Cognitive dissonance: the enigmatic psychological force you didn’t know you already knew
And why we deal with it in some pretty strange ways
A Fox one day spied a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine trained along the branches of a tree. The grapes seemed ready to burst with juice, and the Fox’s mouth watered as he gazed longingly at them.
The bunch hung from a high branch, and the Fox had to jump for it. The first time he jumped he missed it by a long way. So he walked off a short distance and took a running leap at it, only to fall short once more. Again and again he tried, but in vain.
Now he sat down and looked at the grapes in disgust.
“What a fool I am,” he said. “Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping for.”
And off he walked very, very scornfully.
There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.
“The Fox & the Grapes”, from Aesop’s Fables
In the above short story, a fox who comes to terms with the impossibility of reaching his overly lofty goal ends up telling himself he never wanted it after all. The fox rationalises his new choice to not seek the grapes, which gives him comfort in the stress that arises when he confronts a desire he cannot realise.
But what, exactly, does this thought process involve? And why is this fabled example even relevant to this post?
1. “Consistency is key”
You’ve no doubt heard the mantra before, perhaps from the likes of successful self-help authors, entrepreneurs or wellness coaches. But it’s true in a deeper sense.
Humans are naturally drawn to consistency, partly because it paints a clearer and more predictable portrait of our world, and partly because it reduces the mental ‘friction’ of interacting with it.
We tend to keep our opinions and attitudes internally consistent, so that they may coexist harmoniously. Likewise, there is generally some consistency between what we say and what we do — we don’t like to be hypocrites after all. But what really tends to capture our attention, as psychologist Leon Festinger claimed, was the exceptions to otherwise consistent behaviour.
So, if we are to say that consistency is the normal thing (or to use Festinger’s preferred word, consonance), its opposite, inconsistency (or dissonance) is definitely not normal.
2. Getting familiar with dissonance
In social psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort experienced when holding two or more contradicting beliefs. It describes the uncomfortable tension that arises from having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs or attitudes, and being internally at odds with ourselves.
This internal conflict may motivate us to unconsciously adjust our thinking to make one belief more compatible with the other. Cognitive dissonance can defend bad ideas, warp reality and can be more obstinate than an immovable object. It’s the little voice that defends reality as we know it, turning every affront into an assault on our reality. Psychiatrist Franz Fanon described it well:
“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.”
What Fanon is indirectly referring to is the “backfire effect”, where, when presented with contradictory evidence, people may not change their erroneous belief but will strengthen it. Essentially, when your deepest convictions are challenged by accepted evidence, your beliefs will get stronger. The more evidence you give, the greater the resolve against it. Cognitive dissonance is about protecting a core assumption about how we perceive the world, so contradictory evidence is an assault on our familiar worldview.
Central to dissonance theory is that people are motivated to resolve the situation by the discomfort it causes. Fundamentally, as Festinger taught us, this inconsistency is physically uncomfortable, hence our unwavering desire to restore consonance. There’s some actual negative physical tension that you feel any time you recognise two inconsistent thoughts, or when something in your behaviour contradicts your true attitudes or beliefs.
Really though, it’s not that people just prefer consistency over inconsistency, it’s that we feel psychologically (even physiologically) urged to deal with the inconsistency between our thoughts, beliefs and actions. It’s not a matter of preference, but of a deep-seated drive to resolve this issue. Dissonance is not uniform, but has magnitudes. The more discrepant two cognitions are, the greater the magnitude of dissonance. Additionally, the more important these inconsistent cognitions are to the person, the greater the dissonance felt.
At its simplest, cognitive dissonance is about inconsistency, and finding ways to resolve it — of which there are a few.
3. Dealing with dissonance
As I’ve explored, cognitive dissonance is a highly undesirable mental state, prompting us to get out of it by any means possible. The presence of it gives rise to internal pressures to reduce or eliminate the dissonance, and the strength of this pressure is directly related to the magnitude of the dissonance experienced. Festinger compared it to a drive like hunger, where the presence of such discomfort leads to an action to reduce it. The greater the dissonance, the greater the intensity of the action to reduce it, as well as the greater the avoidance of situations that may exacerbate it. CD can be resolved by:
- Changing your thoughts to align better together
- Changing your behaviour
- Changing the situation or environment (if at all possible)
- Adding thoughts into the mix, to help rationalise the inconsistency
- Trivialising the inconsistency
Take the example of smoking. A smoker who justifies their habit with the thought that they exercise regularly and so are not compromising their health as much, despite retaining the thought that smoking is bad for them.
They might even say that they had a relative who smoked and lived until the age of 90, so perhaps smoking really isn’t that bad after all.
Alternatively, they may change their behaviour to be in line with their thoughts and quit smoking because they understand the risks and would want to see this reflected in themselves.
Generally speaking, however, these are all methods of rationalising behaviour or thoughts. Cognitive dissonance leads to rationalisation, especially when you yourself feel responsible for the resulting inconsistency, and when that inconsistency leads to consequences you don’t want.
A core tenet of cognitive dissonance theory is that people invested in a specific perspective will, when confronted with disconfirming evidence, expend great effort to justify retaining the challenged perspective. This is the process of “belief disconfirmation”. Suppose your viewpoint is challenged, with strong evidence or large backing. This causes cognitive dissonance that can be resolved by changing the viewpoint or belief under contradiction. But psychological consonance can also be restored by rejecting or refuting the contradiction, seeking moral support from similarly challenged individuals (see confirmation bias below) or even trying to persuade others that the contradiction is not real.
Moreover, people may engage in “self-justification”, a defence mechanism which describes how when a person encounters cognitive dissonance or a situation in which their beliefs are inconsistent with their behaviour, that person will try to justify the behaviour, often through specious arguments (known as Anangeon, or dicaeologia). They may also engage in ‘minimisation’, downplaying the significance of the behaviour which is responsible for the inconsistency, in order to manage feelings of guilt.
4. Don’t forget your biases
Unconscious cognitive biases are an integral part of understanding cognitive dissonance. People are plagued by unconscious biases.
Confirmation bias (or, as it could even be called, consonance bias) is central to it, as we seek, notice and remember confirmatory evidence that our choice was the correct one while ignoring, forgetting or minimising information that says the opposite. This links nicely into the idea of selective attention, distortion and retention, which suggests that we are more likely to accept and retain information that conforms to our deeply held beliefs and desires.
The bias blind spot is another crucial bias to be aware of, which asserts that we find it difficult to even recognise our own biases — troublingly ironic actually. More still, the Dunning-Kruger effect (where people — often mistakenly — believe themselves to be smarter than the rest of the population) also impairs our ability to battle cognitive dissonance, because we may underestimate its grasp on us.
5. Why should I care?
You probably are pretty smart, unconscious biases notwithstanding, but you definitely should care. Cognitive dissonance is something we all face on a daily basis, be it in our personal or working lives. Perhaps it’s a purchase we feel some buyer’s remorse about and search the web for other people’s good experiences with the product. Perhaps it’s that agonising feeling of breaking your new year’s fitness resolution just a month in.
The best way to overcome cognitive dissonance, though, is to understand it and learn more. Only then can we recognise it and think rationally about how we might restore some more consistency into our lives.
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