Out of sight, out of mind: how pescetarians manage dissonance by creating distance

Abstract

For many, there exists a cognitive inconsistency between the practice of eating non-human animals and the belief that animals are morally relevant. This juxtaposition has fittingly been described as the ‘meat paradox’. However, what can be said about the decision to eat only the flesh of fish? The present research seeks to understand what attitudes lead pescetarians to remove terrestrial animals from their plate but still include aquatic animals such as fish. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with self-identifying pescetarians and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three themes are presented which can be understood by reference to the construal-level theory of psychological distance. Fish were perceived as distant on multiple dimensions which resulted in speciesist (the idea that some species are more important and morally relevant than others) attitudes toward marine animals’ capabilities and the justification of pescetarianism as a compromise between debates of feasibility and ethical desirability.