Jebus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 05, 2018 7:59 amIt's possible, but isn't it also possible that someone is turned off by veganism because they don't want to be part of a bullied group? Isn't it also possible that people find uncontroversial posts boring and don't bother to finish reading the thread which may contain good points about veganism?Jamie in Chile wrote: ↑Sun Mar 04, 2018 9:02 pm Maybe someone watching this thread is going to eat more meat as a result because they saw vegans being rude - or thought you were being rude.
Most vegans seem to believe that a friendly approach is the most effective way of promoting veganism and I agree that this is the best approach when speaking to someone person to person for the first time. However, I am not convinced that a less aggressive approach is the most effective in the following situations:
With people with whom one has already unsuccessfully tried the friendly approach several times.
With people who generally don't listen.
During online forum debates.
While delivering a monologue or answering questions in a Q/A setting (Gary Yourofsky may be the most successful person in history in converting carnists to vegans and he never sugar coated the message).
Going to go off on a bit of a tangent here...
I think there is a need for a study to test whether aggressive tactics or soft tactics work better. It would be expensive ($100,000 ball park maybe), and perhaps need collaboration between different groups or a wealthy donor in order to get such a number. Here's one way you do it.
You send someone to give a talk and do workshops aggressively using a predominantly ethical message and saying things like "meat is murder" "meat is morally wrong" "you want to be on the right side of history". They share information such as horrific videos and facts like baby chickens are thrown into grinders. They say that cheese is just as immoral as meat, and that totally avoiding animal products is the only morally acceptable course if you have truly understood about animal rights. And they talk about speciesism. In the workshops they become argumentative - but still polite - and try and win the argument.
Meanwhile, someone else is giving talks using a variety of soft ethical arguments "I personally became vegan because I didn't want to participate in the cruel system of factory farming" and health and environmental arguments. They engage with others in the workshops, with a listening-focused, non judgemental approach saying things like "eating meat only two days a week is a great way to reduce your impact on the enviroment, I"d appluad you if you could do it" or "if you like cheese, keep eating cheese. What about chickens. Do you think you could consider giving up chickens?"
Then go back and repeat the workshops and ask people what they've learned. Ask people to fill in a survey saying how likely they are to reduce or eliminate meat as a result of the talk and then later have following up questionnaires after perhaps 6 months and again at 2 years to find out how many reduced, went veg etc.
The subjects of the study will only listen to one or the other talk/workshop, not both. So there are two distinct groups. However, the people giving the talks would have to either swop over roles (aggressive vs listening) or there would have to be various diferent people giving talks. Otherwise one approach might win simply because its proponent was more likeable and charismatic, irrespective of chosen approach. You might add a control group. That is people that filled in surveys but never received any workshops or talks.
You deal in only closed environments where you have a very high chance of being allowed back in later, including an explicit promise to have the final surveys filled in at the 6 month mark and a financial incentive perhaps on the 2-year survey. I am thinking of schools and universities perhaps because these could be offered to the students as part of their schooling. You would want to have it done as part of a course, to everyone enrolled in a class, for better numbers and in order to avoid bias - i.e. if you volunteer for something, you might be open minded in general, or be specifically interested in veganism in the first place. Which needs to be avoided.
Schools and universities would mean producing a certain result favouring a certain approach that wouldn't necessarily be applicable to older people. The study would need a large sample size, hundreds or thousands of people.
There are a lot of things that would need to be considered.