Choosing Not to Eat Meat: What Characterizes Independently Vegetarian Children?

A growing body of research has aimed to map the characteristics of extraordinary altruists-such as those who have donated a kidney to a stranger. However, this research has primarily focused on adults, and we know little about the development of extraordinary altruism. While children cannot donate their organs to strangers nor large portions of their income to charity, they can choose not to eat animals. In this study we examine independent vegetarians (i.e., children who become vegetarian while being raised in meat eating families) as a potential case-study of extraordinarily altruistic motivation. In retrospective adult (Study 1) and developmental samples (Study 2) of American participants, we compare independently vegetarian children to family vegetarians and non-vegetarians on measures of empathy/compassion, disgust sensitivity, cognitive reflection, fearful facial recognition, social dominance orientation, and speciesism. We find that both independent and family vegetarians were lower in speciesism and SDO, and higher in disgust sensitivity and empathy/compassion, with these differences emerging almost exclusively in the retrospective adult sample. Crucially, and contrary to our hypotheses, we find no differences between independent and family vegetarians, and discuss potential interpretations of this null result. These data offer new insight into a small body of literature about independent vegetarians and show that similar traits are associated with both family and independent vegetarianism.