, which has been defined as the “abstention from consumption of animal-derived products” (Dutkiewicz & Dickstein, 2021). More specifically, TMT may illuminate as to reasons why people might reject or endorse the notion of veganism.

Practitioners of veganism have turned to veganism for many reasons, although often religious texts play a significant role in one’s justification, such as in Buddhist (Barstow, 2019) and Jain (Singhvi, 2002) traditions, as well as spirituality (Twigg, 1979). In these cases, one engages in veganism because they wish to abstain from causing harm to God’s creations (which includes humans), while also remaining pure and moral (Dutkiewicz & Dickstein, 2021). In this sense, their worldviews promote clear standards that one should live up to, which might provide a sense of immortality either through ascending to the afterlife (literal immortality), or by being remembered as a good person (symbolic immortality; Pyszczynski et al., 2015). According to TMT, striving for these forms of immortality is the central goal in managing death anxiety, and evidence generally supports the idea that literal and symbolic immortality manage death-related concerns (Pyszczynski et al., 2015).

If veganism might reduce feelings of death anxiety, then on initial glance it would seem unclear why one might choose to reject a vegan lifestyle. However, according to TMT, humans tend to deny their creatureliness and similarity to animals, because it minimizes their death anxiety (Goldenberg et al., 2001). This is because the concept of human creatureliness reminds us that our bodies are decaying and our death is inevitable (Becker, 1973) – just like how animals die and decay, so do we as humans. In fact, under mortality salience conditions, people show increased preferences for essays that portray animals and humans as being distinct rather than similar (Goldenberg et al., 2001). This shows that people prefer to think of themselves as being more than just animals. Yet by placing oneself as superior to animals, this reduces people’s concern for their welfare and increases the willingness to kill them (Lifshin et al., 2017). Consequently, this might increase people’s tendency to reject veganism and promote non-vegan diets.

Additionally, death anxiety can be managed using proximal defences, which are conscious, immediate ways in which individuals handle death thoughts through rational or suppression-based mechanisms (Pyszczynski et al., 1999). Dietary habits and health are often linked with death, and in some cases meat consumption is linked with increased mortality (e.g., Orlich et al., 2013). Therefore, it is possible that people might respond to these health-induced death thoughts with proximal defences that seek to deny their vulnerability and/or exaggerate their own personal health that end up increasing, rather than decreasing, engagement in these behaviours (Goldenberg & Arndt, 2008). While this seems counterintuitive, the COVID-19 pandemic is a timely example that people may often not follow sound expert advice or attempt to dismiss the lethality of the virus (Pyszczynski et al., 2020; Srikanth, 2020; Ritter, 2020). In the context of meat consumption, people might minimise the threat of animal-derived product consumption decreasing their lifespan by claiming it “can’t be as bad as the experts claim” or explaining that “this is how they have always eaten” (Arguments For and Against Veganism, 2021).

However, proximal defenses to manage death anxiety are temporary, as the central goal is to remove thoughts of death from conscious awareness (Pyszczynski et al., 1999). Once these thoughts have been successfully removed from conscious awareness, people manage death thoughts on a symbolic (i.e., distal) level. These symbolic defenses can potentially produce support or rejection of veganism depending what one bases their self-esteem on (Goldenberg & Arndt, 2008). For example, one’s self-esteem could be contingent on following a vegan diet because they view it as more environmentally-friendly, which could appeal to those who base their self-esteem on environmental issues (Arndt & Vess, 2008). Similarly, being seen as healthy and fit can constitute an important source of self-esteem (Arndt et al., 2003), and as vegan diets are often viewed as healthy, people may opt to follow a vegan diet. Therefore, people may follow a vegan diet and strongly reject non-vegan diets if it aligns with their contingencies of self-esteem.

To conclude, TMT provides an explanatory tool to understand both the acceptance and rejection of veganism. By understanding the underpinnings of people who pursue, or choose to reject, vegan lifestyles, we will be in a better position to encourage healthier, more sustainable, lifestyles for the individual and society.

Gabi Nieuwoudt (she/her) is completing her final year of her Psychology Undergraduate degree at Royal Holloway, University of London. She aspires to be a Clinical Psychologist, particularly wanting to advocate for diversity and inclusion of disabled, queer, and young immigrants and ethnic minorities into the field. In an attempt to broaden her perspectives and point of view, she took up the third-year module, ‘The Psychology of Love, Death, and Meaning’, where she was taught Terror Management Theory by Dr. Sam Fairlamb.

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