Harnessing Moral Psychology to Reduce Meat Consumption

Abstract

How can we make moral progress on factory farming? Part of the answer lies in human moral psychology. Meat consumption remains high, despite increased awareness of its negative impact on animal welfare. Weakness of will is part of the explanation: acceptance of the ethical arguments does not always motivate changes in dietary habits. However, we draw on scientific evidence to argue that many consumers are not fully convinced that they morally ought to reduce their meat consumption. We then identify two key psychological mechanisms—motivated reasoning and social proof—that lead people to resist the ethical reasons. Finally, we show how to harness these psychological mechanisms to encourage reductions in meat consumption. A central lesson for moral progress generally is that durable social change requires socially embedded reasoning.

“Do you consider animal welfare to be important?” activating cognitive dissonance via value activation can promote vegetarian choices

“…Kunst & Haugestad, 2018;Kunst & Hohle, 2016;Ruby & Heine, 2012;Wang & Basso, 2019). However, we argue that simply informing people that meat consumption harms animal welfare does not guarantee to be effective in stimulating behavior changeit can merely remind people of knowledge they already possess and have learned to avoid thinking about while consuming meat (Buttlar et al, 2021;May & Kumar, 2022;Rothgerber, 2020). Moreover, such appeals for behavior change can be perceived as direct attempts to persuade or manipulate, and consequently trigger reactance instead of behavior change (Lemmen et al, 2020;Sparkman et al, 2021).…”

“…eating meat harms animal welfare (i.e. May & Kumar, 2022;Reczek et al, 2018;Souza & O'Dwyer, 2022;Zane et al, 2016). Many meat-eaters care about animal welfare, but they also enjoy eating meat, and these conflicting cognitions imply different actions (i.e.…”

Situated Affectivity and Mind Shaping: Lessons from Social Psychology

“…14 Mind shaping of this kind has already proven to be effective, for instance, in connection with healthy eating habits (Vecchio & Cavallo, 2019), where the positioning of healthy food options on menus (Keegan et al, 2019) or healthy food recipes on food platforms (Starke et al, 2021) affects people's dietary choices. It can also encourage more sustainable consumption habits (e.g., Demarque et al, 2015;Lehner et al, 2016) by increasing people's willingness to use reusable takeaway boxes (Dorn & Stoeckli, 2018) or cups (Loschelder et al, 2019) or reducing meat consumption (May & Kumar, 2022;Sparkman et al, 2020) and ideological biases on climate change (Goldberg et al, 2020;Sparkman et al, 2021).…”

Ideological resistance to veg*n advocacy: An identity-based motivational account

“…For example, in Western countries many people love dogs and eat pigs ( Joy, 2009 ), while eating dogs may be acceptable in some Asian countries ( Podberscek, 2009 ) and eating pigs is forbidden by Islamic and Judaic scripture ( Farouk et al, 2015 ). Majorities also exert a powerful influence because individuals may doubt their own convictions in the face of the majority ( Martin et al, 2008 ; Bolderdijk and Jans, 2021 ; May and Kumar, 2022 ). Conforming to majority norms (e.g., eat what your peers eat) enables fast and frugal decision making, obviating the need for individuals to extensively deliberate on food choice ( Henrich et al, 2001 ).…”

“…Based on research on the meat paradox, meat-related dissonance (e.g., Bastian and Loughnan, 2017 ; Rothgerber, 2020 ), moral disengagement ( Graça et al, 2016 ) and research on identity-protective and motivated cognition ( Kunda, 1990 ; Kahan, 2013 ; Williams, 2020 ; May and Kumar, 2022 ), a distinction can be made between two broad categories of pro-carnist defenses omnivores employ to resolve moral/carnist identity threat: (1) motivated reasoning and (2) motivated ignorance. Below, we will shortly discuss these motivated defenses and clarify their interrelationship with counter-veg*n defenses in the form of negative stereotyping and stigmatization.…”