Minor and inconsistent differences in Big Five personality traits between vegetarians and vegans
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Abstract
Most research examining individuals who follow different diets has combined vegetarians
and vegans into a single group. To investigate whether this consolidation is justified, we analyzed
possible differences between vegetarians and vegans for the Big Five personality
traits in two studies. In our pre-study, we used data from a German convenience sample of
400 vegetarians and 749 vegans and found that vegans reported slightly higher scores in
Openness compared to vegetarians (d = 0.22). In the preregistered main study, we used
data provided by 1203 vegetarians and 128 vegans from the German Socio-Economic
Panel Study; we found that vegetarians reported slightly higher scores in Neuroticism compared
to vegans (d = 0.18) but did not differ in Openness. We found no differences in Conscientiousness,
Extraversion, or Agreeableness in either study. Controlling for the sociodemographic
variables of age, gender, and socio-economic status did not alter the pattern
of results. Overall, these results suggest that there are no or only small differences in Openness
or Neuroticism between vegetarians and vegans. Further studies utilizing very large,
representative samples are needed to better understand the relationship between personality
and diet groups.
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PLOS ONE, 17, 6, PLOS, San Francisco, California, US, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268896