A meaty problem: how people think about the morality of meat

This thesis explores moral psychology, moral motivation, and the role of social norms in explaining why people tend to be confident their meat eating is morally justified despite relying on internally inconsistent arguments, and why people tend not to be motivated to stop eating meat even if they become intellectually convinced they should. Analysing the moral psychology of meat eating reveals a lack of motivation to stop eating meat is not just a failure of reason, affect, or motivation. Rather, it is at least partially a product of both empirical and normative expectations about the people with whom one interacts.