Themaboek Roze Vleeskalveren

De roze vleeskalverhouderij staat vanaf eind 80-er jaren in de belangstelling. Aanleiding waren enerzijds de kanttekeningen die geplaatst werden bij de individuele huisvesting en de eenzijdige voeding van blanke vleeskalveren en anderzijds de hoge productiekosten. Omdat de kennis over de productie van roze kalfsvlees beperkt was, is in 1990 op het proefbedrijf van het PR, de Waiboerhoeve, een proefaccommodatie voor 320 kalveren gebouwd. In de periode 1991 t/m 1995 is het project ‘pro-ductie alternatief kalfsvlees’ uitgevoerd. Dit onderzoek is gefinancierd door het Landbouwschap, Ministerie LNV en Produktschap voor Vee en Vlees. In dit project zijn de voeding en de geschiktheid van verschillende typen kalveren uitgebreid onderzocht. De onderzoekresultaten zijn beschreven in PR-publicaties. Daarnaast was er behoefte de tot nu toe verkregen kennis in één publicatie te bundelen. Dit heeft geresulteerd in een themaboek voor de Roze vleeskalverhouderij. In dit themaboek worden de onderzoekresultaten kort weergegeven gekoppeld aan een praktisch advies. Naast het onderzoek wordt ook aandacht besteed aan o.a. huisvesting, wetgeving en diergezondheid

How Much Does Effortful Thinking Underlie Observers’ Reactions to Victimization?

From blaming to helping innocent victims, just-world research has revealed that observers react to victimization in a variety of ways. Recent research suggests that such responses to victimization require effortful thought, whereas other research has shown that people can react to these situations intuitively. Along with manipulating just-world threat, across seven experiments, we manipulated or measured participants’ level of mental processing before assessing judgments of victim derogation, blame, willingness to help, and ultimate justice reasoning. The effect of just-world threat on these responses held constant over a range of manipulations/measures, suggesting that the processes involved in maintaining a belief in a just world are not restricted to the rational, deliberative level of mental processing but also occur intuitively

Me, Myself, Fairness, and I: On the Self-Related Aspects of Fairness Reactions

The current dissertation focuses on the psychology of justice as a self-related process. Six experiments within three justice domains are reported in which specific self-related aspects and their influence on fairness reactions are investigated. The construction of one’s self-image (i.e., the self-concept) is presumed to be involved in the experience of fair and unfair treatments by others. That is, how others approach a person, provides information about how they judge this person and in the end, how this person ‘should’ think about him- or herself (e.g., Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934). Chapter 2 demonstrates that this process mainly involves the individual aspects of the self-concept, meaning how people think about themselves as an individual, independent from others. In Study 2.1 this is demonstrated by the higher activation of the individual self than the social self in just and unjust situations. Study 2.2 adds to these findings by showing that fairness reactions are strongest when people were both being treated as individuals and their individual selves had been activated. Chapter 3 shows that when people'sself-image is being threatened, they pay more attention to fairness aspects in their environments, but do so in a self-centered way. This means that people do not only react more positive to a fair outcome (when they receive as much as another person), but also to being overpaid. These findings were gathered in a field experiment (Study 3.1) and a laboratory experiment (Study 3.2). When people have a higher need for positive self-views (e.g., because they are experiencing self-threats) they temporarily attach lower value to the unjust aspect of the overpayment and hence react more positively toward being overpaid. Self-related processes are also involved in how people deal with their Belief in a Just World (BJW) in which all people get what they deserve. The importance of this belief has been demonstrated by the strong, irrational and defensive ways in which people react when this belief is being threatened. For example, people tend to blame innocent victims for their ill fate, probably to restore the idea of deservingness (Lerner & Simmons, 1966). Chapter 4 investigated the processes of coping with just world threats. It was presumed that just world threats may essentially be self-threatening, and may thus involve self-regulation. Study 4.1 investigated the self-regulation process of coping with just-world threats by focusing on the frustration of self-regulation by studying the role of ego-depletion, which indeed caused stronger blaming reactions. Study 4.2 focused on the facilitation of self-regulation by studying the role of self-affirmation. which indeed caused the attenuation of blaming reactions. In summary, fairness reactions are driven by self-related processes. Not only the reactions of people to being treated in just or unjust ways involve the self, but also when they are being confronted with a strong injustice of another person

The society-supporting self: system justification and cultural worldview defense as different forms of self-regulation

Justifying social systems and defending cultural worldviews may seem to resemble the same human need to protect what is known and predictable. The current paper would like to argue that these society-supporting tendencies concern two different forms of self-regulation: the need for control and the need for meaning. Results show higher levels of system justification when participants were lacking control than when they had to think about death or about a control topic. Simultaneously, participants showed stronger worldview defense reactions when they thought about their own death, compared to those experiencing low control. This suggests that system justification may be used to compensate a loss of personal control, while cultural worldviews protect the person from existential anxiety