Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 16:04:30 +0000
From: sdv <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com>
Subject: Re: Evolution and Cognitive Dissonance


Eric

apologies - I read the below without realising it was a quote from the
website mentioned below....

best regards as always

sdv

Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:

> After I read these posted, I was curious to find out what the internet
> might have to say about cognitive dissonance. I haven't heard this
> theory discussed in over ten years.  Imagine my surprise to come across
> the following splendid piece of intellectual garbage.
>
> If Bush becomes president, it is this kind of logic that got him there.
>
> I won't attempt a refution.  This one seems self-explanatory. The only
> comment I will make is that the experiment which is cited seems more
> about how money can corrupt value judgements more than anything about
> cognitive dissonance.
>
> My final question is does anyone out there see a relationship between
> cognitive dissonance and the differend?
>
> Mode 1 thinking privileges rationality over sentiment
> Mode 2 thinking privileges sentiment over rationality
>
>
> http://www.propaganda101.com/cognitiv.htm
>
> Festinger's Theory of Cognitive Dissonance postulates that individuals,
> when presented with evidence contrary to their worldview or situations
> in which they must behave contrary to their worldview, experience
> "cognitive dissonance."  Dissonance is defined here as an "unpleasant
> state of tension."  Individuals will try to relieve this dissonance in
> one of two ways:
>
> Increase the number of consistent cognitions  - In order to assimilate
> inconsistent information to their worldview, individuals experiencing
> dissonance will increase then number of consistent cognitions, thereby
> abating the dissonance.  This often involves rationalizing...i.e. myopic
> focus on facts, logic, or experience which reinforces an existing
> worldview.  In most instances, the offending inconsistent cognitions are
> dismissed altogether as a result of this myopic focus on extant
> consistent cognitions.  This is called "rationalizing" because the
> individual seeks out semi-logical conclusions using extant cognitions
> and newly created consistent cognitions in order to find a way to
> invalidate the inconsistent cognitions.  The reader must understand that
> we are not talking about
>
> Decrease the number of inconsistent cognitions - Individuals change
> their attitudes to compensate for inconsistent cognitions.  Instead of
> rationalizing, the individual excises the inconsistent cognitions from
> their worldview.  This is more consistent with mode 1 thinking.  When
> presented with logic or facts inconsistent with their worldview,
> The following experiment, extracted from Principles of Psychology
> (Price, et al   pg. 507), illustrates the reality of cognitive
> dissonance:
>
> In one of the earliest experimental test of the theory of cognitive
> dissonance, Festinger and J. Meririll Carlsmith (1959) had subjects
> perform a very dull and boring task:  the subjects had to place a large
> number of spools on pegs on a board, turn each spool a quarter turn,
> take the spool off the pegs  and then put them back on. As you can
> imagine, subject's attitudes toward this task were highly negative.  The
> subjects were then induced to tell a female "subject," who was actually
> an accomplice of the experimenter, that this boring task he would be
> performing was really interesting and enjoyable.  Some of the subjects
> were offered $20 to tell this falsehood;  others were offered only $1.
> Almost all of the subjects agreed to walk into the waiting room and
> persuade the subject accomplice that the boring experiment would be
> fun.
>
> Obviously , there is a discrepancy here between attitudes and behavior.
> Although the task was boring,subjects tried to convince another  person
> it was fun.  Why?   To the subjects who received $20, the reason was
> clear;  the wanted the money.   The larger payment provided an important
> external justification consistent with the conterattitudinal behavior.
> There was no dissonance, and the subjects experienced no need to change
> their attitudes.  But for the subjects who received only $1, there was
> much less external justification and more dissonance.  How could
> subjects reduce the dissonance?  They could do so by changing their
> attitude toward the task.  This is exactly what happened.  When the
> subjects were asked to evaluate the experiment, the subjects who were
> paid only $1 rated the tedious task as more fun and enjoyable than did
> either the subjects who were paid $20 to lie or the subjects in a
> control group who were not required to lie about the task.  Since the
> external justification --the $1 payment--was too low to justify the
> counter attitudinal behavior, the subjects simply changed their
> attitudes to make them consistent with behavior.
>
> One can see in this experiment how easily people rationalize situations
> to make them consistent with their worldview.
>
> There is a connection between mode 2 thinking and cognitive dissonance.
> Emotionally based thinking is much more susceptible to facts and logic
> which contradict the justification for that thinking or emotional
> worldview.   Factually or logically inconsistent cognitions are
> countered not with consistent factual/logical cognitions, but with
> emotional cognitions.  For the mode 2 thinker, the universe is not a
> matter of logic and fact, it is a matter of emotion, and when presented
> with logic or facts that contradict a strongly held emotion, they
> respond not with a logical/factual refutation of that contradiction, but
> with an emotional refutation.    The mode 2 thinker refutes emotionally,
> not logically.  This is why one cannot debate or discuss logic and facts
> with mode 2 thinkers.  Any reasoned discussion or debate is met with
> emotional discussion or debate.  It is like trying to debate with a
> child...they simply don't hear you.
>
> How can one counter emotional arguments?  Answer:  It is not possible.
> Mode 2 thinkers cannot be persuaded rationally...i.e. with facts and
> logic that contradict their worldview.  Only rational individuals can be
> persuaded with contradictory facts and logic.
>
> The question is this then:  How does one persuade an irrational
> person?   The simple answer is....conditioning.  Mode 2 thinkers can
> only be persuaded by subtle conditioning, by adding the gist of the
> argument that is to persuade them as a subtext to the plots of the
> stories that they consume as entertainment.   Vicarious identification
> seems to be the only effective means of persuading mode 2 thinkers.  One
> on one debates....ineffective.  Informational propaganda...ineffective.
> Manipulating the story characters with whom they identify and
> controlling the means of propagating this stories (movies, television,
> etc)......very effective.
>
> The Left do not disagree with the Right intellectually...with few
> exceptions, they are virtually incapable of intellectual disagreement.
> The Left disagree emotionally.   Really, this is a psychological and not
> ideological phenomenon.  It is a mass neurosis of sorts.  When millions
> of people cling to worldviews which have failed for the last 80 years,
> something is wrong.  When people celebrate degeneration in defense of
> freedom of speech, there is something wrong.  When people elevate the
> murder of innocent unborn children to a "right" but simultaneously fight
> against the application of capital punishment for heinous crimes,
> something is wrong.  Liberalism is so full of logical and factual
> contradictions that one wonders how a rational person can subscribe to
> such a worldview.  Only mode 2 thinkers can rationalize such things.
> The mind of the liberal is literally shut off to logic and facts.
>
> Liberalism (or what it has come to connote), is really the result of
> decades of emotional conditioning which has left those conditioned
> without the faculty of critical thought.  Certainly those emotions are
> there to begin with.  Humans are animals.   It is the taming of our base
> animalistic impulses that makes civilization possible.   When those
> taming influences are supplanted by devices that condition and reinforce
> the animalistic impulses, civilization crumbles.  This is why morality
> and social structure are so important (stating the obvious in this age
> is iconoclastic..lol).   The point here is that what has happened over
> the last 40 years is that our consumption of entertainment--television
> primarily, movies secondarily,  and in some cases novels--has had the
> negative effect of conditioning either by design or inadvertently,
> emotions and worldviews inconsistent with reality.  These condititioned
> fantasy and utopian worldviews can result in societal collapse.
> Cognitive dissonance is but one vehicle in the war of the mind.
>
> Cults can easily be explained in terms of cognitive dissonance.  All
> inconsistent cognitions are dealt with by violence.  In a cult,
> inconsistent cognitions are dealt with by shunning, by starving, by
> confinement, etc....  Liberalism does the same thing!  Political
> Correctness, the illegitimate step-child of liberalism, is cultlike in
> its establishment of correct speech.  This is what cults do..they
> prohibit certain words and discussion of certain topics.
>
> The Left are essentially a "cult of cognitive dissonance."



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