…a low tolerance for cognitive dissonance leads most propagators of falsehood to self-deception; they tend to say what they believe, having first come to believe what they say.[1]

“Cognitive dissonance is a condition first proposed by the psychologist Leon Festinger in 1956, relating to his hypothesis of cognitive consistency. Cognitive dissonance is a state of opposition between cognitions. Cognitive dissonance is a perceived inconsistency between two cognitions in which the person believes one thing but then acts in a different way from what they believed. For the purpose of cognitive dissonance theory, cognitions are defined as being any element of knowledge, attitude, emotions, belief or value, as well as a goal, plan, or an interest. In brief, the theory of cognitive dissonance holds that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the human mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to minimize the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions,”[2] since it is very hard to live with cognitive dissonance. In other words, “once two competing cognitions are held simultaneously, the individual can be said to be in a state of ‘cognitive dissonance’.” And a “conflicted state of mind will necessarily seek to attain psychological consonance, i.e., a balance between competing cognitions,”[3] through different subterfuges: consensual validation (which is “one of the most deceptive features of social life”[4]), illusions, suppressing doubts, mindguarding (i.e., the sanitization of information so that it conforms to the current schemas), rationalizations, ethical blinders (i.e., a sense of righteousness: “if we are good, then whatever we do must be good”), stereotypes (which are tenacious, since most people tend to stick to them despite all evidence to the contrary), denial, projection (i.e., blaming others for the very thing that we are apparently guilty of), conformity (since the latter “reduces the chance of future cognitive dissonance, because the individual can rationalize that the group imposed its judgment”[5]), the operation of unconscious elements which render subjective sincerety questionable,[6] etc.
In accordance with this definition and the qualifiers appended to it, people “prefer a particular truth over other, more accurate truths because, for example, it does not cause cognitive dissonance and inconsistency or because it is simpler to deal with and thus satisfies the cognitive miser’s need for parsimony. People strive to lighten the burden of information processing by avoiding comprehensive expenditures of thought and energy, by using heuristics, and by structuring their experiences into cognitive schemata that provide shortcuts to judgment, even at the cost of accuracy, and that store information in memory in a form that is economical, accessible, and resistant to decay. Cognitive structure and substance, once formed, tend to persevere, although change is not impossible.” (Vertzberger, 1990: 113). These observations appear to be valid, in my view, because not only do they take into account the intricacies underlying information processing, but they also lend credence to the contention that it is rather easy to sacrifice truth for falsehood (which is done mostly subconsciously), in light of the fact that even minimal standards of honesty create internal discomfort. But this is not to suggest that cognitive dissonance is always strong in humans; it can be mild (Vertzberger, 1990: 138), but not necessarily for the illustrative reason discussed by Vertzberger. If decision-makers experience only mild dissonance as a result of public pressure demanding change in policy, for example, then that mildness can only be explained in terms of the general contempt that’s felt towards ordinary citizens, across the board, among the ruling classes.[7]

That said, there are two kinds of dissonances: pre-decisional and post-decisional. The former “might be analogous to what Freud called ‘compensation’” (Wikipedia), which simply means that a latent bias is compensated for by ostensible displays of impartiality so that moral judgments may be withheld by one’s surrounding, especially by the subjects towards whom one is biased. So the ostensible measures are hoped to reduce dissonance in the later decision, meaning that the bias resides in a ‘comfort zone’ as long as there’s no external stimuli challenging the bias. Post-decisional dissonance, on the other hand, is characterized by conscious efforts to assuage dissonance-arousing situations if and when one does things that one knows are wrong. For example, “many studies have shown that people with compulsive disorders like gambling will subjectively reinforce decisions or commitments they have already made. In one simple experiment, experimenters found that bettors at a horse track believed bets were more likely to succeed immediately after being placed. According to the hypothesis, the possibility of being wrong is dissonance-arousing, so people will change their perceptions to make their decisions seem better. Post-decisional dissonance may be increased by the importance of the issue, the length of time the subject takes to make or avoid the decision, and the extent to which the decision could be reversed. ” (Wikipedia) Therefore, since cognitive dissonance naturally evokes negative feelings, the temptation to eliminate contradictions in order to feel good is rather strong, and this temptation is often precisely the thing that compels the distortion of truth, even if there are times when the elimination of contradictions is done honestly, but that seems to be rare.

Fortunately, there is a moral dimension involved in information processing and cognitive dissonance, as when leaders, for example, are supposedly compelled to make a trade-off between “commitments to morality in politics” on the one hand, and “the pragmatic behavior required by realpolitik” (Vertzberger, 1990: 170) on the other hand. But in reality it is preposterous to presuppose that ethical considerations come into play within the framework of military-based state-capitalism,[8] so we can safely discount Vertzberger’s claim to the contrary, so far as Wilson, Nehru and Carter are concerned (ibid). In fact, leaders in general do not have a commitment to morality (except for public relations purposes), and certainly Wilson and Carter[9] were as thuggish as many of their predecessors and successors.[10] States are not moral agents. Whenever they have acted humanely, it has never been out of any inherent goodness but because they were forced to act humanely by a demanding and threatening constituency (by popular democratic struggles outside the political arena), which brings us back to rationalization, since even the most heinous crimes are typically rationalized through one or another dishonest way, in order to assuage the pangs of consciousness and thereby reduce cognitive dissonance, since most people have a low tolerance for it. It’s for this reason that human beings have developed a wired-in need to justify their actions, whether right or wrong, even to themselves, so that their high self-esteem can remain intact, thereby also allowing them to present themselves to the world in a positive light, regardless of how immoral their actions and behaviors may be, since they also appear to have a wired-in need for a positive self-image. “The point is simply that a striving to minimize ‘cognitive dissonance’ appears to be a common human trait related to our species power of consciousness.”[11]

Finally, modern life under authoritarian structures does, of course, translate into a considerable amount of cognitive dissonance, not just for the oppressed but for the oppressors as well. This explains why modern man is fundamentally depressed,[12] since the ideologically constructed reality of the masters does not, and arguably cannot, almost by definition, correspond with non-ideological reality as it appears (or should appear, since many of the oppressors’ values are internalized by the oppressed) to the powerless. It is, therefore, of the essence for enslaved humanity (with all the inevitable inherent and extraneous tensions and conflicts entailed by humanity’s enslavement) to try to learn to live with cognitive dissonance (crucially while striving to bring about conditions of equality and freedom, so that cognitive dissonance can be incrementally decreased to the lowest possible level over time), without letting it translate itself into socially undesirable means and ends. The ability to do so is a sign of both wisdom and maturity, surely a desideratum for those who care about the foreseeable consequences of human action and inaction.

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_{© Michael Hagos 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009}

_{All rights reserved}

Notes

[1] Joshua Cohen & Joel Rogers, Knowledge, Morality and Hope: The Social Thought of Noam Chomsky, New Left Review, 187, May/June 1991, www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/199105–.htm [Back to top]

[2] Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance [Back to top]

[3] Ibid. [Back to top]

[4] Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, Routledge, 1955, pp. 14-15. [Back to top]

[5] Yaacov Y.I.Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds, 1990, p. 231. The logic here is of course disingenious, since responsibility for personal failure can conveniently be avoided because the “pressure to conform” to groupthink was “too overwhelming.” After all, “the majority can never be wrong?” And “its opinion has to be respected, right?” Right! especially when the leader of the group is an authoritarian figure who demands unquestioning conformity and loyalty to the group’s ethos. And so far as leaders and/or decision-makers are concerned, an effective subterfuge “when threatened by potential post-decisional cognitive dissonance [is the] use of history to relocate the burden of responsibility from their shoulders to metaphysical ones, to the “course of history.” They thus overcome their reluctance to make a decision, especially common in high-risk choice situations, and avoid post-decisional regret and the related urge to reverse the decision.” (Ibid., p. 302) [Back to top]

[6] Since Erich Fromm has described this process better than I ever could, here goes: “…a person, even if he is subjectively sincere, may frequently be driven unconsciously by a motive that is different from the one he believes himself to be driven by: that he may use one concept which logically implies a certain meaning and which to him, unconsciously, means something different from this “official” meaning. Furthermore, we know that he may attempt to harmonize certain contradictions in his own feeling by an ideological construction or to cover up an idea which he represses by a rationalization that expresses its very opposite. The understanding of the operation of unconscious elements has taught us to be sceptical (sic) towards words and not to take them at face value.” (The Fear of Freedom, London: Ark Paperbacks, 1984, p. 56) [Back to top]

[7] As Chomsky has observed: “Walter Lippmann, a major foreign and domestic policy critic and also a major theorist of liberal democracy has asserted in his essays that a ‘revolution in the art of democracy,’ could be used to ‘manufacture consent,’ that is, to bring about agreement on the part of the public for things that they didn’t want by the new techniques of propaganda. He also thought that this was a good idea, in fact, necessary. It was necessary because, as he put it, ‘the common interests elude public opinion entirely’ and can only be understood and managed by a ‘specialized class’ of ‘responsible men’ who are smart enough to figure things out. This theory asserts that only a small elite . . . can understand the common interests, what all of us care about, and that these things ‘elude the general public.’ This is a view that goes back hundreds of years. It’s also a typical Leninist view. In fact, it has very close resemblance to the Leninist conception that a vanguard of revolutionary intellectuals take state power, using popular revolutions as the force that brings them to state power, and then drive the stupid masses toward a future that they’re too dumb and incompetent to envision for themselves. The liberal democratic theory and Marxism–Leninism are very close in their common ideological assumptions.” (Chomsky, Media Control, 1991, pp. 10, 11) [Back to top]

[8] Case on point: “moral dimensions are certainly rejected in the social calculus of capitalist society.” (Ho-Won Jeong, Peace and Conflict Studies, 2000, p. 88) [Back to top]

[9] I cannot say anything about Nehru because I don’t know anything about him. [Back to top]

[10] Even though a volume can be produced so far as Wilson’s crimes are concerned, suffice it to say that he was the one who called for conquest of the Philippines between 1899 and 1902, which left around 200,000 dead. There was no legal or moral justification for that, nor could there ever have been any. It was not a war; it was simply massacre and murderous butchery. Carter’s record was equally if not even more shameful. For some details, see Paul D’Amato, The Crimes of Jimmy Carter: Democrats and Other False Friends, http://www.counterpunch.org/damato01182006.html. See also Chomsky, “The Carter Administration: Myth and Reality,” in his Radical Priorities. For an outstanding analysis of all US military and CIA interventions since WWII (showing that the US is, in fact, a leading terrorist state), see William Blum, Killing Hope and Rogue State. See also Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away with Murder; Edward Herman, Real Terror Network; Alexander George, Western State Terrorism; Chomsky, Pirates and Emperors, and Fateful Triangle; Michael Parenti, Against Empire; Michael McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft; and John Cooley, Unholy Wars. [Back to top]

[11] Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, A Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics, http://www.zmag.org/books/5/5.htm [Back to top]

[12] For insightful, detailed discussions about the hows and whys of this fundamental depression and its unconscious social manifestations, see Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, passim; The Dogma of Christ and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture, chapter 2: “The Present Human Condition,” and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, chapter 10: “Malignant Aggression.” [Back to top]

Sources Cited

Books

Chomsky, Noam, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, NY: Seven Stories
Press, 1991.
Fromm, Erich, The Fear of Freedom, London: Ark Paperbacks, 1984.
___________, The Sane Society, London: Routledge, 1955.
Jeong, Ho-Won, Peace and Conflict Studies: Introduction, Hants: Ashgate, 2000.
Vertzberger, Yaacov Y.I., The World in Their Minds: Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception
in Foreign Policy Decisionmaking, Stanford University Press, 1990. [Back to top]

Internet sources

Cohen Joshua & Rogers, Joel, Knowledge, Morality and Hope: The Social Thought of Noam Chomsky,
New Left Review, 187, May/June 1991, www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/199105–.htm
Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, A Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics: A NEW WELFARE
PARADIGM, http://www.zmag.org/books/5/5.htm
Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance [Back to top]