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In the 1950s, a cult in the U.S. believed the world would be destroyed by a flood on December 21st, 1954.
Many of its members were so convinced that they left their jobs and
gave away all their possessions. ...and then came December 22nd.
As you can imagine, the group felt a gnawing sense of discomfort. But they also contributed
a lot to the field of psychology. See, three social psychologists had infiltrated
this group, and one — named Leon Festinger — gave a name to the group’s inner conflict.
He called it cognitive dissonance, and it’s now a huge area of research. You’ve
probably even experienced it before. But cognitive dissonance isn’t always a bad
thing. In fact, it can be a major way we grow — at least, if you know how to spot it.
Cognitive dissonance is a state of uneasiness that happens when you have
inconsistent beliefs or behaviors. You may have felt it when you learned new
information about the world that contradicted something you’d believed for a long time.
Or maybe you learned something about your behavior that conflicted with your sense of self.
For example, someone might experience cognitive dissonance if they believe
they’re not a prejudiced person, but after a psychological test, they realize
they have a lot of implicit biases. This discomfort can come up in all kinds
of scenarios, though, and we can even see it in the brain — notably, in the region that monitors
errors in your thoughts and actions, the one involved in rationalizing and cognitive control,
and one likely involved in emotions, especially anger and disgust.
Of course, knowing how our brains respond to this stress doesn’t make
these feelings any easier — and it doesn’t make it easier to admit we’re wrong.
Instead, how hard it is to change your mind about something depends on what psychologists call
your “resistance to change.” And that trait depends on a few factors,
such as how much you identify with your belief, how much satisfaction you get from your behavior,
and how much pain or loss you’d have to endure to change those things.
For example, let’s say you see yourself as an advocate for the environment.
But then you learn that the company you work for makes, like, Evil Villain
levels of pollution and refuses to change. If you don’t like the job and you have another
opportunity, you could leave. Your resistance to changing your behavior would be pretty low.
But if you’ve been working there for years and are invested in the company, quitting would be harder,
because you’d experience more loss. Your resistance to change would be much higher.
One way to get around this would be to change your belief — to decide that, eh, maybe you
aren’t an environmental advocate after all. But if that’s not an option, your brain might try
other strategies to reduce your uneasiness. For instance, you might try to rationalize
your thinking or behavior by finding positive things about your company.
Or you might think of things that are even worse and make your job seem lovely by comparison.
Like, you might remind yourself that your company creates jobs and
a better quality of life for some people. Or you might read stories about other companies
that dump toxic waste into the ocean and tell yourself that your company is so much greener
than that. Then, you can keep thinking of yourself as an advocate with a clean conscience.
This is just one example, of course — cognitive dissonance can apply to all kinds of ways we
react to the world, and there are also plenty of other ways we tend to react to it.
Like, we might try and protect ourselves from discomfort by engaging in selective exposure.
That’s where someone only listens to people and media sources that agree with them, and dismisses
other voices that challenge their worldview. Studies suggest that our brains may also skew our
memories to reduce the feeling that our thoughts are inconsistent.
For example, in a 2014 paper, 121 students who didn’t want their tuition to increase were asked
to write an essay supporting higher tuition. Afterward, they became more in favor of tuition
increases… but they also misremembered themselves as being okay with higher
tuition in the first place. And finally, there’s the most simple one:
When faced with evidence that we might be wrong, our brains can just completely ignore
whatever’s making us uncomfortable. The point is, we really don’t like feeling
inconsistent. And consciously or not, we’ll go a long way to reduce the feeling that
our thoughts or actions don’t line up with the way we see ourselves or the world.
Still, cognitive dissonance isn’t always bad.
There are fewer studies about this, but it seems like this discomfort can also help us grow and
make better decisions — like by leaving an unhealthy job, or identifying biased beliefs.
So, what can you do about your brain’s clever schemes to reduce it?
Well, psychologists recommend you pay attention to your initial response to new information
and remind yourself that you’re probably more biased than you want to think.
Then, you can make a deliberate effort to question your response and analyze it.
And also, it doesn’t hurt to do some research to make sure your beliefs and actions are based on
evidence and not on the tricky games your brain is playing to ease your inner conflict.
Because in some cases, the first step to defeating your brain is knowing what it’s up to.
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Psych. This channel is all about understanding
our minds and how they work, and we’ve done episodes on everything from mental health
to implicit bias. So if you want to learn more, you can watch another episode after this
or hit subscribe.
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