A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

It’s a classic.  A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance lays out Leon Festinger’s theory about how and why we change our attitudes.  More than 25 of the books that I’ve reviewed contain a direct reference to “cognitive dissonance.”  It underlies theories of change at personal, organizational, and societal levels.  The fundamental core is simply that individuals strive for consistency in themselves.  They want their behaviors to match their values and their values to match their words.  From this simple premise, research has tried to explain the conditions under which we’ll change to reduce discrepancies.

Competing Cognitions

Festinger’s word for inconsistency is “dissonance.”  Dissonance, he argues, is an unpleasant state for humans; as a result, we’d take actions to reduce the dissonance.  The strategy would depend on the cognitions in conflict.  He describes cognitions as congruent or dissonant with one another and can be placed on a scale from important to unimportant.  He proposes that only important cognitions in dissonance with one another would provide sufficient drive for change.

There are several things that can make thoughts incongruent (dissonant) to one another.

1. Logical Inconsistency – Logically, the two thoughts cannot both be true.
2. Cultural Mores – The culture may not accept our thoughts.
3. Specific Encapsulation – Specific thoughts may be included within generic thoughts. I mentioned in my review of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) that Al Campanis considered Jackie Robinson a good man and a great baseball player – and yet would have been seen as a racist today.
4. Past Experience – The way that we’ve acted is inconsistent with who we want to be.

Resolving Dissonance

The degree of dissonance is influenced by the number of related cognitions.  Cognitions don’t exist in isolation.  There are many related thoughts and beliefs.  When we experience dissonance, we experience it as the gap between clusters of thoughts.  The greater the number of thoughts and the greater their importance to us, the more likely we will experience dissonance – and change.

Festinger proposes that we’d only move one of the dissonant thoughts (or block of thoughts) to resolve the dissonance.  We’d move whichever seemed easier.  However, changing an opinion isn’t the only approach that we have to resolving the discrepancy.

The truth is that we can change the importance of the cognitions.  For instance, if we see ourselves as a generous person, and we walked past the panhandler without making eye contact, we may decide that not being generous in that situation doesn’t mean we’re not generous – we can decide that they weren’t really in need.  Allowing us to deemphasize our behavior and reduce the pressure of the dissonance.

A different approach is to simply forget.  We know that the more salient things are in our attention, the greater we experience discomfort associated with dissonance.  By reducing our ability to recall the situation – by forgetting – we reduce the dissonance and discomfort we feel – and thus reduce the pressure to change.

The other way to resolve the dissonance, the one that makes it so interesting, is to make a change.  Change or Die explains how difficult it is to create change in an individual: 80% of people don’t change their behaviors after a heart attack, and we have 66% recidivism rate after two years.  (Recidivism refers to previously incarcerated people being convicted again.)  So, while the forces of cognitive dissonance can be powerful, they’re only valuable when harnessed properly.

Why We Don’t Change

With a powerful psychological force driving us towards consistency, why don’t we change our inconsistent beliefs?  The first reason is because once you believe something, it’s hard to “unbelieve” it.  It’s like trying to not think about white bears – it’s not possible.  (See White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts.)  If we believe that grass is green, it’s hard to not see the grass as green.

Another factor is the “freezing factor.”  Kurt Lewin proposed that change required unfreezing, changing, and freezing the change.  That is, there’s a certain inertia around the way we do things today.  To accomplish change, we must break through this inertia, make our change, and ultimately recreate inertia around the new, changed, behaviors.  (See Lewin’s change model for more about this change process.)  Following the model, another reason we don’t change is because the freezing effect is overly powerful over time.  Aspects of cognitive dissonance reinforce the decisions that were made and approaches that are in use by amplifying their benefits or minimizing the benefits of the alternatives.

The mere fact that we’ve made a decision creates dissonance at some level.  For everything we’ve decided, we’ve said no to something else, whether directly or indirectly, because of a limitation of resources.  The degree of dissonance seems to increase substantially the more similar the weight and utility of the options are.  The closer the options are, the greater cognitive dissonance will cause them to spread.

Cognitive Disengagement

It is, however, possible to disable the power of cognitive dissonance.  Simply removing the perception of choice eliminates the power of cognitive dissonance to help reinforce the change.  A judge orders a person to attend a rehabilitation program.  The result is the person feels forced, and their perceptions of their abuse of a substance is likely to change less than had they made the choice on their own.  But more importantly, it’s not the degree of coercion that matters, it’s the perception of it.

“But there really wasn’t a choice” is a phrase that indicates the person either sees the decision as not close, and thus doesn’t induce cognitive dissonance, or outside of their control, which also neutralizes any cognitive dissonance forces.  Free choice remains an essential part of the formula for leveraging the power of cognitive dissonance.

Memory

We forget that memory is subject to revision.  We ignore the fact that memories aren’t like film, nor are they immutable.  In fact, there’s plenty of evidence to support the fact that our memories are reconstructed in the moment and incorporate details from our current attitude and mood that weren’t in the original memory.  One of the techniques used to eliminate dissonance is to adjust our historical memories to support our current world view.  For instance, if we previously had seriously considered alternatives to the car we purchased, our decision will reduce the degree to which we can recall having seriously considered those alternatives.

Our memories are wiped clean from our ability to recall them, they’re deemphasized in importance, or we simply rewrite the narrative of the memories to comply with our overall decision.

Mere Ownership

There’s a measurable effect that owning something has on the degree to which we’ll like it.  Barry Swartz shared this in The Paradox of Choice.  However, Festinger explains that the effect, while measurable, isn’t particularly strong.  That is, the ownership effect is something that’s real, but it doesn’t seem to sway our opinions that much.  There are a number of other smaller biases and motivators that are discussed in Influence and Pre-Suasion.  While individually they may not have much impact, collectively they may be a way to motivate change.

Just Enough

There’s a bias in trying to generate change that we should overwhelm the target with reasons why change is the right answer.  It requires a lot of energy and is therefore exhausting.  What cognitive dissonance proposes is that we should provide just enough motivation.  Overwhelming them with evidence is, on the surface, the right answer, but if any of our evidence cracks or is invalidated, the whole commitment can crumble.  If we can find ways to create difficult decisions that demonstrate that there is choice, we can leverage the power of cognitive dissonance to anchor the change – just like Lewin recommended.  (See Resolving Social Conflicts and Field Theory in Social Science.)

Loose Lips Sink Ships

During World War II, there was concern that individual information held by individuals could be assembled into useful information.  The result was a campaign to discourage people speaking about what they did know that might be assembled into useful information.  The problem was the campaign wasn’t particularly effective, and research was done on how people viewed the information that they had.

They didn’t think that mentioning their child had moved from one base to another useful.  Nor did they believe that indicating an order or a shipment of some material could be useful.  However, this is exactly the kind of information the campaign was designed to prevent being shared.  Pamphlets were generated and approaches attempted.  The result was that most people didn’t change their perceptions of whether they had information to keep secret.

The problem, in this case, is that there was no cognitive dissonance, because the idea couldn’t be generated that individuals did have information that they shouldn’t discuss openly.  The desire to be friendly couldn’t be brought into conflict with the need to protect our interests.

Discounting the Individual

One of the ways that we resolve dissonance is the internal equivalent of shoot the messenger.  We discount the information by invalidating the person who delivered the message.  This is a logical fallacy but one we trick ourselves into none the less.  This is one of the drivers for why we are all Going to Extremes.

Reality

Ultimately, one expects that reality will change people to be more in line with what they experience.  However, reality’s power to change beliefs of people is limited.  There is no end to the capacity of the human mind to come up with theories for an experience.  Geocentricism required complex corrections to account for the fact that it was fundamentally wrong, but it didn’t stop people from believing it – vehemently.  Reality was the same.  It was sending clear messages, and these messages were being interpreted incorrectly.

Science has a long history of scientists who believe things that have been long disproven.  Despite clear evidence, some people remain unmoved.

Immovable Beliefs

A portion of Japanese nationals who requested repatriation during World War II were held in camps and ultimately shipped back to Japan.  Despite being told repeatedly that the US had won the war, they returned on the ships hoping to hear the “truth” that Japan had conquered the US.  These beliefs persisted even after they landed and were told by Japanese nationals of the devastation and the surrender.

Similarly, numerous cults have made prophesies about the end of the world.  Their dates come and go, and instead of accepting that the prophecy was false, they invent elaborate stories about how they were wrong about the date – or how their faithfulness has saved the world.  So, while reality can be a powerful force, it’s not an all powerful force that can combat all delusion.  Sometimes, we need to recognize that we can’t get everyone into the conflict position required to recognize the power of A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.