Cognitive dissonance and vegetarianism

(This was the essay I wrote for my USP application - constrained to 600 words, I had to say only the most important)

‘Can Your Pet’: an apparently innocuous game where players care for a virtual chick. However, the game takes a gruesome turn when the chick is ground between two metal blades and canned, placing a twist of dark humour on the game’s ambiguous name. This game is an apt illustration of a social psychology theory - cognitive dissonance - and how it relates to food production. 

Cognitive dissonance describes undesirable conflict between one’s absolute values and one’s behaviour. To reduce this stress, mismatching beliefs or actions are altered to create cognitive consistency. In decision making, for example, to justify a choice, people engage in mental manipulation , exaggerating the advantages of their chosen option and reducing their opinion of the choice forgone (spreading apart the alternatives).       

While this theory explains many situations of cruelty, I have focused on food consumption - an insidious behaviour affecting billions daily. 

Intellectual awareness of the cruelty and environmental damage involved in mass production of fish, meat, eggs and dairy (FMED) products is common by adulthood; however, a corresponding change in diet is not.

This is mainly because the enjoyable consumption of these foods conflicts with that intellectual awareness, creating dissonance that demands resolution. To diminish the guilt of eating an animal that suffered grossly and to justify the decision to eat meat, omnivores spread apart the alternatives to assuage their consciences, blinding themselves to the reality of animals’ suffering. The New York Times Magazine writer Michael Pollen described it “a schizoid quality …… in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side. Half the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us pause to consider the miserable life of the pig – an animal easily as intelligent as a dog – that becomes the Christmas ham.” 

Dissonance is overcome by suppressing the hard reality that feeding off suffering is grotesque in three ways. First, behaviour is justified by another belief: ‘I can’t make a meaningful difference’. This is a common jibe at vegetarianism, one alternative.  It reduces cognitive dissonance, by convincing people that vegetarianism is futile in significantly reducing nett suffering. However, linking ethics to consequence is a fallacious means to achieve cognitive consistency. Just because one cannot prevent mass scale slaughter, one should not fail to take a stand against it. The issue is not whether one can make a difference – it is a matter of what kind.

Omnivores also tend to acquire information biased toward their behaviour. Fears over vegetarian nutritional deficiencies often justify continued meat-eating. However, as reasonable alternatives to meat-based nutrients (e.g. soy and quinoa) are increasingly available, this shield to cognitive dissonance no longer remains viable. 

Thirdly, to justify their behaviour, omnivores downplay the cruelty of FMED industries. As noted in The Economist, “Few people would themselves keep a hen in a shoebox for her egg-laying life; but practically everyone will eat smartly packaged ‘farm fresh’ eggs from battery hens.” The separation of farm and fridge sustains this ignorance and detachment – however, ignorance cannot be an excuse for complicity. Consumers’ dollar votes give them immense power in the key determinants that control these industries - demand and supply. 

Gandhi said, ‘Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony’. Reducing cognitive dissonance through changing values gives the comfort of cognitive consistency, but can also become a veneer of justification that sustains inhumane practices. Cognitive dissonance exists for a reason, prompting us to realise that our actions are wrong. Rather than compromising our beliefs, it is only through changing our food choices that we achieve true dietary integrity.