In response to calls to expand knowledge on consumer willingness to reduce meat consumption and to adopt a more plant-based diet, this work advances the construct of meat attachment and the Meat Attachment Questionnaire (MAQ). The MAQ is a new measure referring to a positive bond towards meat consumption. It was developed and validated through three sequential studies following from an in-depth approach to consumer representations of meat. The construct and initial pool of items were firstly developed drawing on qualitative data from 410 participants in a previous work on consumers' valuation of meat. Afterwards, 1023 participants completed these items and other measures, providing data to assess item selection, factor structure, reliability, convergent and concurrent validity, and predictive ability. Finally, a sample of 318 participants from a different cultural background completed the final version of the MAQ along with other measures to assess measurement invariance, reliability and predictive ability. Across samples, a four-factor solution (i.e., hedonism, affinity, entitlement, and dependence) with 16 items and a second-order global dimension of meat attachment fully met criteria for good model fit. The MAQ subscales and global scale were associated with attitudes towards meat, subjective norm, human supremacy beliefs, eating habits, and dietary identity. They also provided additional explanatory variance above and beyond the core TPB variables (i.e. attitudes, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control) in willingness and intentions concerning meat substitution. Overall, the findings point towards the relevance of the MAQ for the study of meat consumption and meat substitution, and lend support to the idea that holding a pattern of attachment towards meat may hinder a shift towards a more plant-based diet.

A shift towards reduced meat consumption and a more plant-based diet is endorsed to promote sustainability, improve public health, and minimize animal suffering. However, large segments of consumers do not seem willing to make such transition. While it may take a profound societal change to achieve significant progresses on this regard, there have been limited attempts to understand the psychosocial processes that may hinder or facilitate this shift. This study provides an in-depth exploration of how consumer representations of meat, the impact of meat, and rationales for changing or not habits relate with willingness to adopt a more plant-based diet. Multiple Correspondence Analysis was employed to examine participant responses (N = 410) to a set of open-ended questions, free word association tasks and closed questions. Three clusters with two hallmarks each were identified: (1) a pattern of disgust towards meat coupled with moral internalization; (2) a pattern of low affective connection towards meat and willingness to change habits; and (3) a pattern of attachment to meat and unwillingness to change habits. The findings raise two main propositions. The first is that an affective connection towards meat relates to the perception of the impacts of meat and to willingness to change consumption habits. The second proposition is that a set of rationales resembling moral disengagement mechanisms (e.g., pro-meat justifications; self-exonerations) arise when some consumers contemplate the consequences of meat production and consumption, and the possibility of changing habits.

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According to the positive psychology background, the focus on constructive dimensions of individual functioning implies a critical change on the paradigm from the merely analysis focused on individual pathology (and on the need to repair the damage) to an approach focused on self-actualization and well-being (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Despite the progressive investment in this area, the study of distress and disorders has been greater than in the positive individual functioning. As such, in order to address the limitations of traditional models of mental health, a range of theoretical models, with different labels but focused on the same conceptual meanings, has emerged from the positive psychology framework. For instance, there are authors proposing a Dual-factor system of mental health (Greenspoon & Saklofske, 2001), others the The two continua model of mental illness and health (Westerhof & Keyes, 2010) and others the Dual-factor model of mental health (Wang, Zhang & Wang, 2011). All these models suggest that mental health must be viewed as a complete state, reflecting the integration of a positive (well-being) and a negative (psychopathology) dimension of adjustment, in two continuums but related factors (Wang et al., 2011; Westerhof et al., 2010). This conceptualization of mental health has been empirically tested and results supported the model with two separate dimensions (Keyes, 2005; Wilkinson & Walford, 1998). This evidence of a dual-factor model of mental health allows the classification of

Women tend to be more concerned about the welfare of (human/nonhuman) animals and the natural environment than men. A growing literature has shown that gender differences in environmental exploitation can be explained partially by the fact that women and men differ in their social dominance and emphatic orientations. We extend past studies by examining whether social dominance orientation (SDO; 'Superior groups should dominate inferior groups') and empathy ('I feel others' emotions') also help explain gender differences in attitudes towards nonhuman animals. Our mediation model confirmed that SDO and empathy partially and independently mediate gender differences in both human supremacy beliefs ('Animals are inferior to humans') and speciesism ('I think it is perfectly acceptable for cattle, chickens and pigs to be raised for human consumption') among 1002 individuals (57% female; M age = 26.44) from the general population in Portugal. Our findings provide evidence that traits referring to human-human relations can help explain gender differences in environmentalism as well as our relations with other animals. The cumulative evidence suggests that exploitative tendencies towards the natural environment and (human/nonhuman) animals may be built upon shared psychological mechanisms.

The capabilities approach provides a rich evaluative framework to guide transformative change in the community mental health system. This study reports the content and construct validity and psychometric properties of a contextualized measure of the extent to which mental health programs foster achieved capabilities. The Achieved Capabilities Questionnaire for Community Mental Health (ACQ-CMH), adapted from Nussbaum's capabilities framework, was developed previously with consumer collaboration. Content validity was assessed through a collaborative process, involving a panel of eight consumers, staff members, and senior researchers. The resulting shorter version (ACQ-CMH-98) was completed by 332 community mental health consumers sampled throughout Portugal. Factor (PCA) analysis, internal consistency reliability, and test-retest reliability over 2 weeks (N = 33) showed good psychometric properties. The resulting six-factor structure with 48 items explains 48.88% of the total variance (KMO = 0.89; Bartlett p = .00). Internal consistency of the obtained dimensions ranges from .91 to .76. Associations of the measure with recovery, quality of life, and psychological distress scales add further evidence of construct validity. The adaptation of Nussbaum's framework stressed specific components that may enhance understanding and change within the community mental health system.

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