About Cognitive Dissonance...

There may be no more significant influence on communication effectiveness and our own capabilities to hear...and learn...than cognitive dissonance. This important concept shapes how we approach information, what we listen to, what we ignore, what we reinterpret solely to make ourselves comfortable. How closed are we to alternative viewpoints? How threatened are we by others' thoughts and opinions? Mass communicators must be familiar with this concept. Anyone dealing with other people should be aware of its influence. That's pretty much all of us, isn't it? --Prof. Weis

The Basic theory of Cognitive Dissonance

If you don’t take anything else away this term, make sure you understand “cognitive dissonance.”

This affects almost every aspect of your life. Your awareness of it—and how you deal with it—will influence whether or not you learn, grow and, frankly, change some of your views to the correct ones from incorrect ones through the gathering of additional information.

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term describing the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts (cognition) at the same time or engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs.

In simple terms, it can be the filtering of information that conflicts with what one already believes, in an effort to ignore that information and reinforce one's beliefs.

In detailed terms, it is the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, where "cognition" is defined as any element of knowledge, including attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior.

Leo Festinger at Left

The theory of cognitive dissonance states that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to reduce the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions. Experiments have attempted to quantify this hypothetical drive. Some of these have examined how beliefs often change to match behavior when beliefs and behavior are in conflict.

So if you believe something to be true and you hear information that contradicts that, you might tune it out, change the channel or avoid media outlets that might provide those differing points of view. You might hear part of the message and tune out another part. You might rearrange what you hear to conform to your views. Or you might just scream at the TV and call the person offering the opposing viewpoint at idiot…or worse.

Social psychologist Leon Festinger first proposed the theory in 1957 after the publication of his book When Prophecy Fails, observing the irrational belief persistence of members of a UFO doomsday cult and their continued and, in fact, increased belief even after the leader's prophecy failed.

The failed message of earth's destruction, purportedly sent by aliens to a woman in 1956, became a disconfirmed expectancy that increased dissonance between cognitions, thereby causing most members of the impromptu cult to lessen the dissonance by accepting a new prophecy: that the aliens had instead spared the planet for their sake.

Yes, this was a kind of extreme, whacky example. But it took something like that to catch the attention of researchers trying to explain it…and for Festinger and others to get the public to pay attention to this really powerful influence on their everyday lives as well.

Because we’re not talking aliens and UFOs; we talking about whether you even listen to other viewpoints or information once you’ve made your mind up about something because you just don’t want to face the prospect that a different point of view might be the correct one and you, therefore, might—dare I say it?—be wrong.

In popular usage, it can be associated with the tendency for people to resist information that they don't want to think about, because if they did it would create cognitive dissonance, and perhaps require them to act in ways that depart from their comfortable habits.

They usually have at least partial awareness of the information, without having moved to full acceptance of it, and are thus in a state of denial about it. Wow. Maybe the other candidate is really the best one. Maybe the warmer temperatures in recent years are just part of weather cycles thousands of years old. But, with additional information from a range of sources you just might conclude—factually/rationally—that your original views were correct and this time not just because you “felt” they were correct.

It’s not just one guy’s opinion, by the way. Several experimental methods were used as evidence for cognitive dissonance. These were:

• Induced compliance studies, where people are asked to act in ways contrary to their attitudes (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959; Harmon-Jones, Brehm, Greenberg, Simon, & Nelson, 1996);
• Post-decisional studies, where opinions of rejected alternatives after a decision are studied (Brehm, 1956; Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2002);
• Studies of how people seek out information that is consonant rather than dissonant with their own views, so as to avoid cognitive dissonance (Frey, 1982);
• Studies of how people respond to information that is inconsistent with their firmly-held beliefs, attitudes, or commitments (Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter, 1956; Batson, 1975; Burris, Harmon-Jones, Tarpley, 1997).
• Karl, Dolby, and Enrich (2000) found that open source developers who were offered jobs by large software monopolies, subsequently had more favorable views towards closed source software.

In summary…

Cognitions which contradict each other are said to be "dissonant," while cognitions which agree with each other are said to be "consonant." Cognitions which neither agree nor disagree with each other are said to be "irrelevant." (Festinger, 1957).

The introduction of a new cognition that is dissonant with a currently held cognition creates a state of "dissonance," the magnitude of which relates to the relative importance of the involved cognitions. Dissonance can be reduced either by eliminating dissonant cognitions, or by adding new consonant cognitions. The maximum possible dissonance is equal to the resistance to change of the less resistant cognition; therefore, once dissonance reaches a level that overcomes the resistance of one of the cognitions involved, that cognition will be changed or eliminated, and dissonance will be reduced.

This leads some people who feel dissonance to seek information that will reduce dissonance and avoid information that will increase dissonance. People who are involuntarily exposed to information that increases dissonance are likely to discount that information, either by ignoring it, misinterpreting it, or denying it.

You can, therefore, be open to divergent points of view…and, potentially, learn and grow or you can surrender to cognitive dissonance and, potentially, be wrong about just about everything.