Cognitive Dissonance
My doctoral dissertation, written in 1978, used cognitive dissonance to understand behaviors in a bank’s corporate team tasked with creating new training programs. We were looking at the same information, but everyone was using it to fortify different positions. We had gathered the information from face-to-face interviews, in-person observations of programs, student comments, and final evaluations. I don’t recall that we used any numeric measurements as there was more to choose from at that time: numbers were not as deified as they are now. I might call this the era of quality measures, as they’re now known. I take pleasure in even thinking about these good old days.
Once we had all the information, the team would sit and analyze it together—sometimes this would take a few days. Then we would put recommendations in a final report (on paper) and present it up the hierarchy for decisions and funding. Today we speak about “slow” leadership, slow food, slow lifestyles. Those of us working before twenty-first-century cyber-speed took hold know what the concept of slow means. It worked well—we had time to collect good information, to think it through together and enjoy working together as a team. Sigh.
I used cognitive dissonance in my dissertation to understand what, at that time, felt strange. There we were, looking at the same information whose conclusions felt obvious to me, and each person was coming up with very different, even opposing conclusions. I was young—I still believed in rational analyses, so their behavior was a surprise. But not now. Cognitive dissonance is the norm, visible everywhere, and I no longer expect to see rational behavior employed in decision making. However, I still expect it at home and with my own colleagues.
Cognitive dissonance is a well-established theory of human cognition. Each person has sense-making patterns of how things work, developed over time from experiences, acculturation, and other developmental influences. Our view of how the world works gets patterned into our brains as physical neuronal pathways. These habitual responses act as filters for information.
Habits save time: it’s easier to do the same thing, or think the same thing. Changing our minds takes attention and work.
And we couldn’t get through a day if every situation was treated as new. However, when we are looking at information that could be important, dismissing it as familiar or responding habitually to it can be dangerous. Instead of seeing what’s new, we see the new through old eyes. And this gets us into trouble.
Even those skilled in the scientific method run into this perceptual problem. In his truly seminal book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn woke us up to the power of paradigms or worldviews that shape perception. He observed that scientists (even scientists) would behave as we all do when confronted with data that contradicted their working hypothesis. Either they would see only those pieces of data that confirmed their hypothesis, or they would twist their interpretation of the data so it was confirming or, in the extreme case, they would look at the data and physically not see it.18
To give credit to scientists, at least they have a working hypothesis that they’re testing. Most of us have no idea of the assumptions and beliefs we use to create our perceptions. We think we’re open-minded and curious when, in fact, we all suffer from “paradigm blindness.”19 This is the perennial problem with human perception that can only be solved through awareness. The nineteenth-century philosopher William James said, “As a rule, we disbelieve all theories and facts for which we have no use.”
Cognitive dissonance explains this phenomenon; it offers both a diagnosis and a remedy. First, we have to acknowledge that we’re all wearing blinders, every single one of us. Everyone has their view of reality, and it will always be dismally incomplete. Yet whatever the view, it’s essential to note that some views are more accurate and/or helpful than others, as they’re based on more information or life-affirming values. I have no patience with the prevalent attitude that “It’s all just story.” What might sound like acceptance or tolerance is much more likely to be dismissal. Or laziness. Not all stories are equal in their content nor their consequences. We need to look carefully at what happens with a story as it moves in the world; people need to be held accountable for what they put out there, especially in this “post-truth” era.
We do not see the world as an objective, self-existing reality. We can’t. Nobody can, even with advanced scientific equipment. We will never know if such a reality exists. What we do know is that the human brain processes information through a strong filter that has been unconsciously and consciously created as the means to interact with the external environment.
Everything alive has cognition and uses it to determine what to notice. We humans, with higher mental powers, complexify the process of cognition. We see the world through a well-constructed, tightly controlled personality. This is not a good thing: It reduces our cognitive capacity. Instead of being conscious, we are self-conscious. And this leads, as I’ve already noted, to our opinionated, popularity-seeking, narcissistic, self-protecting, fundamentalist, paranoid culture.
This would be bad enough if it was only a problem for individuals trying to make sense of an overly stimulating, confusing world. Increasingly cognitive dissonance is in politics, bringing a vicious intensity to debates, making it impossible to use reason to address our biggest problems. The rise of hate-driven right-wing political parties, even in formerly reasonable countries,20 and the increase in incendiary rhetoric from all sides, is evidence of how cognitive dissonance has replaced rational behavior.21
How is it, in the face of recurring natural disasters, that climate change still seems to be invisible—except to those affected by the most recent floods, fires, cyclones? How can so much evidence and direct experience of climate change remain invisible? Because of the power of human perception.