Cognitive dissonance

....... Everyone has heard of "reducing cognitive dissonance," in which people invent a new opinion to resolve a contradiction in their minds. For example, a person will recall enjoying a boring task if he had agreed to recommend it to others for paltry pay, he actually recalls that the task was boring.) As originally conceived of by the psychologist Leon Festinger, cognitive dissonance is an unsettled feeling that arises from an inconsistence in one's belief. But that's right: there is no contradiction between the proposition "The task is boring" and the proposition, "I was pressured into lying that the task was fun." Another social psychologist Eliot Aronson, nailed it down: people doctor their beliefs only to eliminate a contradiction with the proposition "I am nice and in control." Cognitive dissonance is always triggered by blatant evidence that yo are not as beneficent and and effective as you would like people to think. The urge to reduce it is the urge to get your self-serving story straight.

Sometimes we have glimpses of our own self-deception. When does a negative remark sting, cut deep, bit a nerve? When some part of us know it is true. If every part knew it was true, the remark would not sting; it would be old news. If no part thought it was true, the remark would roll off; we could dismiss it as false. Trivers recounts an experience that is all too familiar. One of his paper drew a published critique, which stuck him at the time as vicious and unprincipled, full of innuendo and slander. Rereading the article years late, he was surprised to find that the wording was gentler, the doubts more reasonable, the attitude less biased than he had remembered. Many others have made such discoveries; they are almost the definition of "wisdom"

If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

There's one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he's crooked. ~ Mark Twain

Our enemies' opinion of us comes closer to the truth than our own. ~ Francois La Rochefoucauld.

Oh wad some power to giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us! ~ Robert Burns ~ Page 423

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Dinesh ^club

If tensions, conflicts and irresolvable dilemmas are the spice of every culture, a human being who belong to any particular culture must hold contradictory beliefs and be riven by incompatible values. It's such an essential feature of any culture that it even has a name: 'Cognitive dissonance.' Cognitive dissonance is often considered a failure of the human psyche. In fact, it is a vital asset. Had people been unable to hold contradictory beliefs and values, it would probably have been impossible to establish and maintain any human culture. ~ Page 165 Excerpt from Sapiens - A Brief History of Mankind - Author Yaval Noah Harari

8 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

On exception to the Negativity bias is found in autobiographical memory. Though we tend to remember bad events as well as remember good ones, the negative coloring of the misfortunes fades with time, particularly one ones that happened to us. We are wired for nostalgia: in human memory, time heal most wounds. Two other illusions mislead us into thinking that things ain't what they used to be: we mistake the growing burdens of maturity and parenthood for a less innocent world, and we mistake a decline in our own faculties for a decline in the times. As the columnist Franklin Pierce Adam points out, "Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory" page 48 Excerpt: "Enlightenment Now" ~ Author: Steven Pinker

6 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

Cognitive Dissonance

In 1957, Stanford professor of social psychology Leon Festinger introduced the term ‘Cognitive dissonance’ to describe the distressing mental state in which people “find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold.” In a series of clever experiments, Festinger demonstrated that such tensions were more often minimized or resolved through changes in personal attitudes than by relinquishing the dissonant belief or opinion.

Festinger’s seminal observation: The more committed we are to a belief, the harder it is to relinquish, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. Instead of acknowledging an error in judgment and abandoning the opinion, we tend to develop a new attitude or belief that will justify retaining it. By giving us a model to consider how we deal with conflicting values, the theory of cognitive dissonance has become one of the most influential theories in social psychology Yet it fails to convincingly answer why it is so difficult to relinquish unreasonable opinions, especially in light of seemingly convincing contrary evidence. It is easy to dismiss such behavior in cult members and others “on the fringe,” but what about those of us who presume ourselves to be less flaky, those of us who pride ourselves on being level headed and reasonable. ~Page 12
Excerpt from “On being Certain” Author : “Robert Burton M.D

4 years ago. Edited 4 years ago.

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