Most meat-eaters accept the slaughter and consumption of animals by saying these acts are natural, normal, necessary, and nice — even if they oppose animal abuse. These conflicting ideas create a “meat paradox” between people’s dietary preferences and their moral response to animal suffering. The paradox exists with vegetarians, too, who eat dairy and eggs. Such rationalizations help people resolve the discrepancy between conflicting beliefs and create psychological distance between themselves and the animals they consume.

Most of the research around this kind of cognitive dissonance has examined attitudes toward the 80 billion land animals killed annually but rarely has considered fishes. Yet fishes are living, sentient creatures who feel pain and fear. How do people, especially those who’ve made a conscious decision to not eat land animals, morally justify killing and eating fishes? For this qualitative study, pescatarians were evaluated for cognitive dissonance and for how they resolved the discrepancy.

Researchers in the U.K. conducted individual, semi-structured interviews with 10 volunteers who self-described as pescatarian. Questions included:

• What motivated you to adopt a pescatarian diet?
• Is there a difference between marine animals and land animals to you?
• What criteria matter to you when deciding what marine animal to consume and where to get it from?
• What do you know about fishing practices, i.e., how the food ends up on your plate?
• Do you have any plans to change anything about your diet?

The researchers transcribed the interviews, identified patterns in the answers, and generated codes to categorize responses from the raw data. Three themes emerged from the participants’ statements that provided insights into how they created enough psychological distance to justify eating fishes:

1. “A fishy identity” describes things participants said that showed they’d align themselves morally with vegetarians and vegans. For instance, one participant commented, “I’m just I guess a vegetarian who occasionally eats fish.”

2. “Eating fish as the lesser evil” describes phrases that indicated the pescatarian was making a personal compromise by eating fish instead of land animals and reasons why it was impractical to completely stop eating fishes. For instance, one participant said, “Well, it’s catering to everyone’s taste because some friends feel very strongly about the fact that they want meat. And I thought, ‘Well, this is a compromise.’”

3. “How to become invisible” relates to perceptions that pescatarians had about the lack of intelligence or power of fishes, their dissimilarities from humans, and fishes not being visible in everyday life because they live in the water. For instance, one participant explained, “The faces and eyes that certain terrestrial animals make. I just feel maybe more connection also because they are more similar to us.”

From these answers, the researchers settled on a guiding theory called construal-level theory of psychological distance (CLTPD) to give the dietary ideologies of these pescatarians context. The theory examines how distance — whether in space, over time, hypothetical, or social — between a person and some other thing influences the way humans think about that thing. The researchers concluded that because pescatarians feel a physical distance from sea-dwelling animals and perceive fishes to be dissimilar from them, they may feel morally justified in eating them.

This study has a couple of limitations noted by the researchers. Participants knew that the primary researcher was a vegan, and this could have influenced their responses. Additionally, perceptions of crustaceans were not explored as fully as other marine animals, which could indicate a greater psychological distance.

Nonetheless, insights from this study reveal opportunities to discourage people from eating fishes. For instance, animal advocates could:

• Highlight the intelligence and emotional capacity of fishes;
• Show the behaviors of fishes that are relatable to humans;
• Emphasize similarities between fishes and other animals commonly kept as companions; and
• Use underwater video footage to make living fishes more visible in everyday life.

Advocates could also reframe the act of eating fishes so that it’s not considered a compromise to eating land animals by focusing on ocean sustainability concerns and how the fishing industry’s use of bottom trawling releases harmful greenhouse gases. Lastly, changing the identity of pescatarians from “vegetarians who eat fishes” to “meat-eaters” has merit.

By addressing these aspects, animal advocates can work to bridge the psychological gap between humans and fishes, potentially leading to more people reconsidering their consumption of marine animals.