Tag Archives: dissonance theory

How Far Can We Bend?

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It isn’t like there would be a ‘hard landing’ after escaping from the requirement to perpetuate the fantasies of the President.

Looking at the faces of members of the President’s cabinet as he takes off on another rhetorical tour through the weeds always makes me wonder what the absolute limits are for those who enable him. Think of all the pictures of the cabinet or business leaders lined up for a photo behind the President at the Resolute Desk or in the cabinet room. Most of the time those present seem to exhibit no obvious signs of embarrassment. Interestingly, except for J.D. Vance, few have also found reasons to be elsewhere.

Perhaps it is just me, but I see some signs of pain in the eyes of the Secretary of State whenever the President finds new ways to distance the United States from even more of its former friends and allies. Perhaps I’m wrong; maybe he is all in. But the photo above of Marco Rubio sitting on a couch in the Oval Office does not suggest a man relishing the role he has been asked to play. As with the others, there is an impression of non-engagement. I can’t imagine that Madeleine Albright, James Baker or John Kerry would have been so willing to keep their posts in order to serve an isolationist with contempt for America’s traditional friends. And being the Secretary of State during a period when fewer governments are welcoming must feel like something has gone wrong, especially when international cooperation is a virtual requirement for the position. It isn’t like there would be a ‘hard landing’ if he escaped to a position where he did not have to perpetuate the fantasies of the President.

To be sure, all of those who remain within the Presidential circle are ambitious weather vanes.  And ambition can make us live with a lot of dross to keep a dream alive. That was my excuse for sticking it out for a sociopathic department chair who once promised to doom any chance I might have for a promotion. Luckily for me and what turned into a 47-year career, this person soon retired and expired. If this was a period when I wanted to move on, the idea also faded with my wife’s desire to stay in her local job. Personal circumstances often complicate the question of how far we will bend against from our values and goals.

We could easily extend this analysis to the scores of business and tech billionaires who are only too pleased to be photographed with the President. It’s a puzzle, since these folks could easily be elsewhere. Is their fiduciary duty to their shareholders really that vulnerable? Do they not sense the dissonance between their own productive work and the dithering in the Oval Office supports? Is there really that much of a transactional benefit to “playing nice” with an otherwise shallow leader?  Doesn’t owning an important newspaper and the world’s biggest mega-store free Jeff Bezos from the need to show up for another enabling event?

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The issue of self-induced obedience is not an obscure question. My guess is that half of the people I talk to about their work mention their immediate boss as a good reason to seek another position. Perhaps like the members of Trump’s cabinet, they stay because they sense that they are positioning themselves for a better final act in a newly reconfigured hierarchy. And then there are the mundane but sometimes overwhelming challenges of reorienting one’s personal or family life.

None of this should ignore the possibility that folks smiling behind this self-satisfied president actually share his vision. Never underestimate how a person’s cognitive elasticity can be stretched to blend to embrace even the most implausible fiction.

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.