Tag Archives: dissonance theory

Putting a Grand Theory to the Test

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At the Oval Office meeting the President took the opposite position of the one urged by Marco Rubio. Rubio suddenly fell silent. As the Guardian reported, “The image of a sullen Rubio quickly went viral online, with one social media user dubbing him ‘the corpse on the couch.’”

These are challenging times. But for a student of persuasion, the events unfolding within the national government provide a flurry of opportunities to evaluate a core theory of persuasion. Events have conspired to force people to acknowledge the contradictory actions of their leader which, in theory, should force them to resolve the discrepancy. A researcher just needs to notice a person’s apparent discomfort with a world that is suddenly different from what they planned. What will change?

Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance theory hypothesizes that individuals will feel some mental stress if new information presents an apparent inconsistency between two firmly held beliefs, or a belief and a behavior. The theory assumes that the inconsistency will trigger an impulse to reduce or explain away the discrepancy. Although this old and grand theory offers something less than a certain “if-then” result, it is also premised on the familiar psychological motive to resolve apparent contradictions. For example, suppose that you found out that a close friend has been charged with theft of pages from artbooks taken from a local library. If the information disturbs you, would you change your attitude about your friend? A hypothesized result is a new realignment that resolves into more consonant attitudes: perhaps less regard for the friend and a thought that the crime was a small one.  The theory’s original author, Leon Festinger, proposed that cognitive dissonance is the tension that results when two thoughts seem incompatible.

There are many possible  refinements and variations on this model, but even in its simplest form it offers a theory of how our attitudes can change. Festinger was also wise enough to never underestimate our willingness to deny a contradiction.

Consider another example. Imagine that you discovered a distant ancestor in your family-owned slaves before the civil war. How would you feel? Writer Cynthia Carr remembers her shame when she learned that fact about an ancestor. She sought to resolve the resulting dissonance by telling an African American friend. For her, that comment reduced some of the dissonance. On the surface, at least, we want our mental life fit together in a more or less coherent whole.

And so we arrive at this moment in the nation’s fraught politics, considered in a few examples from the human dissonance machines in the White House. It appears that the admired business innovator Elon Musk may have a bit of a fascist streak, as demonstrated in his recent efforts to urge German voters to support a far-right party that has been more accepting of the nation’s Fascist past. Musk’s words were mostly an unwelcome intrusion into German and American politics, made even more so with Hitler-style arm salutes offered at Trump’s inauguration. What gives? The dynamic is the same if a person thought that reducing the costs of everyday goods would be Donald Trump’s top priority, as per the campaign. But his first big push has been to place tariffs on foreign goods coming into the country, which will likely raise prices for Americans. An unwelcome surprise? Similarly, if a person like Rubio thought Vladimir Putin is the true villain/aggressor of the Ukraine war, will they accept the President’s absurd judgment that Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is to blame? In the traditional American view, Putin is the anti-Christ and Zelensky is the patriot.

These and other reversals should produce a flood of dissonance for Trump supporters. Should they feel dissonance and buyer’s remorse over owning what demonstrators against Elon Musk are calling Tesla “Swasticars?” Or changing topics, does a daughter’s recent dismissal from her dream job at NOAA increase his dislike of Musk and Trump, who initiated all the massive federal job cuts?

Some politicians can pivot on dime if they are asked to square a circle. Doublespeak is just second-nature. Ask them their favorite color and it is plaid. Marco Rubio entered the last Oval Office meeting as an avid foe of Vladimir Putin and a supporter of Ukraine. By the end of that meeting he sat in silence as the President more or less took the opposite position. And so the image of a sullen Rubio. The fact that a committed belief can be so easily discarded is one reason Congress as a whole is held in such low esteem.

Alternate Paths

As noted, Festinger was savvy and knew that humans could walk a crooked path out of an obvious contradiction. But one final example surprised me. A recent Associated Press report followed a young new hire in the Forest Service who had barely begun her work before she was fired: a result that devastating to her. As she was modeling her new uniform some of her relatives unhelpfully noted that the reduction was probably necessary. They thought she had too many co-workers. The worker was rightfully unprepared for the personal she experienced for privileging the faux urgency of job reductions over dismissal of her own achievement. Dissonance Theory is useful, but when a predicted outcome fails to materialize, it can also point to other factors, like how cruel American life has become.

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Portions of this essay are adapted from the Author's Persuasion and Influence in American Life, Eighth Edition.

 

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The Sentimental Appeal of Live Rounds

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                                            Death of Tecumseh, Part of the Frieze in the US Capitol Rotunda

The man with a gun is a familiar American stereotype. Guns are enshrined in our history, art, and even laudatory self-definitions.

A lot of our friends around the world must wonder why we Americans are so willing to tolerate the murder of innocents brought down by private arsenals of weapons. Many warn their citizens about the risk of getting shot while visiting the United States. The nation is awash in guns that would never be used for authentic hunting. Yet, we continue to invoke a “personal freedom” and a misreading of the badly-written Second Amendment to mitigate our own cognitive dissonance. As we like to point out, our national history was secured by people willing to look down the barrel of a rifle.

More than most nations, the U.S. has been defined by lethal firearms kept by ordinary citizens: muskets in the revolutionary war, rifles during the western expansion that ostensibly “tamed” the prairies and its native populations, and military arms from the “arsenal of democracy” that now serve a useful purpose in Ukraine. But as sure as darkness follows day, we must add the private armories of citizens frightened of sharing the culture with those of a different hue. Virulent nativism is again rampant in the United States, and legally purchased pistols and automatic weapons regularly show up in the hands of recluses in Buffalo, Pittsburgh or Las Vegas, most festering with conspiracy fears.

As a child of the west, it was my birthright to have a toy six shooter by the age of 6 and a BB gun soon after. By the time I was in the Scouts, I and my peers were routinely sent to the shooting range for lessons with the NRA on how to handle a rifle. Even Disney reminded us that every homestead needed the protection of a good man like Davy Crockett, who could shoot straight and protect lands that needed to be “settled.”  The cycle for many young men is now completed with gun shows, shooter games and live or filmed war reenactments. Those without the benefit of the communication skills that come with social intelligence are especially primed to game their way to the idea of a  quick “solution” to perceived grievances.

Too many take comfort in the American catechism of the “right to bear arms.”

The man with a gun is a familiar American stereotype. Guns are enshrined in our history, art, and even laudatory stories we tell about ourselves. We can see it in the monumental frieze ringing the Capitol Rotunda (above), in all of the video cowboys of the 50s and 60s and modern versions of the same genre. The film character Alec Baldwin was portraying in the ill-fated Rust aimed for show but killed for real. That accident repels, but—given the American narrative—never quite enough to unseat the attractions of yet another story about the wild west.

If we could think of our society as a person, we might imagine it as suffering from an incurable addiction to mostly sentimental narratives stitched around a misunderstood foundational document. This addiction is fed by stories of shooters and redeeming enforcers, but none of the fiction can match the horror of 211 American mass shootings so far this year.1 So, we mourn the children and adults bleeding out on the floors of schools, stores, and churches.  And we muster anger at the rare, lethal and deranged Americans that see a gun as a tool of self-expression. The bad guys in other modern societies like Norway or the U.K. are mostly captured by unarmed police. But in our stand-your-ground culture, criminals–and those among us who anticipate that they might be their victims–are armed to the teeth. The local bait shop in our affluent nearby town of 500 not only sells fishing supplies, also Glocks and ammo as well.

Addictions are notoriously difficult to break. And in our media we continue to celebrate the history and lore that is constructed about the nation’s many violent conflicts. They have become a buffer against accepting that our addiction to the bullet is any more serious than other human frailties. Even against the wishes of many Americans, we don’t seem to have the political will to disarm. So our recidivism is guaranteed.

A large segment of the political class has learned to look away, or to recite the familiar litany of prayers for the innocents on one day, while some return to stoked-up racial fears the next. Even though too many have lost their birthright freedom to live, most of the rest of us still take comfort in the tired catechism of the “real” freedom in the “right to bear arms.”

Most cultures would not tolerate a policy or cultural routine that enables the massacre of its citizens. But it seems that we have our reasons.

1 Gun Violence Archive, https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting, Accessed May 18, 2022.