Cognitive dissonance is a theory in social psychology that reminds me of physical homeostatis. It refers to misalignment of a person's 1) actions and 2) beliefs. The theory posits that this misalignment creates mental discomfort that people wish to minimize in one of several ways (as an attempt at achieving cognitive consonance or alignment).
To clarify, I will break down the words that define this theory. the words 'actions' and 'beliefs' are broad terms. Actions can also be referred to as 'behaviors' while beliefs can include attitudes, values, desires, ideas and so on. The word 'cognitive' derives from the term 'cognition' which refers to thoughts and ideas. Dissonance refers to discrepancy or a lack of congruity. Another way of understanding the theory is that it refers to 2 thoughts that are in disagreement. Examples of thoughts that are in opposition with each other include the following.
i ) Knowing that cigarette smoke is carcinogenic but
ii) wanting to smoke anyway.
i ) Knowing of abuse in a relationship but
ii) justifying it with some type of excuse.
The degree of dissonance
The degree to which someone feels dissonance depends on the magnitude of the dissonance and the depth of the value. Beware that, the greater the magnitude and deeper the depth, the greater the feeling of discomfort. Consequently, the magnitude of the response is likely to follow suit.
Responses & consequences
There are different types of response. They all relate to changing something; the action, thought or, entirely outside of the situation, oneself.
1) change action
2) maintain the dissonance. You accept it as being acceptable based on a justification or lie. This can have harmful consequences. At some level, such persons understand the hollow nature of their reasoning and can ultimately develop a low self esteem.
Here are some examples of these types of response to cognitive dissonance.
1) Change action & or cognition. The person changes his action to become aligned with his thoughts, thereby creating true cognitive consonance. Such a person is fully in touch with reality.
Example(s):
- A smoker knows that smoking is carcinogenic and stops smoking.
- Someone's actions cause harm against someone else and stops taking that action.
2) Maintain the dissonance but change your perception of it to establish a false sense of alignment.
- Excuses, demonizing the victim, scapegoating someone else. This is common in toxic relationships. The narcissist and flying monkeys create false narratives.
- "(s)he acts badly but the other person was bad."
- "He forcibly had sex with her but she dressed provocatively / but she is his wife."
- "They acted unfairly but that happened so long ago that it no longer matters."
- "Racial profiling happens at the borders but those people are the greatest perpetrators of rape and theft and therefore deserve to be checked more than other people."
Quite apart from the difficulty of breaking addiction, the smoker does not stop smoking. He changes his thoughts about smoking. He reasons with himself to minimize his mental discomfort. His thoughts find a way to justify the fact he has not stopped the dissonant action such as in the following.
- "I am not smoking enough to cause damaage".
- "Smoking is better than other bad habits. It eases my stress. If I quit, I will find another habit that is worse."
Contradictory information
- "Fake news!" aka "They are lying"
Peer pressure (Cult scenarios, influential people)
- "Everyone else is doing it!"
Entirely ignore and deny the obvious disonance. Essentially this gives a pass to the wrong doer and victims overcompensate in an attempt to fix things. Arguably, when victims overcompensate, they assume guilt and responsibility within a situation which is a subtle acceptance of the scapegoat role.
- Wives pretend they can not see the cheating behavior of their spouse. Essentially feeling a sense of guilt, these wives try to overcompensate by losing weight, dressing more nicely and so on.
- Exploited workers try to overcompensate by overextending themselves, thinking that this will get them the recognition. They think the bad treatment will stop ... when in reality, the exploitation does not stop.
- Abused children try to overcompensate by performing well at school, thinking that they will win the favors of their parents and the bad treatment will stop ... when in reality, the parent will never change.
A healthy way of dealing with your own Cognitive Dissonance
We all suffer some levels of cognitive dissonance. We hurt when we realize someone or something in which we believed is less than what we expected.
Become more mindful of your mental discomfort when faced with opposition, especially from a trustworthy source. Allow yourself to sit with the discomfort rather switch focus away from it.
CONTENT RELATED TO COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
- Character assassination
- The idiomatic fable of the Fox & Sour Grapes is a classic example of cognitive dissonance. When the fox' 1) desire did not match his 2) actions of attaining the grapes, cognitive dissonance occurred. The grapes were out of his reach. His resolution of this discrepancy was to pretend to change his belief by concluding that they were sour and undesirable anyway.
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