Imagine you’re sitting down to lunch and you order a sausage roll.
Though when it arrives, it’s accompanied by an unusual message.
“Many animals - pigs and cows - were slaughtered, suffered a cruel and horrible death and felt
pain to provide the meat for your lunch.”
So, do you still eat it?
And… why?
On the outside, this whole situation is decidedly uncomfortable.
You want to eat meat, but you also think that animal torture is immoral.
On the inside, your brain is freaking out.
This psychological conflict between people’s dietary preference for meat and their response
to animal suffering is known as “The Meat Paradox”
And your response to The Meat Paradox can tell you some pretty interesting things about
how you make decisions.
Now, think back to your sausage roll dilemma – and why you, potentially, still ate it.
You might say, "it's already on my plate.
What am I going to do?"
OR
"humans are a Super Predator and we’re meant to eat meat and we're just doing our pod in
the game of natural selection."
But Dr. Julia Shaw would call
bullshit!
I'd say that is the ultimate, ultimate cop out for trying to outsource morality.
Now Dr Shaw is a lecturer at UCL, and author of the new book EVIL, where I first read about
the Meat Paradox.
So, naturally, I wanted to speak with her to understand why we often repeat behaviours
when we know they’re harmful either to ourselves or others.
Or animals.
The meat paradox is the inconsistency between our belief that animals are cute.
And we need to protect them.
And we probably shouldn't torture them.
And on the other hand, eating them and turning them into meat and in the process, putting
them in factory farms and torturing them in various ways.
And so clearly these two beliefs are inconsistent with each other.
And that's what we call cognitive dissonance, is that we hold two beliefs at the same, and
the paradox lies in the middle.
Now it’s helpful to take a step back and understand where this idea of cognitive dissonance
came from
The idea behind cognitive dissonance actually came from a study in the 60s by someone called
Festinger, who took participants and made them take spools and put them in a tray.
And then he had participants fill the tray was spools, and then he had the dump them
back out and do it again.
So back in, back out it, back in, back out.
And so he made them do these really boring tasks.
And the idea was that they would, after they did this really boring task, go to the next
participant, say that it was a really fun study, and then they would get either paid
$1 or they'd get paid $20 to say this lie.
So either you can say I got paid 20 pounds.
And so it was fine.
And so I'm, the reason I said at the reason I said it was an enjoyable task is because
I got paid money for it.
And so I don't need to change how I felt about it.
But if you only got paid one pound and instead that's not enough to make you feel like that
excuse is lying you instead.
And this is what he found a change how you feel about the task and you instead think
that you know what, putting spools in trays and taking them out, fine.
I actually had a pretty good time.
And so what's happened is that you've had this cognitive dissonance between these two
things at you.
The thing he didn't like to do, saying you liked it and you had to bring them into alignment
somehow.
And so he called this experience of having this too.
Inconsistent beliefs, cognitive dissonance.
And this inconsistent behaviour happens in lots of other areas.
So on the one hand we think that it's not okay to underpay people or to put people in
really dangerous working conditions.
And yet we show up at cheap shops and we buy things that are really cheap just because
of the price tag.
Um, so there's that.
And then there's other more complicated things like, like porn where on the one hand, it's
not okay to pay someone to have sex with you, but porn is legal in many countries where
prostitution is not.
So there's a lot of inconsistencies on very low levels but also and more extreme or more
severe levels.
Um, that really point to questions as to how do we deal with this as human beings?
How do we deal with these inconsistencies?
Now, back to The Meat Paradox
And so what we need to do is either we need to excuse me, eating by saying it's okay because
we need it.
It's okay because it's culturally something.
It's something we do, or we need to be Vegan and actually be consistent with our cute animals
approach and say, you know what?
It's not okay to turn animals into meat because they're cute.
And so you're a consistent in your actions and your thoughts.
What does our response to the meet paradox say about ourselves?
I think it's shows that we are often deeply inconsistent in our morality.
I think that meat is one good example where there's lots of excuses.
We're constantly telling ourselves a story that it's okay to do so because everybody
else was doing it.
Because there's this industry and it's not our problem.
Um, and I think it's, it's just reflected on in so many ways on it in other industries.
And so we just need to be very, very careful that we can at least accept the fact that
we're being hypocritical and don't get angry.
For example, when someone challenges us and says, if there are problems with that behaviour,
uh, instead that we actually reflect on it.
And then if it isn't consistent, that ideally we do change our behaviour more in line with
our deeper, more compass and we stop, for example, eating as many animal products.
We stop polluting the planet like crazy and we stop buying cheap clothes just because
of the price tag
At this point, you still may ask… who cares?
Or what do I do now?
If you can bring your behaviours more in line with your moral beliefs, that’s great.
But the most achievable things you can do is not criticise others for acting in ways
that go against your beliefs.
When we act in these conflicting ways ourselves we make these post hoc excuses, we justify
it and mentally we’re at ease, we feel fine.
But when others behave in this way we’re highly critical.
There is no solution for The Meat Paradox but there is a message wrapped up in the sausage
roll.
We’re all inconsistent beings.
And when we can’t behave better, we can be more understanding of others and treat
them better.
So, be nice.
Now a few years ago I watched this New Zealand documentary called The Science of Us that’s
about this huge longitudinal study in Dunedin that’s been following a group of more than
a thousand people since they were born almost 40 years ago.
The findings from it were so interesting, I think about it all of the time, and I’m
stoked to find that it’s now available of CuriosityStream, who is the sponsor of today’s
video.
They’re a subscription streaming service with thousands of documentaries, nonfiction
titles and originals from some of the world's best filmmakers.
Unlimited access starts at just $2.99 a month, but for BrainCraft viewers, the first 30-days
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Thanks!