In 1954 social psychologist Leon Festinger and his collegues followed The Seekers, an apocalypse cult which believed that a flood would destroy humanity on December 21st the same year while they themselves would be saved by extraterrestrials. The scientists focused on the members, that were very committed and for example had given up their homes and jobs to work for the cult. After the postulated apocalypse did not occur, the members whose identity was so entangled with the cult, started to re-interpret the evidence against themselves in a way that still was coherent with their beliefs (e.g. by saying the flood was avoided because of the faithfulness of the cult members).
This coping mechanism that Festinger and collegues postulated, was called cognitive dissonance. They thought that when a person holds contradictory beliefs, values or ideas; or acts against any of these, this person experiences psychological stress which it seeks to reduce1.
The theory of cognitive dissonance suggests that behaving against own beliefs, leads to feelings like anxiety, sadness, shame, and stress. Since humans as a social species hold values such as justice and compassion, and at the same time are participating in the mass breeding and killing of sentient animals for food, cognitive dissonance occurs. This particular kind of cognitive dissonance is often called the meat paradox2 and in the context of carnism the methods of coping are often referred to as carnistic defense. All of the following examples are ways of coping with this dissonance.
Denial
Denial already shows itself in the invisibility of the belief and logistic system behind the exploitation of animals. Although billions of land animals are killed every year, most people don’t get to see anything of this gigantic logistic apparatus, except for a few cows on the roadside. The observation that the belief system that justifies the killing of these animals wasn’t even named (what shows that it wasn’t even considered) until ‚carnism‘ came around, shows the scale of the denial.
Justification
Prof. Joy who coined the term carnism also proposed that the justification of this belief system can be summarized in the so called 4N’s (Joy proposed the first three, the fourth was introduced later). She postulated that the arguments justifying meat consumption can be reduced to the following four3:
Justifications of meat consumption:
„Eating meat is…
- natural (e.g. „Mankind has been eating meat for thousands of years.“, „Lions also eat meat.“)
- normal („Look around, everyone eats meat.“),
- necessary („Where do you get your protein?“, „What about deficiencies?“),
- nice“ („It tastes good.“, „I don’t want to miss it“).
The postulated pattern was investigated by Australian psychologists in 2015. American and Australian undergraduates were asked to „list three reasons why you think it is OK to eat meat“. Over 90% of answers were classified among the 4N’s.
Furthermore the meat-eaters that endorsed these arguments showed less guilt regarding the meat paradox. They were more likely to objectify animals, attribute less consciousness to them, and expressed less moral concern. At the same time they were less proud of their consumer choices, as well as more supportive of social inequality and hierarchical ideologies. Thus the study showed a connection between the expression of justification of meat-eating through the 4N’s with a more negative and devaluating attitude towards animals4.
“Justifying animal exploitation (by using the 4N), correlates with the devaluation of animals, less support for social equality questions and a higher endorsement of hiearchical ideologies.“
Cognitive Distortions: Devaluation, Dissociation and Compartmentalization
The meat-paradox arises when people consider the moral status of animals. Main determinants of this consideration are the animals‘ perceived consiousness and ability to feel pain as well as the perceived similarity to humans. To reduce the negative effects of the meat-paradox (the psychological stress, like in other forms of cognitive dissonance), many studies showed strategies which lower the animals moral status by lowering one or more of these determinants2.
“Lowering the moral status of an animal (although based on unsubstantial claims regarding e.g. animal consiousness) is a method used to reduce
psychological stress.“
Dissociation of meat from the animal means to psychologically distance oneself from the so called „gap“, a term introduced for the intransparent processes of meat production, which facilitate this dissociation. Dissociation is thus a form of denial, as well as a form of cognitive distortion. Especially in Western countries, but also in general, people tend to „de-animalize“ meat, to reduce the cognitive dissonance5 6 7 8 9 10.
By generating different names for the meat, than its animal source (e.g. „pork“ – „pig“) and different verbs for the killing (e.g. „managing“, „processing“) psychological distance is build, and dissonance (at least while not confronted with „the gap“) resolves 10 11. In this line of thought, a Norwegian experimental study showed: as soon as the dissociation can’t be sustained (by being confronted with a picture of the animal one is about to eat – in other words: making the animal „source“ salient) the negative effects of the cognitive dissonance reappear12.
Although some of the euphemisms have grown historically („beef“ comes from french „bœuf“, which means „ox“ – nowadays the connection is not salient anymore, meaning that an english speaker who says „beef“ typically thinks about the „meat product“), some others are explicitly invented by representatives of the meat industry to further lower the perceived link between the animal and the „product“ – e.g. „processing plant“ as a suggestion for replacing „slaughterhouse“3.
| euphemism | meaning |
|---|---|
| pork | pig |
| beef | cow |
| meat | flesh |
| livestock | animals |
| processing / harvesting | killing / slaughtering |
| processing plant | slaughter-house |
Compartmentalization allows conflicting beliefs to co-exist by giving each a different category in which it seems valid. A central categorization in case of carnism is the category edible vs. inedible, according to people’s schemata (mental classifications which can be learned and modeled). Although neither consciousness or intelligence, the capacity to suffer, nor their similarity to humans is different between pigs and dogs – one would be eaten (at least in the Western societies), and the other can get as far as a familiy member 5 11 13.
This kind of compartmentalization thus does not have a solid valid grounding, but it is opportunistic and can be remodeled to fit a new conflict in beliefs. But like the other forms of cognitive distortion, the conflicting ideas are never resolved. A little cue can be enough to question each of these (mostly implicit) strategies, and trigger cognitive dissonance.
Going vegan
By definition not a method of carnistic defense, „going vegan“ offers an opportunity of resolving the meat paradox in it’s core – without denial, justification, devaluation, dissociation and compartmentalization. If we really belief that we like animals, if we are pleased by taking care of one, if we get sad by seeing or even hearing a story about one that was put to sleep, the only option in which we don’t have to experience dissonance, without denying the death of billions of land, trillions of aquatic animals every year, without justifying the cruel system of animal exploitation and without distorting our cognition and therefore our perception of reality, is by living our core beliefs.
1 Festinger, L., Henry, W., Riecken, S. S. (1956). When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World. University of Minnesota Press.
2 Loughnan, S., Bastian,B., Haslam, N. (2014). The Psychology of Eating Animals. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 23 (2): 104–108. (click here to read the whole article)
3 Joy, M. (2011). Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism: the Belief System That Enables Us to Eat Some Animals and Not Others. Berkeley, Calif.: Conari. (click here for Joys blog ‚beyond carnism‘, in which she describes the main ideas)
4 Piazza, Jared, et al. (2015). Rationalizing meat consumption: The 4Ns. Appetite. 91: 114–128. (click here to read the whole article)
5 Amiot, C. & Bastian, B. (2017). Solidarity with Animals: Assessing a Relevant Dimension of Social Identification with Animals. PLOS ONE. 12(1): e0168184. (click here to read the whole article)
6 Hoogland, C., Boer, J., Boersema, J. (2005). Transparency of the meat chain in the light of food culture and history. Appetite. 45 (1): 15–23.
7 Perez, C., Castro, R., Furnols, M. (2009). The pork industry: a supply chain perspective. British Food Journal. 111 (3): 257–274.
8 Vanhonacker, F., Verbeke, W. (2013). Public and Consumer Policies for Higher Welfare Food Products: Challenges and Opportunities. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. 27 (1): 153–171.
9 Te Velde, H., Aarts, N., Woerkum, C. (2002). Dealing with Ambivalence: Farmers‘ and Consumers‘ Perceptions of Animal Welfare in Livestock Breeding. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. 15 (2): 203–219.
10 Plous, S. (1993). Psychological Mechanisms in the Human Use of Animals. The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. 49 (1): 11–52.
11 Serpell, J. (2009). Having Our Dogs and Eating Them Too: Why Animals Are a Social Issue. Journal of Social Issues.
65 (3): 633–644.
12 Kunst, J., Hohle, S. (2016). Meat eaters by dissociation: How we present, prepare and talk about meat increases willingness to eat meat by reducing empathy and disgust. Appetite. 105: 758–774
13 Plous, S. (1993). Psychological Mechanisms in the Human Use of Animals. The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. 49 (1): 11–52.
studies in green. 