Cognitive Dissonance : The Mind’s Manoeuvre from Uncomfortable Truths

Hello, I'm Wayne Brittanden for the Political Compass Podcasts. Satter is Tom Lerah once joked about the discomfort of a Christian scientist with a pen to sitis. He was describing in a nutshell the mental conflict that comes when your beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. It's called Cognitive Dissonance, and it's on overdrive in our current world of uncertainty in so many areas. There are a number of defensive ploys that we can adopt when we are hit with inconvenient truths. We can try to explain them away, simply reject them, avoid the uncomfortable information altogether, or convince ourselves that there's really no conflict at all. Politicians have particularly deft at this, and the person that you need to listen to is Professor Daniel Meaghan. He's an expert on neuroscience and applied Cognitive Science at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. And political attitudes play an important role in his psychological research. Dan, welcome to the Political Compass Podcasts. That's great to be here. Now I wonder if you agree with my broad definition of Cognitive Dissonance? Yes, absolutely. I think that's a very concise and accurate way to put it. Of course there are two kinds of ways we look at Cognitive Dissonance aren't there. It is one where simply it's that information that conflicts with your worldview, your personal beliefs. And there's also just unpleasant information you might not have a belief for, but the information is too daunting to take on board. Yeah, I think both of those things, those types of things can cause this dissonance and the degree to which they're going to cause this discomfort is going to influence the degree to which we try to reduce that feeling of distance. Can you give me a good example of Cognitive Dissonance in our present age? Yeah, I think, you know, if you could recall, I mean, the COVID is obviously something that is occupying a lot of our thoughts these days. And you could think of examples where, you know, obviously there's a lot of uncertainty all along. And people who are comfortable with science guiding their views were recognized that science is a dynamic enterprise that plays out over time. And there was always going to, there was a comfort with the uncertainty and then a desire, you know, among people who are comfortable being guided by science to, you know, to adjust their feelings as new information, information, but even people who are in that category, you know, when it came to things like vaccine effectiveness, you know, the early evidence both in terms of the safety data and also the effectiveness data was that, you know, very much consistent with the idea that the vaccinations were going to be an important part of the way we thought this pandemic. But the effectiveness of vaccines, I think, when certain variants like Omicron came along, the, I think the expertise changed a little bit to the point where it may not affect transmission as much as we had originally thought about what vaccines might do, but it certainly should have its protective effects in terms of serious health consequences for people who were infected. But you could see even at that point, people who felt they had been guided by science felt like they were continuing to be open-minded about letting their beliefs go where science told them to go became very, very important because once it had become politicized in vaccines were something that you were supportive of. I think it became very difficult for people who were pro-vaccination and maybe pro-vaccination mandate, for example, to acknowledge that the science would start not undermining the benefits of vaccines per se, but maybe change, maybe the picture was getting a little bit more not as rosy as we originally thought certainly on the side of can vaccines prevent transmission. I know a lot of people who felt like, I'm at a university, we feel we identify as a community that is guided by science, but even at that point, at that point of the pandemic, you could tell there is this kind of these types of uncertainties were being received by different people who were apparently identifying with a common set of principles about what they should be believing in any moment in time. Well, of course, earlier decades ago we had the tobacco thing where people were saying even my doctor smokes is perfectly safe, although medical opinion was science was gradually going against tobacco. Yeah, well, I'm personally not comfortable with using equating tobacco and a vaccine. I wasn't equating it, I just made another example of the public switching off. Yeah, yeah. In these things, do play out over time, but it just goes to show, I think, that there are lots of situations where people who feel that they're open-minded, that their thinking is flexible and dynamic and is going to be updated with the latest available evidence, still do get stuck in certain ruts. And respond to what should be causing them, either doesn't cause them, the first place because they're being selective about the type of information that they receive and emphasize in their lives. And now that we're living in a very, very strange information environment, people, it's much easier these days to protect yourself from dissonance by not even hearing contrary information in the first place, by choosing places where you get your information from. So, and some of those places, even if they claim to have certain journalistic standards about covering all sides of an issue, are attending to a cater to what their listeners want to hear or their viewers want to hear. And so, it's very, very difficult. I think dissonance is actually lower than it's ever been because people are able to avoid it before it even starts. Well, I wonder if cognitive dissonance is actually necessary for us sanity in certain situations. And even in some cases does it have a positive role to play in creating a content and secure society? Oh, absolutely, it does. And I think that the fact that I think these two things that we've gone hand in hand, the fact that we, there is a feeling of instability right now and uncertainty. And dissonance isn't playing as big of a rule as it could be because it should, in a sane society, dissonance, we should always be feeling dissonance about something or other right. We should always recognize that, you know, we want, it would be convenient if the world was black and white, but actually there are many, many shades of gray. And so, it's difficult for people to navigate that. And I think, you know, we'd be all better off if there was more dissonance. You know, the expression in politics has often been, is, is, is, can the center hold? And I think a lot of people who have been concerned about whether the center can hold are fearing that it's not holding all that well right now. And I think a person who is centrist in their orientation is somebody who is comfortable with dissonance, is, is, is, it realizes that if they're not experienced, I'm dissonance, maybe they're not, that maybe they're not trying hard enough to understand other points of you or the shades of gray, uh, and locked into black and white thinking. Can you tell us a more about what center is a means in this connection? Yeah, well, I, you know, everybody has their own definition of it. But I guess I use it in the sense of, you know, insofar as it's you're comfortable on, uh, when I know that I did a little research on you and I know you're interested in, uh, in a multi-dimensional, um, view of political orientation. But if, just to keep things simple, if you look things on a left-right axis, you know, if you, if you find yourself adopting a point of view that would be consistent with a left point of view or a right point of view or something like that, uh, and you, and you fail to find anything meaningful or valuable at all in what the other side has to say about an issue. You're probably not trying hard enough to appreciate their point of view. Uh, more of right, just think it's, you know, centristism can also be more pragmatic in its motivation. If I believe the, if I'm on the, I can sort of myself on the left and I think the left is right about everything and the right is wrong about everything. Even if I felt that way, if I looked at the society in which I, I was living in in a political actor in and I realized that 50 percent or more of the population was on the right and I was on the left, a centrist in my view would, would recognize that they have to work hard on persuasion. They wouldn't just be satisfied saying I'm right and they're wrong. They'd say, well, I, I believe in democracy and I believe that, um, it's my job as a person on the left to convince as many people as possible that that point of view is the correct one and I would be working on it. Now, I think we live in an environment where people, um, once they've chosen sides, they're not experiencing dissonance. They're not, they're not experiencing a desire and a motivation to understand the other side and to try to work with the other side on their terms, bringing us together on issues where we could find common ground. On the other hand, some people are opening themselves to a lot of discomfort by doing that, aren't they? Yes, it is uncomfortable. And also, as I think especially in Anglo-Saxon culture, there's a confusion between discourse and conflict. Some people are happy to disagree and it's not an uncomfortable situation. avoid conflict because they think it's necessarily going to lead to argument. Anxious hostesses don't want in such situations there, guests to be talking about sex, religion, or anything like that. Yes, I do agree to completely. That's one thing that I find very, very disappointing about discourse these days is people's discomfort with it. Desired to understand people at different points of view. A cowardice, if you feel so strongly that you're right and somebody else is wrong, then you should feel comfortable openly speaking with them and airing your differences and trying to explain to them why you think that you're right and they're wrong without just declaring them wrong and feeling no obligation to explain why or making no effort whatsoever to persuade them to your point of view. I think there's a cultural thing here too. I've sat around dinner tables long into the wee small hours with Italians and with French and they behave very differently to Anglo-Saxons. They have heated discussions, sometimes heated, and they hug each other at the end of the evening and go away totally exhilarated. Yeah, I actually have an interesting distinction there among two different Anglo-Saxon cultures that I've lived in because I was born and raised in the United States, but I've lived in Canada for many years. I would say if you make that comparison between Americans and Canadians, and again, we're making generalizations here, which I know you'd acknowledge, but nevertheless, I feel that Canadians, again, on average, are less comfortable with this agreement and conflict in certain settings, say in work settings and things like that, or intellectual settings in your university. That's been my kind of my experience of being an adult professional in Canada has been sometimes putting my American comfort with disagreements. Not necessarily an important context. I try to avoid cowardly avoidance of disagreement for disagreements, but when the situation is, there's nothing to gain or lose by being disagreeable. I'd be comfortable with it. I'm comfortable in that situation. I remember when I first arrived in Canada, this is back in the early 90s, and I was in graduate school. That's why I came here. I went to, it was at a graduate seminar, and there was a student in the class who also happened to be the only other American in the classroom, coincidentally. He and the professor got into, again, you could call it an argument if you want, but to me, it was just an intellectual discussion, and they seemed to be budding heads and not really understanding each of this point of view. I thought maybe I saw what was the hang-up of disagreement between the two. I injected, tried to see if I could add some clarity, and both of the parties in this disagreement kind of wrote me off as, no, that's not the problem. That's not what we're talking about here or something along those lines. I didn't think much of it. I tried, I failed, whatever. Afterwards, walking down the hallway with some fellow students in the class, and they were asking me if I was okay. I didn't even know what they were talking about. At the end, it was because I had been shut down so quickly, they thought, "I must have devastated my feelings," or something like that, and it was kind of a funny moment for me. Coming from the states, you must be aware of the particularly in the deep south among the white population, there's a very strong and sometimes bewildering for outsiders' tendency of people to vote against their own best interests. Poor people who are completely tied up with the abortion debate, prison schools, gun control, and gay marriage, and not really so interested in issues like a decent education for their kids or proper safety net for health requirements. I guess it's quite common for people to vote against their interests in certain situations, but I find it particularly marked in the south of the United States. Yeah, there's a book called "Dying of Whiteness" written by Jonathan Betzlund. He talks a lot about those issues of people using racial identity as their primary deciding factor in their political affiliation and then going along with that affiliation come voting time and whatnot. It is an interesting situation and there are longstanding historical issues about why that is. Once the Democratic Party that used to rule the south felt that necessary to get behind several rights in the 60s, white southerners who used to be identified with the Democratic Party shifted over quite drastically to the Republican Party and then elsewhere in the US working class people used to be when organized labor was a big driving force in politics and the Democratic Party was the voice of labor. Those affiliations remain steady, but as Union membership declined and things like that and other types of cultural issues were brought to the fore by Republican politicians, you could see the entire transformation that began with white southerners in the 60s has now completely transformed the white working class in many parts of the United States. All of whom you could say seem to be voting against their own interests at times. And of course confusing the political landscape there is the death of a once vibrant political species, the liberal Republican. Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean they exist, you can sometimes you can find them on the internet, but they do seem to be relatively powerless right now, that's for sure. So looking at cognitive dissonance again, it seems that there are more reasons than ever before in the sun, certain age we're living in with so many existential crises. There are more reasons than ever to switch off and not take in the wealth of information that's unpleasant. Yeah, I've certainly experienced that myself there are times when I'm feeling overwhelmed and you know dissonance is funny because dissonance almost when we talk about it, it feels it's supposed to feel like a two component thing. You have this belief and you have these other this other information that is contrary to that belief, but these days the information, the misinformation through the uncertain information is so overwhelming, it feels like it's coming at you from all sides and it really does feel like shutting down is the only solution to problem at times. And certainly in my own experience, talking to others even if we've always considered ourselves as intellectuals, as people comfortable with disagreements, comfortable with uncertainty, confident that the scientific method and enlightenment values will resolve that uncertainty or at least reduce it over time with progress. It feels like there's a halting to that progress, that promise of resolving uncertainty. It feels like we're an increasingly uncertain world and it can be difficult to even find oneself in a state of dissonance and not just shut down completely. Well, yes, even in the darkest days of World War II, we could sort of see light at the end of the tunnel and imagine something like the United Nations coming about and giving us a new world. But in the era, for example, of climate change, it's a bit different, it's more difficult to glimpse that light, isn't it? We can't get the ice caps back, we can't replant the rainforests, it all looks much more permanent than before. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you completely. And that's, I think that's even when there is a lot of uncertainty, because there's always been a lot of uncertainty, as I think you're suggesting, it's a lot easier to take that uncertainty when there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And I agree now that there is not only do we have climate change looming in our future, but just the level of what you might call middle-class economics, the promise of middle-class economic stability for people who are somewhat privileged and working hard to make sure that they maintain that status in society. There seems to be a lot more uncertainty about what the future holds in a variety of ways. Climate change came up across a dinner table recently, and somebody said, "Oh, but if I accept that information, I don't have hope and I've got to have hope." Hope comes from a position of disempowerment, doesn't it? If there's a solid reason for something positive to come, you have a bit more control over the situation. But if you're left with hope, it's because there's nothing really tangible to work on. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I think there are probably people who are empowered and do have reason to be optimistic about the future, and hope is still the emotional state that they might find themselves in. They're hopeful because they have reason to be. Maybe optimism is a better word for it there than hope. Hope does imply, I guess, desperation. I see what you mean by that now, but yeah, I suppose. The other thing that's interesting is if you follow the climate change literature, especially me as a psychologist who studies things like dissonance and people who, when they're trying to act in a political environment, taking into account the psychological states of their audience, it's really interesting in the climate change literature. the degree to which people seem to be critical of somebody who is so doomsday in their pronouncements about the future are not leaving room for even that powerless hope you describe you know without that what how could we possibly do anything to reduce to mitigate the damages from climate change so whatever we do we should at least not eliminate hope is as small as that might seem sometimes well hope traditionally has been a theological virtue too hasn't it yeah yeah I don't know about faith and charity these days that's another matter yeah yeah politicians particularly are looking from election to election and not necessarily taking on board themselves the big picture because firstly it's too weighty for the political calendar that they're working to and secondly the public seems to be encouraging them not to give too much uncomfortable information yeah I think that is that is a problem to to really tackle the problems that would would take a sustained effort the way political systems are designed and democracies do absolutely favor short-term thinking and unwillingness to make tough decisions because because if those if the benefits of those tough decisions aren't going to be seen until after the next election then there's little incentive for politicians to do the right thing so to speak especially for issues like climate change that really will require sustained effort whose benefits the whose tangible benefits will not be seen in the immediate future in the political arena it seems that the more authoritarian politicians even dictatorial are the ones who are more likely to dismiss climate change yes why is that you know I I imagine it could there could be different motivations some of them could you know could have some type of financial gain from from burning fossil fuels but I know that's not what you're asking I think they are political opportunists who who recognize that the uncertainty that we're all kind of feeling right now is something that that people don't like and authoritarians offer certainty that's that's what they're selling if there's uncertainty about how many you know how many inhabitants a country can can have before we don't have enough resources to go around then it's easy to blame immigration and it's easy to be an anti-immigrant politician and in those types of attitudes at the you know among political actors I'm have are bringing more political success in the West in recent years so I think that that's what they're selling is certainty in an uncertain world if I look back to the 60s as I understand it population control was a really big issue zero population growth came about with Paul Ehrlich's population bomb a lot of discussion about ZPG then no one talks about population now even though the world population has more than doubled since the book came out and then we moved into the 70s there were nuclear hazards huge campaign against nuclear weapon marches then we moved into climate change in the 80s and nuclear weapons went on the back burner then we had covert now we've got Ukraine a lot of these issues interrelated but it does seem like the broad public can only deal with one crisis at a time yeah yeah and you think that there's there is a certain amount of bandwidth that people can can devote to and I think that that's maybe one of the you know one of the reasons why Putin decided to act in Ukraine when he did is because he felt that maybe there would be you know with with COVID and all sorts of other things going on in the world that it would be not be as front and center as as it turned out to be but maybe he's counting on it you know some other event happening that will overshadow it and and distract away from from that particular instance and yet some of these existential threats that I just mentioned are interconnected aren't they if you look at Ukraine it has an impact on climate change something like 25,000 shells every day fired off that's not doing the climate any good at all yeah absolutely no these you know it's kind of hard not to see at geopolitical events as as interconnected absolutely so in a way cognitive dissonance does suit particularly authoritarian politicians doesn't it yeah it does because they they offer dissonance reduction to people like again if let's say it's focusing on immigration if you you know if you feel like you are you consider yourself a citizen of a society and you feel like you tolerate other members of your society and you want it to be you want people in your society to have opportunities for success and whatnot and you know yet you you know that there's a limited number of resources to go around there's some concern about immigration and an authoritarian offers you the you know and you might be concerned about being anti-immigration because it doesn't fit with your view of yourself as a tolerant person who wants to be you know who wants to have people who are otherwise suffering to have a place in your society uh an authoritarian will offer you you know an easy out if you will telling you about why uh it's okay to be to have anti-immigration sentiment for example yeah i'm looking at that earlier point you made to about optimism and thinking does a person have a right to be an optimist without the backup of knowledge to support the optimism well i mean i mean is an ostrich an optimist yeah i i don't know i mean i think people whether their their optimism is justified or not is another question but um yeah i mean i if i was ever ever feeling optimistic myself i would you know the first thing i would ask myself is am i fully informed before you know before being optimistic um so i'm not sure about that if there's if there's anybody who has reason to be optimistic in terms of the the state of human the state and the future of human society on this planet it would is there anybody who is optimistic who is fully informed i'm not sure certainly you know i've you can find if you search on the internet for people who are seemingly intelligent who seemingly have worked hard to um to educate themselves about about the state of the world and who are nevertheless optimistic they're you know uh Stephen Pinker i'm sure you're familiar with him but he you know he's gone on record to sit you know to talk about to laud human progress over the last you know century or more and he also seems somewhat optimistic about the future as long as humans make the right collective decisions about things like you know he's big into nuclear power for example as a um as an important component of mitigating the effects of climate change and things like that so there are optimists out there who are smart people and who seem to be very well first but i think it's going to be harder and harder for those two things to be compatible optimism and and uh knowledge of the world and even in his case there's that uncomfortable connection between nuclear power and the ability to create nuclear weapons yes yeah you know there was a time maybe when when the importance of nuclear power and its role in mitigating climate change was not fully appreciated and i think there's i think optimists about that particular issue would say that there must be a way to be able to um to have one without the other in other words to have clean a clean source of energy without the uh the risks of of weapons and mass destruction well the Canadian uh west coast has suffered from Fukushima and uh of course you've got one and a quarter million tons of contaminated waste about to pour into our Pacific from Japan so nuclear power hasn't exactly uh given us a brave new world no no aren't there cultural differences here too Dan because a fascinating exercise is to look at some European films that have been made in recent years and even further back in time and then look at the Hollywood version that came out shortly afterwards always the Hollywood version had a much more rosy tidy ending so you had that distinction between the sort of i could even say shallow optimism of the new world compared to Europe's world weary pessimism yeah yeah i agree with that that sentiment yeah that that seems um seems absolutely true although it's interesting americans have always had that reputation in comparison to other nations but i you know maybe now the um maybe now that's changing although it seems to be a lot of really really if you look at when surveys do ask americans about their optimism about the future i think those numbers are starting to fall i think there's a lot of people who have pretty dim pro uh dim um prophecies about their own future economic prospects and and whatnot so that might be changing but yeah, I agree that generally speaking optimism is something that Americans identify with and it may be there's some cultural pressure to not be the party pooper and be the life of the party. I should confess to my own personal experience of witnessing cognitive dissonance for the first time and becoming interested in the whole subject. Back when Nelson Mandela was a global hero and he still is, he took over the leadership of the ANC and I found out quite by accident that he had gone quietly to Indonesia and from dictator Sahato accepted a donation of $10 million. He returned from Indonesia without having criticized the political prisoner situation over there which in many ways was worse than that in South Africa. He had a perfect opportunity to condemn it but he took an easier way out and as good as the man was it was a difficult story to have to bring out and it was nevertheless something I had to do. I wasn't going to withhold it because it was an uncomfortable one and all hell broke loose a lot of people were very unhappy that the story came out. It wasn't denied it was demonstrably true but you had people on the one hand who loved Mandela who correspondingly hated Sahato and to think of their archvillain and their hero being in the same bed was too much to deal with. Yeah, that's another thing. I think that problem if you will has got, you know, I'm sure that some some time has passed since that story broke obviously but but that's one thing that I find really disappointing about the way intellectual culture has changed in the last 10 or so years is that you know things somebody's either good or evil, you know. And sometimes it comes out in this way where you know you have somebody who's perceived as good you have somebody like you who wants to say well yeah without questioning their goodness they're not perfect and that being shot down there's you know other examples of a person who has is seen as good and maybe have some minor moral indiscretion that is discovered and suddenly they're you know all of their good deeds are quickly forgotten and they are now thrown very rapidly into the evil category and there's this seems to be so little appreciation for for the subtleties of life about individual persons about groups of people you know about political actors there's you know nobody's pretty we all know we're not perfect and people in the public I have just very little ability to weather even the smallest of storms these days it seems. If we completely sanitize people who are fundamentally good then we do them a disservice because doing much more justice to them if we accept the eblimishes and still see them as good people. Mandela among politicians was a saint put among saints he was a politician. Yeah you know there's an interesting example in Canada a few years ago where it was discovered that Justin Trudeau there were these pictures that surfaced of him and blackface back you know long before his political career and you know in this at that time when he did it was probably something that nobody thought much of but but these days you know obviously somebody couldn't wear blackface in the present but even examples of past black face are now being brought you know past past crimes that were crimes at the time we're now viewed as present crimes in the culture we live in today and yet he weathered that he did whether that storm the Canadian people did decide after that to to reelect him I think twice since then in minority governments mind you but but nevertheless and certainly his reputation has been tarnished but I think sometimes people can weather whether those storms even if it strikes people as a typical to to the reputation that they have or they've tried to cultivate when something that they've done surfaces that undermines that it's not necessarily the end of their careers at that point sometimes they can weather those storms I think it's pretty widely acknowledged that the progressive camp in politics has abandoned some of its traditional concerns in favor of identity politics yeah the most shocking example in North America is I think my I shouldn't say the most shocking the one that that strikes me is a very radical turn over the course of my political lifetime has been the American Civil Liberties Union because you know I remember when I was a young a young man first getting versed in politics I was just overwhelmed at some of the positions the ACLU took in the interest of freedom you know things that I made me really really uncomfortable they were defended because they were operating on a set of principles that I came to very much admire and I understood that sometimes defending what is a position you disagree with is part of what it means to be somebody who defends freedom of thought and freedom of speech and if you've heard some about what the ACLU is what's happened to them in the past few years is almost a shocking by comparison comfort with what would have been in their past a failure to defend free speech has that become an issue of people recognize that or even within the organization I would think so yeah I mean there's some discussion on the American left now that progressive political organizations political activism organizations are now being there are the missions that they they claimed uphold in terms of making political progress in the political system as it is can be undermined when there is a bit too much of a session over identity politics they causes infighting and political organizations and causes them to lose focus about about what their mission is and a preoccupation with pronouns can also be a lazy way of feeling virtuous without actually coming to terms with very complex and wider problems correct well I can see we could go on Dan but time has run out and I want to thank you for being part of this and I hope we can pick up with you again I'm sure there'll be many more examples of cognitive dissonance in the coming years well thank you so much for having me