Cultivated Our sense of identity, morality, our gender norms — those things are all intersected with the foods we eat. In this area, there’s a psychological terrain where when people do eat meat and do care about animals, but then feel as though maybe their meat consump-tion is harming animals; that is psycho-logically uneasy for them to experience. There’s a lot of research on this idea of cognitive dissonance, of what hap-pens in the mind when people eat meat — especially when morality emerges to the forefront of their conscious mind. And that fills into a lot of attitudes that people have toward animals, and things like how much mental capacity do farm animals have. There’s research showing, for exam-ple, that when people eat meat, they are less inclined to say that cows and chickens and pigs can experience pain or happiness. And there’s experimental evidence looking at that, where if you literally randomize people to eat meat or not eat meat, just within moments after eating meat, they change their attitudes about animals experiences and mental capacities. are compelled by certain arguments and don’t change. And there are a lot of people who don’t really think about these things consciously, but then change their behavior subconsciously. We realized that many behavior changes [stem from] social norms and environmental or situational factors. So more than just your attitudes, what your family members and friends, your partner, your boss, your co-workers, your religious community or any other kind of community that you’re involved in — all those social networks that you’re a part of, first and foremost, are what will shape what you eat, more than just your own personal attitudes. That’s why a behavior change can be hard. The other reason is just the conve-nience, cost, availability factors. A lot of people’s eating decisions come down to what’s cheap, convenient and available. So, no matter what kind of Alt-Meat: Additionally, you partic-ipated in an overview of studies that evaluated how meat eaters may (or may not) be influenced to change their diets. What were some of your main findings? ROSENFELD: When you change peo-ple’s behaviors, there are so many fac-tors that go into that, and meat eating is no exception. Do they think that eating meat is good or bad? Do they think that eating less meat makes sense? That it has benefits, or not? You can change their attitudes in that sense. But then, even among a lot of people who do say, ‘Yeah, eating less meat is good,’ or, ‘Eating these kinds of meats is better,’ they don’t actually change their behavior, and that’s where we re-alize that just people’s attitudes aren’t enough. There are a lot of people who 32 Alt-Meat May 2025
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