Do vegetarians expect to find meat tasty?

Psychological interest in vegetarianism is on the rise due to its social significance (health, climate change, and animal welfare). It is unclear whether and how the vegetarians’ cognitions and emotions towards meat influence psychophysiological aspects such as salivation to food. The present study analysed voluntary (attitudes towards meat) and involuntary (emotions and salivation in response to images of food and real meat) behaviours, comparing vegetarians and omnivores. This study uses real meat and a measure of salivation to examine vegetarianism. The results showed that in vegetarians, attitudes and emotions towards meat were more negative than those of omnivores, while arousal towards meat was not different for vegetarians and omnivores. The salivation of vegetarians in response to real meat was not statistically different from that of omnivores. However, our results show that vegetarians’ salivation to real meat was similar to their baseline salivation. Our findings suggest that while vegetarians perceive meat as a negative non-appetizing stimulus at the cognitive and emotional level, at the involuntary psychophysiological level the perception of meat did not wholly suppress salivation and was perceived as a neutral non-appetizing stimulus.