*Confused Screaming*
Eric Liu (ISB G12)
A guest contributor from Issue 3, Eric Liu is back to prove that he is not only a love expert, but also a psychological master. Next time you eat “a whole ass cake,” Eric hopes you will remember to explore your own brain!
If God is all powerful, could he create a stone even he cannot lift?
How can Schrödinger’s Cat be both dead and alive?
How does Harry get the philosopher’s stone by wanting it but not wanting it?
Will my neighbors ever stop being so loud?
Contradictory questions and paradoxes perplex our curious ape brains. How can two diametrically opposed statements both be true? In our heads, it simply cannot happen. We just can’t cope with two contradictory ideas existing at once, so we end up experiencing immense psychological stress. To alleviate our stress, we try everything in our power to resolve the contradiction. And if we cannot resolve it, something needs to change. This is the phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance.
While it may seem like a rare yet intriguing phenomenon, cognitive dissonance occurs on a daily basis. Consider a hypothetical person Bobby who is trying to lose weight by avoiding fattening foods but is eating a whole cake. In his head there are two opposing thoughts:
I must lose weight by avoiding fattening foods
I’m eating a whole ass cake
Bobby experiences stress due to cognitive dissonance and his immense gluttony. There are four different ways that Bobby can resolve this dilemma:
Change the behavior or the cognition (“I’m going to stop eating this cake”)
Justify the behavior or the cognition through changing the conflicting cognition (“Well, I guess it won’t hurt to eat some fattening foods”)
Justify the behavior or the cognition by adding new behaviors or cognitions (“I’m going to exercise later”)
Ignore or deny information that conflicts with existing beliefs (“This cake won’t actually make me fat”)
Note: Bobby is not meant to represent any real-life person and Bobby’s actions are not meant to replicate real events.
In a study looking at cognitive dissonance, researchers had students perform boring tasks for an hour to induce negative responses from them. The students were then asked to persuade someone that the tasks were actually fun. After this, the students were randomly given either $1 or $20. At the end, they were asked to report their actual opinions of the boring tasks.
”Embedded into cognitive dissonance is what we commonly refer to as confirmation bias, the idea that we will favor information that confirms our preexisting views.”
Students who were given $20 were more likely to have negative opinions of the boring task, whereas those who were given $1 reported that they actually enjoyed the tasks.
Why?
In this case, the cognitive dissonance stems from the opposing ideas “I tried to convince someone this is a fun task” and “I found this task boring.” The people who received $20 could justify the dissonance by thinking “At least I got $20 for it,” but those who received a measly $1 could not. Thus, their dissonance could only be resolved by thinking, “I actually enjoyed doing those tasks.” Weird, huh?
One time, my friend Jeremy Ng and I were talking about a volleyball game in which I played as libero. My friend mistakenly thought that I wasn’t libero and adamantly refused to believe me when I, the person who played in that game, told him that I was in fact libero that game. He didn’t even play volleyball, yet he refused to believe me no matter how much I tried. I then presented him with two pieces of evidence: the vague testimony from someone who didn’t play volleyball but watched the game and a video recording showing me playing as libero. He refused the video recording and instead jumped onto the testimony of the person stating that he was correct all along. How could he be so foolish?
Embedded into cognitive dissonance is what we commonly refer to as confirmation bias, the idea that we will favor information that confirms our preexisting views. This isn’t simply finding that one source that backs up your argument in an essay. If I firmly believe that pineapple on pizza is bad (which I do) and am presented with one source saying that pineapple is good and another saying pineapple on pizza is bad, I will favor the source saying pineapple on pizza is bad.
”He refused the video recording and instead jumped onto the testimony of the person stating that he was correct all along. How could he be so foolish?”
The reason why my friend clung onto the questionable testimony in favor of a literal video recording was because he had cognitive dissonance and used
4. Ignore or deny information that conflicts with existing beliefs (“The video evidence is probably of another game and the testimony is true”)
To resolve it.
So how can we use cognitive dissonance to our advantage? An interesting phenomenon called the Benjamin Franklin effect describes when someone who otherwise doesn’t like you performs a favor for you, they are more likely to do another favor. The dissonance arises when they performed the irreversible act of helping you, but they don’t necessarily like you. Looking back at the four methods of resolving dissonance:
They cannot change the behavior or the cognition since it already happened
It is illogical to perform additional behaviors or cognitions to resolve dissonance (“Since I was so nice to the person I don’t like, I’ll spit on them later just to even it out”)
They cannot ignore of deny information because it already happened
Thus, the only way to resolve this dissonance is by justifying the contradictory circumstances (e.g. “I actually don’t dislike that person that much”). In turn, they will like you more and therefore will perform more favors for you. In this way, you, like Benjamin Franklin, might be able to turn all your enemies into your friends. On the other hand, it might also improve your current relations with someone you already are friends with. Funnily enough, I had a friend develop a crush on a girl he had never met before simply because he had lent her his calculator.
So the next time you procrastinate on YouTube and justify it by saying you’ll do it later, know that it’s your brain resolving cognitive dissonance.
Want to know more about psychology? Consider joining the psychology club! We meet on Club Day 1 in room 3203.
EricL