Using Private Interviews to Deeply Probe the General Public’s Views on Farming Animals (Pax Fauna)

##narratives

We conducted interviews with ordinary American meat eaters in an attempt to discover what frames underpin latent public support for the goals of the animal movement, and what messages advocates could use to activate that support. We identified promising frames animal advocates can use to build support for a future without using animals for food.

We identified promising frames animal advocates can use to build support for a future without using animals for food. We also observed several common patterns people use to justify their opposition to the movement, patterns we believe advocates are not currently addressing. We experimented with several strategies to overcome these rationalizations and found which were most effective.

Throughout the study, the decisive factor determining how sympathetic an interviewee was to animal advocates was whether we successfully shifted their perspective away from the consumer frame. Our core recommendation is that animal advocates must work to replace the consumer frame: in our own thinking about farming animals, in our messages to the public, and ultimately, in the public discourse. In brief, other key takeaways are:

Much of the public, especially to the socio-political left, is deeply ambivalent about eating animals. Feelings of guilt and shame are hidden behind a layer of deliberate avoidance. When that layer is penetrated, people use rationalizations to resolve their ethical discomfort.
These rationalizations rely on deep values of culture, tradition, nature, and freedom of choice. The public is widely aware of the harms of animal agriculture. In addition to reminding people of those harms, advocates must address these deeper concerns.
The most effective pro-meat rationalization people have is futility: some version of “Things will never change, so it doesn’t matter what I do. Even if I stop, others will continue eating meat.” Stuck in the consumer frame, people cannot imagine society changing.
Overcoming futility is closely tied to replacing the consumer frame.
Use the metaphor of evolution to help people envision the change advocates know is possible: “Society is evolving beyond using animals for food.” Enrich the evolve together narrative with notions of modernity and progress. This was the most promising strategy for deactivating the consumer frame.
Besides futility, different rationalizations require different strategies. For instance, in our interviews culture justifications were best met with empathy and validation; freedom of choice was best met with a carefully considered counter-argument; and naturalness was overcome by simply stating the argument in its plainest form, allowing people to see the frame and the underlying illogic.

Others in the Pax Fauna sequence