Embracing Cognitive Dissonance
I have struggled over the last several years to understand how some people can continue to believe different ideas that are so clearly false. The big one, that has been repeated over and over, is that the last presidential election was illegitimate, and that the wrong candidate was declared the winner.
There have been lots of others, however — childhood vaccines cause autism, global warming is a hoax, President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and the COVID vaccine causes heart attacks, changes your DNA, or implants a tracking chip.
None of these things are true, yet people continue to believe them. Part of the problem is that many of these thoughts are related to complex systems, and we are lazy. We like simple solutions rather than struggling through reams of complicated data. There are also issues of causation that can be hard to resolve. Some children are autistic, but can it be shown that this is the result of a vaccine? That requires strong statistical analysis to prove.
It turns out that there is another explanation that deserves consideration — cognitive dissonance. The American Psychological Association defines cognitive dissonance as "an unpleasant psychological state resulting from inconsistency between two or more elements in a cognitive system.” You might want to be healthy but eat a candy bar, and then feel guilty. Or you may really care about the environment, but love to drive your gas-guzzling sports car. You tell yourself that you’ve worked hard for your money, and deserve to have some fun. There are lots of examples that occur every day because we aren’t fully consistent with our values.
I have a friend who told me about a spiritual retreat where one of the first exercises the group did was to list their most important values. They wrote things like God, Faith, family, helping others, and being stewards of creation. The retreat went on, and near the end of the weekend, the group was instructed to develop two schedules: where they spent their money, and where they spent their time. Then they were asked to compare those schedules with the values that they listed earlier. Some people started to cry. For many there was no correlation between their values and their behavior, which put a focus on their cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance always feels bad. It may cause stress in the form of anxiety, shame, sadness, regret, or just a vague sense that something is not right. In order to alleviate these crummy feelings, a person may try to justify their conflict by blaming others or seeking out a new explanation. They may also try to find only information that confirms what they believe, or what they are doing. This is called confirmation bias, and has become a significant issue since the development of the internet has made it easy to find exactly what we want to hear.
The psychologist who first coined the term cognitive dissonance was Leon Festinger, in 1957. He had infiltrated a doomsday cult who believed that aliens were going to rescue them from the destruction of the world and take them to another planet. When the aliens didn’t show up on the appointed day, the cult suddenly wanted publicity to tell the world that due to their faith, the world had been saved. Rather than admit they were wrong, they made up this new story to relieve the conflict that they felt.
No one likes to be wrong. It feels particularly bad when one has invested a great deal (of time, money, or energy) in the belief that has been shown to be incorrect. When this occurs, people will go to great lengths to avoid admitting that they were wrong.
I have worked with a number of abused women who refuse to leave their violent relationships. They will tell me things like, “when he’s not drinking he’s wonderful,” or “it’s my fault for making him so mad.” It often takes years of conflict or some serious injuries before they are willing to admit that they have made a mistake and need to make a change. It’s this same cognitive dissonance process that can make it so difficult to leave a bad job, or to quit smoking, or to begin to understand that your choice of candidates was not the best.
Relieving Dissonance
There are some positive ways to deal with and relieve dissonance. It boils down to one of three things, each of which is challenging. To alleviate the conflict, a person can change their thoughts, their behavior, or their perceptions.
Changing thoughts, or cognitions, can be really hard when wrestling with a deeply held conviction, like a religious or political belief. If this belief is in conflict with behavior, it may have to be modified or rejected.
Changing actions can also be difficult, such as in cases of physical addiction or economic necessity. If the cognition can’t be changed, behaviors may need to be modified.
When neither behavior or thoughts can be changed, a person may have to change the way they think about their actions. A person who cannot afford organic produce may choose to buy canned goods from producers who meet certain criteria, for example.
Facing our cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, but it can be enlightening. If we were all strictly following our values, dissonance wouldn’t occur. When we begin to feel that little twinge of guilt or unexpected sadness, it can be helpful to take the time to sort out where it is coming from. Then maybe—just maybe—we won’t be putting ourselves in the position of justifying our belief in the aliens who never appeared, or the candidate who promised the moon, and never delivered.
