Cognitive Dissonance and the Road to Conspiracy
When people choose comforting lies over unpleasant truths
I’m going to tell you a story that blew my mind. Firstly, I’m a huge fan of Professor Brene Brown - PhD, researcher and the one of the best story tellers whose work I’ve had the pleasure of reading and listening to. In her latest book, ‘Atlas of the Heart’, Brene talks about human emotions and her chapter on Cognitive Dissonance struck such a chord in me, I had to write about it.
Brene tells the story of Festinger, a psychologist, who in 1957 infiltrated a doomsday cult for his own research. Cult leader Dorothy Martin, claimed to have received messages from another planet proclaiming the world would end on December 21, 1954. In preparation, some cult members quit their jobs and gave away all their possessions. (No kidding!) When doomsday came and went and the world didn’t end, Martin changed her story to claim that the world had been spared because of the ‘force of Good and light’ from the believers (of course!). And here’s the mind blowing result: Rather than getting angry that they had lost everything and abandoning their discredited beliefs, the group members doubled down on their beliefs and fell deeper into the cult.
Mind. Blown.
Thus, Festinger developed the theory of Cognitive Dissonance - the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change. As you can imagine, Cognitive Dissonance poses an uncomfortable position so humans naturally act to reduce their discomfort. In the face of facts, one would think the easiest way to reduce the discomfort is to believe the facts from experts and research. eg. smoking is bad for me so I’ll stop. If that doesn’t work and the smoker just can’t quit, they will then seek to justify their actions - eg. smoking keeps my weight down so it’s ok. This is cognitive dissonance in action.
Reading this chapter was an incredible light bulb moment for me in understanding the anti-science movement that is hurting my head as it spreads so rapidly today. People develop their beliefs through stories, google, social media etc, yet when the facts or evidence disagree or challenge these beliefs, rather than adjusting their beliefs, they choose to double down on them and find whatever stories they can to justify their choices (which is not hard in today’s (mis)information-at-your-fingertips world).
We’ve seen this in abundance over the last few years during the Covid 19 pandemic and we continue to see it in the anti-science movement everywhere - the re-emergence of once eradicated diseases (just this week Diptheria was detected for the first time in 100 years in Australia in an unvaccinated child which is both horrifying, yet unsurprising in the current climate of misinformation), the rise in home birth deaths and the spread of anti-science cancer ‘treatments’. If you’ve ever tried to rationalise with the ‘believers’, you’ll know, you just can’t. (Believe me, I’ve tried and been attacked with such vitriol, I’ve just given up). I’ve learned that when there is no evidence to support an opinion, people will instead opt for personal attack and aggression. There is no reasoning and no amount of evidence that will convince the intractable. At best, people would rather lose wealth or health than rethink their beliefs in light of evidence; at worst, as we see now in medicine, people will die rather than accept they were wrong.
It leaves you feeling kind of hopeless about the future of the human race, right?
So, I’m going to leave you with psychologist Adam Grant’s words from his brilliant new book ‘Think Again’, as my only comfort… though I still fear greatly what this means for the future as it certainly seems to be in short supply.
‘Intellgence is traditionally viewed as the ability to think and learn. Yet in a turbulent world there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.’
Stay curious. Think Again. And Again.
Dr Kate x
So could a way to get thru the cognitive dissonance be to share engaging stories about how science saved lives? Or just share more science backed data?