As a vegan and psychologist, Iwas astonished at how meat-

eaters could both love animals andeat them. While there have beenmany studies of vegetarians, fewhave inquired into the psychologyof meat-eating, so I decided to dothe research myself. I spent tenyears in the Social PsychologyInstitute at the London School ofEconomics studying 217 people,using focus groups, surveys andexperiments. The results challengemany preconceptions and well-respected theories.

My research suggests that meat-eatersare ‘in denial’ about the life and deathbehind meat: that is, they keep themeat they eat separate in their mindsfrom the animals they love. Meat-eaters may genuinely believe that theylike eating meat more than they loveanimals, but analysis of their attitudesreveals that the opposite is true andthat psychological and culturalprocesses maintain their illusions ofconsistency.

Our culture promotes meat-eatingthrough surreptitious farmingmethods, renaming animals into meat(e.g. pig/pork), different mediaportrayals between species, andchildren’s socialisation. But this veil ofseparation does not completelyobscure the former life of film-engulfed flesh on supermarket shelves;it merely enables denial, a paradoxicalstate in which people simultaneouslyseem to know, and not know, thetruth. Denial is always partial; peoplealways register enough information to trigger their denial strategies.

These include avoiding or rejecting the truth, attacking the source ofinformation, blaming others, seekingalternative information, or forgetting.When confronted with the truth,someone in denial may experiencebeing reminded of somethingunpalatable that they ‘sort-of’ alreadyknew. Their denial strategies thenrush to restore the illusion. As an

example, like many vegetarians, I havebeen asked why I don’t eat meat, onlyto be interrupted with: “Oh no, don’ttell me, I don’t want to know!”

In focus groups, meat-eaters agreedthat they did not ordinarily connectanimals to meat:

“I reckon 90% of people that go intothe butcher’s shop … and order a pieceof lamb don’t think of that as a sheep”

“… You don’t … it’s ‘meat’; you don’tsee it as a sheep; you don’t see it as acow”

“If they actually knew how they werekilled … there’d be a lot morevegetarians”

“It’d put you off for life”“Oh yeah true”

However, most meat-eaters arguedthat they liked eating meat more thanthey loved animals: hence their viewswere consistent with eating meatoverall. A minority argued thatfarmed animals are bred to be eatenand therefore eating meat is good foranimals. This presupposes thatfarmed animals lead happy lives andthat they would otherwise die out(ignoring the precedent protection ofsome species). The remaining meat-eaters were torn: feeling veryuncomfortable with no sufficientlyvalid reason to eat meat:

“I see no justification whatsoever … Ionly eat meat because I don’t thinkabout it. If I thought about it, Icouldn’t possibly”

My researchsuggests that

meat-eaters are‘in denial’ about

the life anddeath behindmeat: that is,they keep themeat they eat

separate in theirminds from the

animals theylove.

Carol Norton, PhD

“I know animals are killed, but it doesn’t bother me…”:

the truth about meat-eaters

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Reasoning about eating meat andloving animals

To test these arguments, I experimentallymeasured meat-eaters’ automaticresponses to images of animals,animals being slaughtered andcooked meat. Unlike the focus groupdiscussions, participants could notconsciously control thesemeasurements taken by computer.The results were astonishing: contraryto popular belief, meat-eaters did notlike animals any less than vegetarians.The difference was that, whereas forvegetarians meat was synonymouswith animals’ slaughter, meat-eatersdid not connect meat with theslaughter of animals. This fog ofdenial allowed them to eat meatguilt-free.

I also tested people’s satisfaction withtheir own attitudes, and whether ornot their attitudes changed. Meat-eaters became increasinglyuncomfortable as they consideredtheir attitudes. In the end, meat-eaters’ attitudes towards animalsremained highly positive, but theirattitudes towards eating meat andanimals’ slaughter fell significantly.

Changes in attitudes

Yet these results contradicted thefocus groups, where most meat-eaters argued that they liked eatingmeat more than they loved animals.The conclusion is that many meat-eaters are ‘in denial’ about their ownattitudes towards meat, animals, andtheir slaughter.

Further, although meat-eatersclaimed that they enjoyed the tasteof meat, statistical analysis revealedthat underlying their reasons foreating meat was ‘habit’, not ‘taste’.The psychological explanation is thatmost of our moral arguments merelyjustify automatic judgements, madewithout conscious awareness. Suchshortcuts ease our mental workload,but they mean that decisions areoften less well-considered than weimagine. For most meat-eaters,

‘taste’ seems a better reason to eatmeat than ‘habit’. In the same way,many focus group members justifiedeating meat backwards from theirbehaviour; reasoning which theexperiments discounted. Backwardjustification works like this: “I eatmeat; therefore I must like meatmore than animals”. In fact, mostmeat-eaters eat meat out of habitand like farmed animals more thanmeat. Further, when meat-eatershonestly consider their own attitudes,they become uncomfortable andreduce their liking for meat.

Facilitating attitude change

One of the best ways to changesomeone’s attitudes is to drawtheir attention to inconsistenciesbetween their behaviour andattitudes. In this case, the attitudechange was contrary to thebehaviour of eating meat. This isbecause meat-eaters’ attitudestowards animals were remarkablystable and because meat-eaterswere in denial about animals’slaughter. When meat-eaters wereforced to reconnect meat toanimals’ slaughter in their minds,they became uncomfortable and,without their usual denial strategies,they changed their attitudestowards animals’ slaughter andeating meat.

In theory, then, many meat-eaterswould become vegetarian if theyhonestly considered their ownattitudes and the reality of animals’slaughter. To encourage this, weneed to grab meat-eaters’ attentionwithout them feeling too personallyjudged or threatened. In many ways denial strategies have thepsychological upper hand as theymaintain a safe status quo. Yet myresearch shows that, if usedcarefully, the simple truth may leadpeople to change their own minds,and diets.

Contact:c.a.norton@alumni.lse.ac.uk forfurther information.

When meat-eaters wereforced to

reconnect meatto animals’

slaughter in theirminds, they

becameuncomfortableand, without

their usual denialstrategies, theychanged their

attitudes towardsanimals’

slaughter andeating meat.

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