Look at the titles of several popular books by prominent animal scholars and see what you notice. I’m referencing Hal Herzog’s Some We love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat[1] and Melanie Joy’s Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows[2]. Although both cover unique ground from different perspectives, they clearly converge in depicting our relationship with animals as schizophrenic.
How many animal lovers do you know who still eat meat? How many people do you know who dote upon their pet dog or cat and eat meat seemingly without much thought? How can we collectively make such an outcry about individual cases of animal abuse or exploitation and then ignore the horrors of factory farming? How can apparently moral people seem so invested in many good causes and yet still engage in a daily behavior riddled with such negative consequences? How can prominent environmental conferences still serve meat?
If you’re like me, you’ve probably not only noticed these contradictions, but been puzzled, frustrated, angered, and saddened by them. It’s affected me and intrigued me so much that I have spent a good part of my research life the last decade trying to understand what transpires in the minds of meat eaters.
The purpose of this post is to highlight what I have learned. I want to help you understand how people navigate through what is called the meat paradox, that individuals morally care for animals and wish them no harm yet simultaneously eat them as food. As in all of my blogs, the intention is to explain through science not mere opinion or sole reliance on personal experience. And to be clear up front, explaining phenomenon does not mean endorsing it or condoning it. I am merely trying to describe here – with the aim to understand – not validate.
The Cognitive Dissonance of Eating Animals
The experience of the meat paradox is one of cognitive dissonance – we are pulled in two directions because when we eat meat a value or belief we hold (the importance of treating animals humanely) is contradicted by our behavior. Dissonance is emotionally unpleasant. It makes us feel guilty, anxious, upset. We don’t like feeling it and are determined to rid ourselves of it, even if we’re mostly unaware of what’s happening.
One major way to eliminate dissonance is to change behavior. In this case, we could go vegetarian or vegan and align our values with our actions. This obviously feels good to us and makes us feel like we’re living up to our moral standards. And indeed, plant-based diets seem more popular lately. Even fast-food chains like Burger King have started offering animal-free options. But without trying to be a downer, rates of vegetarianism are still low. They are estimated at by the Vegetarian Resource Group to be about 6% in the U.S. and approximately the same across Europe. Eating animals, in contrast, is an overwhelming norm, with meat consumption reaching record highs in the U.S. in 2022 according to the National Chicken Association.
So, what most meat eaters do is resort to psychological strategies that allow them to maintain eating meat. Most of these are rationalizations and justifications that explain away the troubling behavior. I have identified no less than fourteen such strategies[3].
Strategies to Reduce Meat-Related Cognitive Dissonance
Let me divide them in the following way.
Prevention
Because dissonance from eating animals is psychologically unpleasant, individuals are motivated to prevent it from occurring in the first place. We can do so in several ways:
- Avoidance. We avoid unpleasant emotions by refraining from acknowledging animal welfare, environmental, or health concerns with meat consumption. We simply try not to think about it. And it’s not merely a personal effort. Avoidance has become a cultural norm protected by powerful institutions. For example, avoidance is supported by the physical isolation of factory farms, by institutions and laws that make gaining information about farm animal welfare nearly impossible, and by media socializing children to view meat as originating from happy animals living on peaceful farms. If individuals allow themselves exposure to information about farmed animals, social pressure discourages spreading this knowledge to others, as the very topic of factory farms is considered taboo.
- Willful ignorance. Given these socially ingrained protections, it is not surprising that individuals know so little about the treatment of animals eaten as meat. Compared to vegetarians, meat-eaters display less knowledge of typical farming practices and underestimate the degree of suffering inflicted on livestock. This ignorance seems largely motivated—as a willful ignorance intended to prevent individuals from experiencing negative arousal from eating meat. Multiple studies have shown that meat eaters admit to not wanting to know things about factory farming because it would make it more difficult to continue eating meat. Even motivated ignorance is bliss.
- Dissociation. Individuals can also prevent guilt by pretending that no animal is involved during meat consumption. This disconnect is accomplished by dissociating the animal from the food product. We call meat “bacon” and “steak” and “hamburger” instead of the actual animal itself to disguise our actions and render animals absent. We get disgusted and are less likely to purchase meat that is bloody or contains other visible reminders of its once-life-as-an-animal.
These strategies work in concert to produce a conspiracy of silence where the harmful consequences of meat are absent from our thoughts. The more mindless and routinized the behavior, the more that meat eaters are let off the hook.
Indirect Strategies
Alas, sometimes guilt and anxiety from eating animals cannot be prevented. In these cases, there are two broad strategies meat eaters can use. The first I call indirect because they don’t directly defend eating meat but try to disconnect the self from the moral implications of eating meat. They are slippery attempts to avoid seeming like a typical meat eater or to distract attention away from oneself and instead denigrate or blame others. There are five of these.
- Perceived behavioral change. People may try to avoid unpleasant emotions from eating meat by pretending that the problematic behavior doesn’t apply to them. In one study, being told they were to watch a PETA video caused individuals to lower their reported meat intake[4]. Numerous studies have documented that many people who claim they are vegetarian simultaneously acknowledge that they eat meat. For instance, in a Time/CNN survey of 10,000 American adults, 60% of vegetarians admitted that they had eaten red meat, poultry, or seafood within the last twenty-four hours! Although some of this discrepancy may arise from genuine confusion about what defines a vegetarian, it likely also reflects motivated self-identification that serves to reduce guilt. If I say I am vegetarian enough, maybe I’ll convince myself that meat’s ills aren’t my doing.
- Defining oneself as a humane meat eater. In a related strategy, one may proclaim that even if one eats meat that comes from animals, the meat that one eats does not harm animals because it is humanely produced. This position has become more mainstream since Michael Pollan raised its virtues in the Omnivore’s Dilemma[5]. In a radio debate, the high profile carnivore chef Anthony Bourdain once defended himself from the moral vegetarianism of author Jonathan Safran Foer by claiming that all the meat he used was sourced from humane origins. Why is this a strategy and not a moral position? First, whether any animal killed for food can be treated humanely is a legitimate question. Second, reliance on so-called humane meat universally would mean that people would only eat 1/100th of the meat they eat now. Finally, I have found that humane meat eaters are less likely to perceive their diet as something that they need to adhere to strictly. This makes me think that at least for some, identifying with the humane meat movement may flexibly reduce dissonance among individuals who still consume meat regularly.
- Do-gooder derogation. It’s an old tactic to condemn the condemner, to discredit the bearer of bad news. It allows us to deflect attention away from ourselves and point the finger at someone else. This is especially common with “moral rebels,” people like vegetarians who adopt moral positions others aren’t willing to take. Consistent with this concept of “do-gooder derogation,” several experiments have found that making meat eaters more uncomfortable causes them to focus more on deficiencies of vegetarians. In what may not be a shock to some readers, vegetarians are evaluated as or more negatively than are commonly studied targets of prejudice, with only drug addicts being evaluated more negatively. Nearly half of meat-eaters freely generate negative associations of vegetarians!
- Third party blame. While devaluing vegetarians distracts individuals from considering their own moral shortcomings, another strategy is to obscure personal responsibility for the mistreatment of farmed animals by placing third-party blame on other entities in the food system. Consumers generally claim that they are powerless to improve animal welfare standards, instead placing responsibility on governments for failing to implement effective laws and on retailers for failing to offer humanely produced meat. But how many consumers would really welcome more choices and would really like labels telling them about the origins of meat? It would threaten willful ignorance, and lead consumers to have less money from purchasing more humane meat or to feel greater guilt at not.
- Moral outrage. Individuals may also reduce guilt by expressing moral outrage at third-party transgressors in the food system or even at others who mistreat animals outside the food context[6]. We get angry at corporations like Sea World or individuals like Michael Vick who mistreat animals, in part, because it lessens negative emotions from our own behavior and helps us project a strong, moral identity. How else to explain the anger directed toward extreme animal eater Louis Cole for consuming a live goldfish, which pales to the atrocity of factory farming? More scientifically, we found that when reminded of meat’s problematic nature, meat-eaters expressed greater moral outrage at a third party responsible for animal abuse.
So, we have mental weapons at our disposal to escape moral condemnation from eating meat without defending the behavior itself.
Direct Justifications
But some meat eaters openly embrace their eating behavior and unapologetically defend it as just and moral. You’ve probably had an argument with at least a few of them! Such unabashed meat eaters use a variety of direct justifications, some focused on animals as separate entities from meat and others on meat itself.
- Denial of animal mind. One common means of reducing guilt is to deny animal mind—that is, to claim that farm animals do not think, feel, and suffer the same way as humans do. If targets are less capable of suffering, then harming them seems less morally troublesome. Several experiments show that when guilt from eating meat is ramped up, individuals are motivated to perceive animals as lacking the capacity to feel or understand as we do. When what we are harming is beneath us, we feel as though we are causing fewer aversive consequences.
- Dichotomization. As the book titles in the introductory paragraph underscore, we compartmentalize or dichotomize animals into different categories based on our relationship to them. This allows us to maintain positive connections with selected animals, such as pets, while justifying consuming others. This motivated application of moral worth explains why Americans express outrage at dogs being eaten in some cultures while simultaneously disregarding the moral worth of chickens, cows, and pigs in their own culture. It starts early, as parents may rely on this technique to induce their hesitant children to eat meat.
- (- 14). Meat as natural, normal, nice, and necessary. Some dissonance-reduction strategies focus on meat itself, with or without recognizing the animals involved. They direct attention to meat consumption, rather than meat production. Four prominent pro-meat justifications are claims that eating meat is natural, normal, nice, and necessary.
The meat-as-natural rationalization focuses on human relationships with animals and depicts the relationship—whether it be through religious or evolutionary forces—as one characterized by human dominance and animal subordination. The argument becomes that “we are supposed to eat meat.”
The meat-as-normal justification works on social support and social norms and help placate guilt by social reassurance. Guilt can be lessened, therefore, to the extent that individuals view meat-eating as a normal human activity, a deeply ingrained habitual behavior that largely transcends culture. Everyone else is doing it, so it must be okay, right?
The meat-as-nice justification emphasizes gustation and that meat is simply too delicious to avoid. How many times have you heard people admit their own apparent weakness and explain their eating behavior this way? It almost seems like those with an appetite for meat confess that no one is perfect, and this is one imperfection they will tolerate in themselves.
The meat-as-necessary justification argues that meat is nutritionally essential for optimal well-being, thus abdicating the individual from responsibility for harming animals. I’ve confronted this directly from people, aghast that my children have never consumed animal flesh. But this justification is obviously tenuous, as the existence of all those vegetarians demonstrates.
As tempting as it may be to pick apart these 4Ns justifying meat consumption, they seem to work quite well for meat eaters. Endorsement of these four pro-meat justifications is associated with greater meat consumption, less willingness to try meat alternatives, greater commitment to continue eating meat, and less meat-related guilt.
This is not to suggest that meat eaters are constantly feeling guilt and directly tapping into one of these 14 strategies. They have likely worked things out so that they can continue to eat meat pleasurably and still feel like decent, moral beings. Occasionally, something will get in the way of their personal conspiracy of silence, and they can call upon one of these strategies to feel better about themselves.
The Bottom Line
If you’re living with meat eaters, I hope this posting better helps you understand someone whose behavior may be causing you bewilderment, frustration, anger or sadness. It may not eliminate those emotions, but I hope it can give you a discussion starter and a way to frame your concerns. And if you are a meat eater, I hope this can help you reflect inward on what you may be experiencing. Often before change occurs, we need to have a moment of realization about what is happening within us.
[1] Herzog, H. (2010). Some we love, some we hate, some we eat: Why it’s so hard to think straight about animals. New York: Harper
[2] Joy, M. (2010). Why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows. An introduction to Carnism. San Francisco: Conari Press
[3] Rothgerber, H. (2020). Meat-related cognitive dissonance: A conceptual framework for understanding how meat eaters reduce negative arousal from eating animals. Appetite, 146, 1-16. MRCD appetite.pdf
Rothgerber, H., & Rosenfeld, D. L. (2021). Meat‐related cognitive dissonance: The social psychology of eating animals. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 15(5), e12592. 2021-Meat-RelatedCognitiveDissonance (1).pdf
[4] Rothgerber, H. (2019). “But I don’t eat that much meat”: Situational underreporting of meat consumption by women. society & animals, 27(2), 150-173. situational underreporting of meat.pdf
[5] Pollan, Michael. (2007). The Omnivore’s Dilemma : A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin.
[6]Rothgerber, H., Rosenfeld, D. L., et al. (2022). Motivated Moral Outrage Among Meat-Eaters. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 13, 916-926.