EvC Forum: Cognitive Dissonance and Cultural Beliefs

Many of you will know that I often invoke cognitive dissonance in these debates and many may feel that this is over-stating the issue. In actuality, imhysao⁽¹⁾, it is very likely I am way understating the issue.

First, I need to update what I usually post on this issue from wikipedia, as it has been modified since 2010:

Cognitive dissonance - (Wikipedia, 2012)
Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously. In a state of dissonance, people may feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment.[1] The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements.[1] An example of this would be the conflict between wanting to smoke and knowing that smoking is unhealthy; a person may try to change their feelings about the odds that they will actually suffer the consequences, or they might add the consonant element that the smoking is worth short term benefits. A general view of cognitive dissonance is when one is biased towards a certain decision even though other factors favour an alternative.[2]

Cognitive dissonance theory warns that people have a bias to seek consonance among their cognitions. According to Festinger, we engage in a process he termed "dissonance reduction", which he said could be achieved in one of three ways: lowering the importance of one of the discordant factors, adding consonant elements, or changing one of the dissonant factors. [5] This bias gives the theory its predictive power, shedding light on otherwise puzzling irrational and even destructive behavior.

Lowering the importance of conflicting information is usually done in several ways: attacking the messenger (ad hominem), denial, calling the evidence lies or part of a conspiracy theory, for instance.

Adding consonant elements would involve looking for information that supports the original belief, regardless of the value of the source (this explains the creationist use of creationist websites rather than for instance), while ignoring any additional dissonant information. This involves Confirmation Bias⁽²⁾.

Changing one of the dissonant factors would involve correcting dissonant information that is false or changing the original belief to accept the contradictory information. This is similar to the process in science of changing an hypothesis that is contradicted by new empirical evidence (from testing etc) so that the hypothesis explains the new evidence as well as the original evidence: the dissonance is removed and the hypothesis can undergo further testing.

The problem with changing beliefs is that usually they can be core beliefs with a lot of emotional attachement, which results in anger that it is challenged and can lead to the irrational or destructive behavior noted above. This also often involves beliefs learned at an early age, which then involves the irrational primacy effect (see confirmation bias, early information).

This just covers the basics and an individuals initial response/s to contradictory information.

Note that cognitive dissonance is not necessarily a bad thing - it can be used in schools to spur students to find resolutions of the dissonant information by further study and it is actively sought in science with testing hypothesis - especially in situations where people are willing to change beliefs and opinions when presented with new information.

What I want to discuss here goes deeper into this issue for people as parts of groups with similar thoughts/beliefs/opinions, ones where the belief\opinion is entrenched and deeply held:

Cognitive dissonance - (Wikipedia, 2012)
Dissonance is aroused when people are confronted with information that is inconsistent with their beliefs. If the dissonance is not reduced by changing one's belief, the dissonance can result in misperception or rejection or refutation of the information, seeking support from others who share the beliefs, and attempting to persuade others to restore consonance.

An early version of cognitive dissonance theory appeared in Leon Festinger's 1956 book, When Prophecy Fails. This book gave an inside account of the increasing belief that sometimes follows the failure of a cult's prophecy. The believers met at a pre-determined place and time, believing they alone would survive the Earth's destruction. The appointed time came and passed without incident. They faced acute cognitive dissonance: had they been the victim of a hoax? Had they donated their worldly possessions in vain? Most members chose to believe something less dissonant: the aliens had given earth a second chance, and the group was now empowered to spread the word: earth-spoiling must stop. The group dramatically increased their proselytism despite the failed prophecy.[14]

(see also the Great Disappointment (occurred in 1944))

Instead of discarding their belief, it apparently became stronger due to the group choosing a modified belief that allowed\explained the conflicting information. We've seen similar modification of belief in the creation\evolution debate, where we now have micro-evolution accepted (variation and adaptation), but macro-evolution is still rejected\denied, and the new emphasis on "information" without any real attempt to quantify and evaluate it.

Proselytizing is, of course, a way of adding consonant elements, by adding people to the group holding the belief (which implies that anyone proselytizing may be experiencing cognitive dissonance ... ). The larger the group the less it seems that the belief is in conflict and more likely it appears that the contrary evidence is wrong to those in the group (it is less important, false or it is a conspiracy etc).

Fundamentalist Evangelical Christians that believe in a young earth form such a cult/ural group of self-supporting, confirmation biased, entrenched, believers, and they are the main source of misinformation confronted on this forum. This also affects American politics detrimentally.

Politics is another area where you have emotionally held basic culturally entrenched beliefs\opinions that are in conflict (liberal vs conservative) where there is little objective empirical evidence that clearly supports one view over another.

Cognitive dissonance is visible causing conflicts around the world: when we include other fundamentalist groups and political groups this can be seen to be a primary source of conflict around the world. This is serious, and we need to learn how to deal with this problem, to wean people from irrational (illogical) and delusional (contradicted) culturally entrenched beliefs and stop destructive behavior (suicide bombing?).

Confronting them head-on (as we tend to do in these debates) does not seem to work, especially on the culturally entrenched, deeply held beliefs, in fact it appears to make it worse (foreveryoung comes to mind as a recent example). Compassion is needed, but also a more nuanced approach, questioning rather than challenging.

For me, science is a way of questioning the universe to ascertain what beliefs\opinions\concepts\hypothesis are more likely to be true, with the assumption that beliefs supported by evidence are more likely to be closer to reality than ones that are not supported, and that beliefs\opinions\concepts\hypothesis that are not contradicted by evidence are more likely to be closer to reality than ones that are contradicted.

See cognitive dissonance in education for some examples.

An open-minded yet skeptical approach is necessary, imho, to develop a personal world view that explains all the evidence with minimal cognitive dissonance and minimal reliance on confirmation bias.

Enjoy

⁽¹⁾ In my humble yet sometimes arrogant opinion ...

⁽²⁾ Note this is now updated from previous postings with a 2009 reference:

Confirmation Bias (Wikipedia, 2012)
Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.[1] People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. For example, in reading about gun control, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.

Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in military, political, and organizational contexts.

( ... the invasion of Iraq comes to mind ... )

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