How we tune our thinking to soothe the ears of reason.

Cognitive Dissonance

The theory of cognitive dissonance was first formulated in the 50s, by a psychologist called Festinger. In a nutshell, it refers to the psychological tension created by two conflicting ideas, feelings, values or attitudes, called cognitions.

The tension is due to the inconsistency between the two cognitions.

Save Face

The first experiment illustrating cognitive dissonance involved students who had to perform a boring task, and who had to do a review for the next group of students, so as to convince them to take part in the experiment. Before doing their reviews, a group of students was paid $1, another one $20, and a third group (the control group) was not asked to write the review. Eventually, the students were asked their real opinion about the whole experiment, by someone supposedly not involved in the experiment (say, a supervisor of the psychology department).

The results showed that the students who were paid $1 rated the task better than the two other groups.

In order to explain these results, the experimenters put forward the hypothesis that the students from the $1 group had not enough internal justification in performing a boring task and lying about it, so they reduced the dissonance between their feelings and their attitude by unconsciously convincing themselves that the task was not that bad. If they didn’t, they would have had to acknowledge, at least to themselves, that they had been manipulated, or “taken in” by the experimenters.

In another example, several persons were invited to participate in an unusual dinner: on menu, worms, grasshoppers and other insects! Nobody never ate anything like that before.

In a first group, the “master of ceremony”, in charge of the dinner, was very nice, funny, engaging and cheering. In the second group, he was harsh and unpleasant; the atmosphere was not particularly enjoyable.

The guests were asked to rate how they liked their unusual meals at the end of the dinner. From the reviews, the second group clearly liked their food better than the first one. Again, the dissonance between their behaviour (eating disgusting food with in an unpleasant atmosphere) and logic (why put up with it?) had to be reduced, and they unconsciously modified their judgement (according to the theory).

Reducing Dissonance

Dissonance can be reduced in several ways:

• removing dissonant cognitions;
• adding new consonant cognitions;
• reducing the importance of dissonant cognitions;
• increasing the importance of consonant cognitions;

Here is an example used by Festinger. A smoker can be subject to dissonance, between the knowledge that smoking causes cancer and the fact that he keeps on smoking. He can:

• stop smoking (removing one cognition);
• deny the risks of cancer (removing the other cognition);
• argue that smoking has several positive effects on stress and weight (adding consonant cognition);
• minimize the risks of cancer, eg. compared to car accidents (reduce importance);
• argue that smoking makes his life much better (increasing importance);

The Least Effort

Naturally, people tend to go for the least effort. In the previous example, stoping smoking is probably not the least effort, so our smoker is likely to choose another option.

In the same vein, a long, difficult or costly commitment to something is not likely to be given up easily. People sort of protect their investment. This is how, for instance, hazing works; a difficult, humiliating training, an “investment”, that one is going to defend against possible dissonances.

Comforting Decisions

Difficult decisions often create some doubts once the choice has been made; was it the best option? The advantages of the other options, and the disadvantages of the chosen one, can create a dissonance.

As way to reduce the dissonance consists in minimizing the value of other alternatives and increasing the value of the chosen option. Note that easy decisions generally don’t bring on dissonance.

Renforcing Beliefs

Information that put beliefs into question creates a dissonance for the believers, who are going to try to reduce it as usual. The path of least resistance leads to the denial or distortion of the information, and induce the believers to seek support so as to add new consonant cognitions.

A Theory

Cognitive Dissonance is still a theory, and keeps on evolving as of now. While the motivations are still under debate, the existence of the phenomenon is widely accepted.

The following page explores applications to poker.