Cognitive dissonance is a very uncomfortable feeling.

But if you know what it is and have

learned how to recognize it in yourself, it can be a deliciously uncomfortable feeling. Its
offering you a chance to see the complexity of things; its a challenge to your intellect, to see
in a new way. And seeing in a new way can cause a hundred other thoughts and beliefs to
need adjusting, to need to be expanded. If you have courage and awareness, youre always
growing, evolving as a person at such moments.

Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions (ideas,
attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are logically inconsistent, such as "Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me"
and "I smoke two packs a day." Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish;
people don't rest easy until they find a way to reduce it. In this example, the most direct way for a smoker to reduce
dissonance is by quitting. But if she has tried to quit and failed, now she must reduce dissonance by convincing herself
that smoking isn't really so harmful, or that smoking is worth the risk because it helps her relax or prevents her from
gaining weight (and after all, obesity is a health risk, too), and so on. Most smokers manage to reduce dissonance in
many such ingenious, if self-deluding, ways.
Mrs. Keech and the Origin of "Cognitive Dissonance"
The psychologist Leon Festinger coined the term "cognitive dissonance" to describe an experiment with a doomsday
cult he and two colleagues had infiltrated in order to study what people do when someone or something they believe in
proves to be false. According to the newspaper account that aroused the researchers' interest, a woman the researchers
called Mrs. Keech claimed to be in contact with aliens from another planet. From her alien contacts, Mrs. Keech had
learned that the world was set for destruction on December 21, 1954. Fortunately for Mrs. Keech and her followers,
though, the aliens had also said that she and her disciples would be saved. At world's end, they would be scooped up and
flown away to safety in a flying saucer. Accepting her prophecy of Earth's destruction as true, Mrs. Keech's believers made
preparations for the world to end. Some emptied their bank accounts, sold their homes, and said good bye to their friends.
Not surprisingly, December 21 came and went without Earth being destroyed. In response, Mrs. Keech cheerfully
announced that she had gotten another alien message: The world had been saved because her followers had believed in
her. Hearing her excuse, those who had not given up all their worldly goods pronounced Mrs. Keech a fraud. But those
who had lost the most by believing in her prophecy became even more fiercely devoted to Mrs. Keech and made intense
efforts to convert others as well. In trying to explain the behavior of people like Mrs. Keech's followers, Festinger came up
with the term "cognitive dissonance," which describes the anxiety people feel when what they believe or think is
challenged by contradictory information or experiences.

- Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me, 2007

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence
that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that
is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect
that core belief, they will rationalize, ignore, and even deny anything that doesnt fit with the core
belief.
(Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 1952)

A conversation with cognitive dissonance

August 11, 2014 By Stacey Hudson
http://momnesia.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-conversation-with-cognitive-dissonance.html

AUGUSTA, GA. - I get angry with people sometimes. I try to keep it to myself, try to understand others'
perspectives, try to remind myself that we all experience our own struggles. But when people lie, manipulate
other people, bully someone weaker, or engage in mean behavior for the pure sadistic enjoyment they get, I feel
angry.
And yet, those people I can let go. Those people are unlikely to change, and sticking with them through the
process of the improbability will only result in heartache for me. So I cut them out of my life, whenever
possible. Sometimes, family or professional ties require us to continue to engage them in some way. All I can do
is minimize contact and refuse to personalize their issues.
One thing I have trouble letting go, however, is when a person - confronted with facts in contrary to their
personal opinion - refuses to consider their position in light of those new facts. That is called "cognitive
dissonance" - more specifically, "confirmation bias." Anyone who has had more than a 10-minute discussion
about politics has probably encountered it.
I find myself arguing with people stuck in this mindset, even though the very definition of cognitive dissonance
is the irrational denial of facts contradictory to their opinion. The definition of insanity, of course, is doing the
same thing the same way repeatedly, and expecting different results. Sigh...
I'll give you the example that makes me crazy:
Recently, I was talking to a friend about travel. He's done a lot of it, and is planning more. He'll visit Asia next
year, and I asked if he'd ever considered a trip to India.
"NO!" he exclaimed. "It's the most rapist country in the world!"
I stopped and thought.
"Really?" I asked.
"Yes," he declared. "I watch the news every day. Every day, rape in India. All the time. Rape, rape, rape."
I cringed, mentally, as he tossed the term around. But his declaration just didn't sit right with me. Obviously,
rape is a serious issue in India. But declaring it "the most rapist..."? I was perhaps choosing the wrong hill on
which to die, but I couldn't let it go.
"Well..." I ventured, tentatively. "I wonder if that's really the case. It seems kind of the issue du jour, as opposed
to something based on measured coverage."
He shook his head. "It's all over the news. You should watch the news more."
I should watch the news more? I worked in the news media for years!
I don't have cable, but I get my news online from a variety of reputable news sources: MCNBC, Fox News,

CBS News, the BBC, "The New York Times," CNN (Oh, how the mighty have fallen), "The Wall Street
Journal," "The Guardian," even sometimes "CBS Sunday Morning" and "The Daily Show." I'm all up in the
news! And there has been no lack of coverage of violence against women in India and in the Middle East. Still,
there's more to the story, as they say.
I saw it then. I saw him doubling down, not wanting to be wrong. Not wanting his knowledge of the world to be
shaken. He'd rather insult me by calling me under-informed or naive than confront what might be his own
misconception. And that pissed me off.
"You're asking me to believe that there are more rapes per capita in India than in Somalia and the Congo, where
it's regularly used as a tool of population control," I snapped. "You're saying that there are more rapes in India
than in a country where gangs of armed men regularly attack villages and systematically rape every woman and
child in the camp."
He stared at me. I don't usually go off on this stuff with him. We just don't have those kinds of discussions. Our
friendship is based on a mutual love of cooking interesting foods and watching stupid comedies.
"Look, I think part of the issue with rape is a lack of reporting," I tried.
"That's what I'm saying!" he exclaimed.
I held out my hands: "Hang on. Not media reporting. Statistical reporting. One of the issues with crime statistics
is that they're based on reported numbers, and then those numbers are enhanced by projected statistics about
how many crimes go unreported. And that depends on there being a reporting structure in place. Rape goes
under reported, even in countries where a reporting structure exists. In the U.S. and Canada, in most of Western
Europe, in many countries, there is a federal mandate that these crimes are reported and tracked. But there's
hardly a working government in Somalia and the Congo, in Venezuela and Iraq, and in a lot of countries,
women can be killed by their own family for even a rumor that she has been sexually violated. There is a hard
push in India, a lot of outrage, about violence against women. I think what we have is a story cycle that hasn't
run its course, and a country making some attempt at maintaining reporting structure."
He opened his mouth, then closed it again and shook his head. Nothing I said was going to get through to him, it
seemed. And after less than two minutes, I was already exhausted with the conversation.
"Look, I'll just Google it," I said, and pulled up a number of articles. "...Holy crap."
"See?"
"No. Look. They all say the United States is the highest in terms of number of rapes."
"Really?" he asked, disbelief etched into every line on his face.
"Really." I showed him the articles, and shuddered. There's just no perfect measure of crime statistics.
He handed me back my tablet and shook his head.
"I see it on the news every day," he said. "India is the worst."
And there you have it. Even when confronted with (what I think were) reasonable arguments in contradiction to
a belief, and even when handed a number of hard statistics countering that belief, the desire to maintain one's
perception of the world wins every time.