Cognitive Dissonance: Our Brains and Our Beliefs

So, this blog post has been on my ‘to write’ list for some serious time now… As James and I are currently making our way through the southern US states, I thought I might as well chuck it in the post line-up (since I finally got myself sorted out and actually wrote it!). It’s a concept that I learnt about last year in my introductory psychology courses, and it just struck me as such a common and inherently human problem that I had to put some thoughts down about it. Cognitive Dissonance is defined by Merriam Webster (online) as:

psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.

Basically, that means that cognitive dissonance happens when you believe in something that is in direct opposition to an attitude you display, or a way you act; eventually you’re forced to find a way to rationalise the chasm between them so that the conflict no longer exists. You can do that by changing belief (a) or changing attitude/behaviour (b), or by creating a bridging belief (c). I’ll give you an example, to try and illustrate the idea a bit better (though if you check out the link here, it might just do a better job than I have of explaining it!).

Belief (A): It’s important to me to do something in service of others/to make the world a better place in some way, shape or form.

Behaviour (B): I am currently not doing anything in service of others.

Rationalisation (C): Well, I’m not allowed to legally work in the USA and I wouldn’t know how to get started, I’m incredibly busy with studying full-time and writing. And I want to develop my writing in the hopes that one day that could be my method of helping or reaching people.

Now, that doesn’t really put me in a great light, but I just wanted to demonstrate how easy it is for us to convince ourselves that our actions don’t need to conform to our beliefs. I mean, I strongly believe that wherever possible, we should work to help our fellow humans (and on that note, animals and the environment as well)… But I’m not doing anything that could fit in that definition. So I have to adjust that belief and decide that helping others isn’t actually important to me, change my behaviour or find a way to justify my actions to myself. It must be closely tied to self-awareness: if you’re not self-aware, then you’re probably less likely to experience cognitive dissonance, because you never examine your actions closely enough to realise that they may not align with what you purport to believe or advocate.

And of course, this is everywhere.

Think about the number of people in the fitness and diet industry who preach self-love or self-acceptance… but then turn around and try to sell their followers or clients a weight-loss product of some description (which is invariably little more than a way to take advantage of people looking for a solution). Now, perhaps those people selling are faced with a conflict, but undoubtedly so are consumers: and it’s a great selling tactic for products of every description because society tells us to do something and we either have to conform, or we have to find a way to reconcile the idea that if we don’t conform, we’re not good, or loveable, or worthy. 

So, with that in mind, I’d like to ask—could we start a movement where this is the buzz phrase for 2017? Whenever I think about it in any great depth, I can’t help but feel that the whole concept is so incredibly applicable to everyday life, and especially the vast, complex and often-confusing world we live in. Plus, the great thing is, as always with real life, this is incredibly pertinent to writing! Hurray! Realistically, it’s hard to find much about psychology that isn’t relative to writing, since psychology is all about people, and writing is all about exploring people, they go fairly comfortably hand in hand.

If people deal with cognitive dissonance in real life almost every day, then your characters should too. How do they justify their actions to themselves if they stray away from their personal moral code, or how do they react when their opinion of someone else is challenged by that person’s actions? How do you portray your characters thought processes when they’re faced with something that makes them reconsider their paradigm?

It’s a bit left of field and a little bit of psychology to start the week out, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one!

— Ana.

[Image credit to Ciceron.com ]