Self-regulation
Can a planning exercise help people eat the less meat they intend to?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
A short mental contrasting and if-then planning exercise made people's intention to cut meat actually predict how much they cut, which information alone did not.
Study at a glance
- Design
- RCT — Randomised two-arm experiment: information text only vs information plus MCII, with 7-day meat diaries at baseline, 1 week and about 4 weeks after the intervention.
- N
- N=55 · 60 non-vegetarian university members randomised; 55 completed the study and were analysed.
- Population
- Mostly student non-vegetarian members of a German university
- Outcome
- Reduction in diary-recorded daily meat consumption (g/day) and how strongly baseline intention predicted that reduction
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Key findings
Both groups cut their meat intake, and the MCII group cut somewhat more by week 5 (d = 0.61). Crucially, in the MCII group intention correlated with reduction (r about 0.53-0.54), whereas in the information-only group it did not. MCII added a benefit only for people with at least moderate intentions (above roughly 4.60 on the 1-7 intention scale in the first week after the session); perceived experimenter demand did not differ between groups.
Methodology
60 non-vegetarian university members kept a week-long meat diary, then rated how strongly they intended to eat less meat. All read an information text about the environmental, health, ethical and social reasons to eat less meat; half were randomly assigned to also do MCII, writing a meat goal, its best outcome, their main obstacles and four if-then plans. They then kept meat diaries in the week after the session and again in week 5.
Limitations
The sample was small and mostly students, who already ate about half the average German amount of meat, so results may not generalise. There was no no-intervention control group, so it is unclear how much of the overall drop came from the information text, keeping a diary (self-monitoring), or time. Meat intake was self-reported in weight categories and the follow-up lasted only about a month; in a baseline-matched reanalysis the week-5 interaction was no longer significant.
How this study connects
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