Remaining ignorant of evidence that animals have minds is likely to facilitate their mistreatment. The research show that meat consumption is implicated in reactionary dissonance-reduction mechanisms, such as perceiving food animals as having relatively unsophisticated minds, disregarding the sophistication of their mind, and 'strategically' (deliberate or non-deliberate) avoiding the exposure to evidence that animals have minds. This mechanism is likely to undermine food-animals’ moral status and perpetuate a commitment to consuming meat.
STEFAN LEACH: Animal minds are of central importance to debates about their rights and welfare. Remaining ignorant of evidence that animals have minds is therefore likely to facilitate their mistreatment… The goal of the present research was to test the relationship between individual differences in the commitment to eating meat and the tendency to avoid information about food-animal minds. It was also to test if this avoidance is strategic. We understand strategic avoidance in this context as minimizing exposure to information that challenges meat eating (e.g., evidence of food-animal minds) together with not minimizing exposure to similar information that does not challenge meat eating (e.g., evidence of non-food-animal minds). Note, we make no assumptions about whether this type of avoidance is deliberate or non-deliberate. Strategic ignorance of this sort poses a barrier in the way of an unbiased, empirically-informed assessment of food animals’ mental capacities.
Because mental capacities are grounds for moral status, ignorance of mental capacities threatens to undermine the moral legitimacy of our relationships with food animals. If a commitment to eating meat is associated with a strategic avoidance of information about food-animal minds, this would therefore represent a mechanism that is likely undermining food-animals’ moral status and perpetuating a commitment to consuming meat. It would also represent a critical roadblock for those interested in improving the welfare of animals and reducing meat consumption by communicating information about their sentience and suffering.
We tested this idea in five studies by examining the relationship between individual differences in meat commitment–the desire to eat meals that contain meat and reluctance to replace meat with plant-based substitutes — and the tendency to avoid information about food-animal minds.
Study 1 tested this by asking participants about their desire to avoid information about food animal sentience. Studies 2a and 2b unpacked this effect by examining the motivation to expose oneself to information that suggests food and companion animals are intelligent and information that suggests they are unintelligent. Studies 3a and 3b extended them work by presenting participants with information about food and companion-animal minds and examining avoidance behaviours in an ecologically-valid context (browsing an online website).
In these studies we captured avoidance by measuring the time participants took to terminate exposure by closing a webpage that contained information about animal minds. The addition of companion animals in these latter studies allowed us to test if similar effects arose in response to information about a comparable animal that has little bearing on participants’ dietary commitments…
Studying samples of adults and students from the UK and US we found that, consistent with motivational perspectives on meat consumption, those who were more (vs. less) committed to eating meat were more motivated to avoid exposure to information about food-animals’ sentience (Studies 1), showed less interest in exposure to articles about intelligent food animals (Studies 2a and 2b), and were quicker to terminate exposure to internet pop-ups containing information about food-animals’ minds (Studies 3a and 3b). At the same time, those who were more (vs. less) committed to eating meat approached information about companion-animals’ minds (Studies 2a-3b) and unintelligent food animals (Studies 2a and 2b) in largely the same ways. The findings demonstrate that, within the UK and US, the desire to eat meat is associated with strategies to avoid information that is likely to challenge meat consumption. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: