Bravo to the IAAP for inviting Cass Sunstein’s insightful essay on “deliberate ignorance,” then giving us a chance to comment. How is it that most people both eat animals and care about animals? Each year a staggering 86 billion land animals are labeled as “food,” then killed and torn to pieces, often on misery-filled factory farms. Can behavioral science insights help us better understand and reduce this immense animal suffering?

As an officer of the Psychology Coalition at the United Nations, and a co-founder of the annual APA Animal Summit, it seems best to share my comment in two parts, about (1) United Nations policy and (2) behavioral insights into animal suffering.

One:

To its great credit in 1951, the new United Nations nudged the Ford Foundation to create and fund the new concept of “behavioral science” to guide its “Project Five, designed to use empirical research to promote five global goals: (1) peace, (2) democracy, (3) the economy, (4) education and (5) human relations—issues highly relevant to the emerging UN” (Takooshian & Congress, 2020, p. 5). In 2018, under UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, the UN finally formed a dedicated Behavioral Science Group (www.unbehaviouralscience.org/), thanks in part to the sedulous leadership of psychologists Maya Shankar and Lori Foster (2016), to add a research component to its pursuit of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (www.sdg.org).

Since the origin of the UN, its purpose has expanded far beyond “world peace,” now with 17 SDGs to reduce diverse causes of suffering—poverty, discrimination, inequality, climate… But up to now animal suffering is conspicuous by its total absence from the UN agenda. The primary pro-animal initiative at the UN occurred on August 23, 2018, when the Global Animal Law (GAL) Association in Zurich submitted an 8-page proposal for an unprecedented UN Convention on Animal Health and Protection (https://www.uncahp.org/) to be adopted by 2029 by the UN General Assembly. But so far the UNGA remains far from adopting this even after eight years. Clearly animal and human suffering are both global problems, but UN leaders so far are focused only on one of these two. Might the UN Behavioral Science Group somehow add animal suffering to the radar of the UN, or not?

Two:

How can behavioral scientists help reduce animal suffering? To start, three facts seem clear:

(1) Pro-animal attitudes. It is natural for humans to bond with animals. At petting zoos world-wide, we see how eager children are to love and be loved by the gentle lambs, placid cows, playful pigs, and other barnyard critters. And of course billions of human families have one or more four-legged members whom they cherish. (2) Anti-animal behavior. Aside from a tiny percent of vegetarians, over 95% of people are omnivores who enjoy eating animals. (3) Dissonance. For omnivores, the so-called “meat paradox” is clear—the inconsistency between our pro-animal attitude and our anti-animal behavior. We try to justify our killing and eating of dead animals with the “four N’s,” that “meat eating is natural (we evolved to eat meat), normal (everybody does it), necessary (we need the protein), and nice (it tastes good)” (Zaraska, 2016, p. 52).

Each day in 43,000 McDonald’s restaurants world-wide, millions of children and adults savor their tasty bacon breakfast or hearty lunchtime burgers. What a clear example of Sunstein’s “deliberate ignorance and wanting to not know.” Many children are likely unaware of the origin of their crisp bacon or juicy burgers, and few urban adults have experienced the hideous sights, sounds, and smells of the slaughterhouse that killed these unwilling animals earlier that week. How many of these diners would be willing to kill the creature that they are eating?

Like many vegetarians, when Paul McCartney walks past the bloody meat section of his local market, he feels a combination of positive relief that he no longer has any part in this horrible system of factory farms, yet also negative remorse that he could not save the lives of these creatures that were all alive a week earlier. To remedy this, Sir Paul produced an unflinching 13-minute video, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian” (McCartney, 2010; www.meat.org). He matter-of-factly shows what mass media and agri-businesses (meat, poultry, dairy) deliberately hide from us--the unspeakable sights, sounds, and smells of hellish factory farms where sentient creatures end their short and miserable lives.

From 2010 till 2020, an estimated 20 million people have viewed Sir Paul’s message over 10 years. Using psychological acumen, the PETA webpage asked online viewers to agree to give up meat for 30 days in order view this video. In the language of social psychology, to temporarily “change their behavior to fit their attitude.” This is exactly the evidence-based method that the Great American Smoke-Out pioneered for one day each November since 1976, to help smokers free themselves from tobacco addiction by pledging to stop smoking for just 24 hours. If only PETA could share quantitative or qualitative information on the impact of Sir Paul’s behavioral intervention.

In my own in-depth survey on “Why (not) eat meat?” (Takooshian, in press), 16 people recounted their own diverse life experiences. As Sunstein might predict, we found most vegetarians had one thing in common –a transformative encounter with a slaughterhouse or factory farm, and being stunned by its hellish sights, sounds and smells. It is as if these people “awoke” to their own past behavior after years of “deliberate ignorance.” Indeed, could our current meat system survive without its reliance on total media secrecy? Based on Sunstein’s analysis: (1) Would deliberate ignorance be less possible if slaughter houses and factory farms were more exposed to public view? (2) Might public pressure cause factory farms to be reformed? (3) Would vegetarian behavior increase or not?

References

McCartney, P. (Director). (2010). Glass walls [Video]. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. https://www.meat.org/

Shankar, M., & Foster, L. (2016). Behavioural insights at the United Nations: Achieving agenda 2030. United Nations Development Program. https://www.undp.org/publications/behavioural-insights-united-nations-achieving-agenda-2030

Takooshian, H. & Congress, E.P. (2020). Behavioral Sciences at the UN: An overview. In E.P. Congress, H. Takooshian, & A. Asper (Eds.). Behavioral science in the global arena, volume 1: Addressing timely issues at the United Nations and beyond. Emerald Publishing. 
 https://psychologycoalitionun.org/454-2/

Takooshian, H. (in press). Why (not) eat meat? In G.J. Rich, H. Takooshian, S.D. Churchill, & N.E. Fry (Eds.), Human-animal interaction: Current perspectives. Springer Nature.

Zaraska, M. (2016). Mind over meat. Scientific American Mind, 51-55.