# Simulating Persuasive Dialogues on Meat Reduction with Generative Agents

> Source: <https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.1/>
> Published: 2026-08-05 00:00:00+00:00

##### Abstract

Meat reduction benefits human and planetary health, but social norms keep meat central in shared meals.To date, the development of _communication strategies that promote meat reduction while minimizing social costs_ has required the costly involvement of human participants at each stage of the process.We present work in progress on simulating multi-round dialogues on meat reduction between _Generative Agents_ based on large language models (LLMs). We measure our main outcome using established psychological questionnaires based on the _Theory of Planned Behavior_ and additionally investigate _Social Costs_.We find evidence that our preliminary simulations produce outcomes that are (i) consistent with theoretical expectations; and (ii) valid when compared to data from previous studies with human participants. Generative agent-based models are a promising tool for identifying novel communication strategies on meat reduction—tailored to highly specific participant groups—to then be tested in subsequent studies with human participants.- Anthology ID:
- 2025.nlpsi-1.1
- Volume:
[Proceedings of the First Workshop on Integrating NLP and Psychology to Study Social Interactions (NLPSI) @ICWSM ’25](/volumes/2025.nlpsi-1/)- Month:
- June
- Year:
- 2025
- Address:
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Editors:
[Aswathy Velutharambath](/people/aswathy-velutharambath/unverified/),[Sofie Labat](/people/sofie-labat/),[Neele Falk](/people/neele-falk/),[Flor Miriam Plaza-del-Arco](/people/flor-miriam-plaza-del-arco/),[Roman Klinger](/people/roman-klinger/),[Véronique Hoste](/people/veronique-hoste/unverified/)- Venues:
[NLPSI](/venues/nlpsi/)|[WS](/venues/ws/)- SIG:
- Publisher:
- Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org)
- Note:
- Pages:
- 1–10
- Language:
- URL:
[https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.1/](https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.1/)- DOI:
[10.36190/2025.30](https://doi.org/10.36190/2025.30)- Cite (ACL):
- Georg Ahnert, Elena Wurth, Markus Strohmaier, and Jutta Mata. 2025.
[Simulating Persuasive Dialogues on Meat Reduction with Generative Agents](https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.1/). In*Proceedings of the First Workshop on Integrating NLP and Psychology to Study Social Interactions (NLPSI) @ICWSM ’25*, pages 1–10, Copenhagen, Denmark. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). - Cite (Informal):
[Simulating Persuasive Dialogues on Meat Reduction with Generative Agents](https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.1/)(Ahnert et al., NLPSI 2025)- PDF:
[https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.1.pdf](https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.1.pdf)