Cognitive dissonance is defined as the discomfort a person feels when their behaviour does not align with their values or beliefs. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a person holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time. The inconsistency between what people believe and how they behave means that they will attempt to do things that help minimize feelings of discomfort such as by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding new information.
Does any of this sound familiar?
While this sort of behaviour can be seen in most aspects of life (such as when you know that smoking is bad for you, but you say you have to smoke because you’re very stressed without it) and can vary in intensity depending on the situation, it is something that is spoken about quite a lot in the vegan and animal rights movements. No doubt all of you will have had the experience of mentioning to someone that you are just considering going vegan, and suddenly there is a never ending stream of reasons and explanations as to why that is a bad idea, how your health will suffer and how they once knew a person who was vegan for three hours and suffered from protein deficiency.
Cognitive dissonance is also one of the biggest hurdles for the animal rights and veganism movement. What we eat is something that is very deeply rooted in our way of life, and to suddenly have that questioned can be a hard thing to come to terms with. It is why people can get very defensive (and no doubt downright aggressive) when the topic of veganism enters the conversation. I like to believe that the majority of the world are kind, compassionate people, and like to believe that the reason they have not yet converted to veganism is because they don’t have enough information yet. Now there could be the argument that this is my own level of cognitive dissonance – maybe people are actually worse in general than I would like to believe – but this is the approach I choose to take. In my experience, as soon as someone finds out that I am vegan there are a lot of questions about how I did it, how I find it, do I miss bacon…the usual suspects really. But as the conversation goes further, I do find that many people do start to reflect on their own behaviours more and I think this is an exciting first step for so many people. It opens up their mind into thinking that maybe what they have always believed – that we as a species need animal products in order to survive – is no longer true, and it slowly begins to start those thoughts rolling into actions.
But as I always say on this blog, the entire world and movement of veganism is constantly changing. Eight years ago, when I first decided to start my vegan journey, I had maybe two chocolate bars to choose from so was always very excited when a new option was added to the line up. In all honesty, I am now absolutely spoilt for choice. I have realised lately though that I still have that belief – that my options are limited – and so I pick up anything and everything I can find as I still think that this is the last time anything new will ever be released. But again if this blog has shown anything, it is that this isn’t true. So I am now trying to be more mindful of what foods I choose and whilst I am excited when new products are released, I try not to just stockpile on them all as though I am preparing for nuclear fallout.
Taylor Talks Vegan 