ABSTRACT
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 cognitive dissonance, and if so, how they may alleviate such tension, and suggests future research to help clarify a number of unresolved questions. From the review, it seems likely that children experience varying degrees of cognitive dissonance from eating meat – even at fairly young ages – and activists would be wise to target this group for change before behavior becomes more deeply entrenched.
