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Assignment #4: The Diet and Lifestyle Choices Interview

Course: Social Psychology

Professor: Dr. Scott Plous

Name: Chrysanthi Agrafiotis

Date: 8 th September, 2013

Characters: 5857

Taking the Diet & Lifestyle Choices Interview offered by eInterview.orgwas undoubtedly a unique experience. It was not an ordinary interviewthat requires 20 minutes of your time and then you go on with your life.Upon completion, I spent a lot of time thinking about it. It called uponme to go through the process of self-examination. My self-concept wasthreatened. Being a meat-eater, at first I felt a bit offended by thepressure to conform to the vegan lifestyle.

What started out as a routine questionnaire which attempted toestablish my social identity as a person who cares, in general, about theenvironment, the animals etc., all of a sudden it started making me feeluneasy and guilty about my dietary choices. I felt I was being guidedalong a path that I did not want to take. I realized that I wasexperiencing cognitive dissonance . I was informed about the cruelanimal practices and how I am actively supporting them through myactions. I started questioning my ethics and my self-concept was shaky. Ithought that maybe I was being prejudiced against animals, viewingthem as an inferior species that is there for us to feed on. Maybethrough this categorical thinking (Lecture 4.2) I was unknowinglycausing harm. Maybe because eating meat is deeply imbedded in my

culture and therefore I had never questioned it.

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I believe that this interview was aimed at making people aware of theattitude-behavior inconsistency (Lecture 2.3). While the vast majoritymost likely said that they do love animals, their behavior was notconsistent because by eating meat they cause the suffering of animals.There it was The Abilene Paradox (Lecture 4.1) that while peopleclaim to love and support animals in theory, not only are their actionsnot neutral but they are in the completely opposite direction.

Moreover, I would like to mention that this interview is based on thepremise that eating meat causes the suffering of animals and that thereare alternatives available which are not mentioned (What are they?Food supplements, vitamins?). In my opinion, it is the modern methodsof intensive farming that have brought about these results. In traditionalfarming the animals are tended to with great care. People have beeneating free-range meat since antiquity but it is the mass production thatcauses animals to live in small spaces, injects them with growthhormones and slaughters them under questionable conditions. Modernfood industry and its insatiable hunger for maximized profit are to blamefor animal suffering and not our meat eating habits.

Web-Interview vs. Conventional Interview

There are definite benefits to using this method of interviewing as it caneasily be filled out from the comfort of your own home. It is fast only20 minutes are required. The web is an effective channel to performlarge-scale research as it can handle a large amount of data and reach ahuge number of participants. It was effective not only in collectinginformation but also in causing the interviewee to reflect on his beliefsand behavior.

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However, it was impersonal as an experience though efforts were madeto establish a relationship with the interviewee such as the partswhere the program thanks the interviewee for his participation and thereply boxes inviting one to air his views.

During the interview, I felt the need to defend my views and whenoffered the reply box, it just wasnt the same as talking to a liveinterviewer. Even though I had a lot to say I limited myself to a brief comment.

When comparing meat-eating to infanticide, cannibalism and incest Ifound this highly provocative and I needed to debate this with a human

and not with a computer. Unfortunately, these acts happen in bothworlds, the human one and the animal one, but it is not a commonwidespread norm in either one.

The Interviewers Personality

If we are to assume that this computerized program has a personality

then we might say that it is authoritative as it seems to be convincingbacked by evidence and showing deep knowledge. It could also becharacterized as domineering because it does exercise a certain amountof control over the interviewees. It forces them to look at their previousanswers and requires of them to be consistent as far as their attitudeand behavior are concerned. It seems to be prejudiced against meat-eaters categorizing them as an out group (Lecture 4.3) which causesharm to animals. At the same time it is polite (the frequent use of thank you).

Instances of questions that seemed not to make sense

The question about eating a vegetarian or a pepperoni pizza seems to beextremely far-fetched and exaggerated. If we were to put deviantbehavior on a scale of 1 to 1000 I believe that pepperoni pizza eatingwould not be in the top positions concerning unethical behavior.

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Ways to improve the Diet and Lifestyle Choices eInterview

I believe that after 8 years of preparation, a lot of thought has gone intothis survey and with our limited knowledge of Social Psychology we canunderstand that the true agenda was not only to collect data about ourdiet and lifestyle habits but also to persuade us to become aware of theInner Biases of our ingroup and change our ways. However, I didnt findthe pizza argument convincing so maybe another question with a morepersuasive argument could be used.

In addition, a video of the interviewer reading the questions would makethe sight more personal and closer to a life-like experience.

To conclude, eInterviews are gaining momentum and more and moreweb based surveys will be used in the future. Our goal should be to tryto make them as humane as possible.