Cognitive Dissonance in Meat Eaters

Are you against animal cruelty?

Before becoming a vegan, I was never obsessed with eating meat. I would eat it because it was either cooked for me or it was an option on a menu while out to eat. But if I actually thought about what that piece of meat was prior to it becoming ‘food’, I would get disgusted. I usually couldn’t even get myself to finish eating if I even thought of the animal itself.

The moral question of whether it was right vs wrong wasn’t even the forefront thought on my mind. Instead it was one single emotion: disgust.

An emotion such as disgust is a very strong emotion. I’ve heard many other carnivores relate to this and feeling a sense of disgust if they thought about the animal they were consuming. So why are people still eating flesh and secretions from animals?

Pleasure.

Another strong emotion that often trumps disgust. We place the positive emotion at a higher ranking than our negative emotion and try to push the negativity to the back of our minds.

Pleasure is one of the obvious reasons that often comes up in discussion.

But if they find meat so pleasurable then why not eat a dog, cat, horse, or even dolphins?

This is when the psychological gymnastics begins for this moral dilemma.

How do you discern which animals are ok to eat and which ones are not? It seems that this is often justified by a simple answer with no scientific or proven explanation. Dogs, cats, and horses are obviously supposed to be our companions but cows, chickens and pigs were MEANT for food. Duh!

How silly of me. Of course that explains it! I mean those animals don’t feel anything right? Like when a calf is taken away from the mother quickly after birth just in case the calf drinks any milk…Seriously though, doesn’t that calf know that milk is meant for us humans? Or pigs. They are definitely no where near as intelligent as my dog.

In order for one to be consistent in their views, if you eat meat then you should feel ok eating all forms of meat. Many carnivores have an outcry each year during China’s Yulin Dog Meat Festival but yet they are purchasing and consuming the flesh of an animal who is being slaughtered every day? They are clearly arguing out against animal cruelty but they are contributing to it as well.

The ONLY difference is your perception.

There is a clear cognitive dissonance occurring here. Cognitive dissonance is defined as:

"the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change."

For meat eating to take place, there will most always be cognitive dissonance. Majority of people don’t support animal cruelty (meat eaters included) and nowadays many of these meat eaters advocate for more humane slaughterhouse conditions. The more you read that sentence over and over again you’ll hopefully realize how crazy it sounds. “…more humane slaughterhouse conditions.” The word slaughterhouse in itself is pure terror and can never be humane.

Steve Loughnan, a psychological scientist who studied carnivores, found many stark differences between the attitudes and values of meat eaters versus vegetarians/vegans.

"For example, meat eaters tend to be more authoritarian in general, believing that it is acceptable to be aggressive and controlling with subordinates. Meat eaters are also more likely to accept inequality and to embrace social hierarchies."

This makes sense since the very act of consuming animal products goes hand in hand with a belief in authority. You can read more about this subject in my post here. But this one study clearly shows that meat eaters justify their consumption of animal products because to them there is a social hierarchy in place and certain animals are on the lower end of the spectrum. Vegans (for the most part) have disregarded this idea of a hierarchy and embraced the moral questions to stop the cognitive dissonance in themselves.

If you don’t support animal cruelty, don't eat meat. It’s really that simple.

Compassion without action is just an observation.

All images sourced from Pinterest.