ORWELL@TRIUMFRG.BITNET (02/06/90)
> Dave Cunningham's definition of cognitive dissonance: >The definition can get long winded, especially when people start giving >examples of types, or start sketching it out as set theory, but essentially >it means believing something is both True and False at the same time. This is incorrect. A "state of cognitive dissonance" occurs when becomes aware (on whatever level) that some aspect of one's internal mental model of the world (beliefs, emotions) conflicts with external evidence. "The world" includes (and, in fact, is often most prominent) the model of oneself. Cognitive dissonance, of itself, implies no value judgement of intellectual integrity. [Footnote: It seems that one trait of creative scientists (and perhaps of creative individuals in general) is that they can tolerate or even embrace cognitive dissonance on a more intense and extended level than others --- i.e. knowing that their current theoretical constructs are inadequate without embracing ad hoc explanations. (There is a famous quote by Einstein about the years of painful groping in the dark during his creation of general relativity.) ] The hypothesis (amply borne out by observation) is that human beings find cognitive dissonance painful and actively take steps to reduce it. "Cognitive dissonance mechanisms" refer to how this reduction of the tension between the internal mental model and external evidence is achieved. The most straightforward is that one realizes that one's internal model was previously in error in some respect, and one revises it accordingly. This obviously happens all the time, else we could learn nothing new. (E.g. non-pathological individuals do not try to sustain a previous belief in how often the subway trains run when they are confronted with new evidence.) The more interesting mechanisms are when one "protects" the existing mental model in the face of contradictory evidence -- generally when it involves some core beliefs. Probably the sharpest and clearest "public" cases are those of religious beliefs (true believers in the "paranormal" provide more good examples). E.g. I think it was the Jehovah's Witnesses who predicted **definitively** the end of the world during the first world war (this story, if I remember correctly is told in Martin Gardner's "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science"). When this didn't happen, what did the JW's do -- desert their faith en masse? No, they claimed (if IRC) that they world HAD ended, in some kind of "metaphysical sense", but people just hadn't noticed! The point being that they couldn't just shrug off the failure of the prediction. Apparently there is a whole book written by a psychologist devoted to the study of how people belonging to "modern" religious cults deal with the failure of "definitive predictions" -- generally, I guess, by the leader or leaders of the cult -- end of the world stuff. Most of the believers do not thereby reject the cult (some do). On a personal level, let us say one has just unjustly treated someone like shit, and one's internal model is that one is, after all, a pretty good person. There are 3 scenarios: a) Realize you have done wrong, apologize and attempt to make it right. b) Take no corrective action, stew over it, and decide that one is, after all, not such a good person. c) Take no corrective action, stew over it, and decide that the person you just treated like shit was in fact shit richly deserving your treatment, and that it wasn't your fault at all. ("It is human nature to hate those whom we have wronged".) Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that one must do **something**, and, for most people, c) is much preferred over b). Ron Balden