How we love and hurt animals: Considering cognitive dissonance in young meat eaters

摘要: The son of Lawrence Kohlberg, a psychologist noted for his work on moral development, once spent six months while a four-year-old refusing to eat meat because he believed it was “bad to kill animals” (Singer, 2002). The father assessed this as a primitive failure to distinguish between justifiable and non-justifiable killing and eventually was able to convince his son to reclaim meat in his diet. How did Kohlberg accomplish this? What did his son come to believe about meat? About animals? Was he uncomfortable eating meat after his resistance phase? These questions inspired the present chapter. The basic issue is whether young meat eaters experience cognitive dissonance, and if so, what strategies do they adopt to reduce the tension? The chapter first reviews more established evidence on cognitive dissonance in adult meat eaters, considers more speculative information on whether young eaters experience …