Sitting next to the author, my friend was on pins and needles listening to all this ridiculous propaganda, and stood up to refute each and every one of the fallacies that had just been presented. After a brief moment of stunned silence, the two young men attempted a rebuttal, but were unsuccessful, and reluctantly admitted that "further research is necessary". But then something unusual happened: after the question period, a large group of people gathered around the two instructors, competing to pay $75 to sign up for their meditation training. The author assumed that these listeners had not understood the logic of his friend's rebuttal. However, it turned out to be the exact opposite.
The psychological mechanism behind this strange phenomenon is the subject of our talk today: cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term that describes the tension between having two contradictory thoughts at the same time, which creates a state of discomfort. To be more precise it is a feeling of incompatibility that arises from the two perceptions, also known as " the feeling of dissonance" (the feeling of dissonance is related to the degree and importance of the conflicting cognitive factors), where " cognition" refers to any form of knowledge that contains perceptions, emotions, beliefs, attitudes, as well as behaviors.
The above is Wikipedia's explanation.
Simply put, cognitive dissonance is an "inconsistency", and the "sense of dissonance" that comes with it: sometimes it's an inconsistency between behavior and attitudes (the most common), and sometimes it's an inconsistency between beliefs and reality. The opening example is an inconsistency between a "strong desire for paranormal meditation to work" and an "implicit trust in the logic of reasoned counterarguments". This inconsistency creates a tense, uncomfortable sense of dissonance, which then becomes a powerful incentive to make immediate changes to get out of that state.
"I wouldn't have paid for it on the spot, because I'm so poor I'm broke. I was going to wait until the next time I heard a lecture. But as soon as your friends started talking, I knew that it would be better to give them the money now. Otherwise, as soon as I get home, I'll think about what he said and never sign up again."
One listener explained this to Theodini after the meeting.
While suffering from a sense of dissonance, he responded immediately, but he did so unwisely. His instinctive unwillingness to change his attitude towards supernatural meditation and his refusal to listen to the voice of reason led him to change his behavior to conform to this attitude. Not only did taking the course fail to improve his situation, it even brought him one step closer to bankruptcy, but that wasn't the worst part.
Everyone has heard the popular Internet phrase "the mouth says no, but the body is honest". Behind this joke lies the mechanism of cognitive dissonance. The real attitude of the heart is actually "want", but for various reasons, can not be shown, the mouth can only say "no", so these two contradictory "cognitive" conflict, and then Then these two contradictory "perceptions" clash, and an unpleasant sense of dissonance arises, and the means of eliminating the sense of dissonance unconsciously is to show the true attitude, that is, the mouth says "no" while the body says "yes". This is when the body responds to the real attitude.
Take a concrete example. The first thing you need to do is to take a look at the color of the red envelopes you've been given. (If the behavior of opening your pockets while saying no is considered intentional, it may not be included in the discussion of cognitive dissonance; for the time being, let's consider the figure below as a representation of the changed behavior)
There are several ways to eliminate the dissonance caused by the refusal of the red packet:
1. Changing attitudes
Changing attitudes toward the red packet to be consistent with the behavior of saying no (or the behavior of refusing the red packet), and changing attitudes toward the red packet to be consistent with the behavior of refusing the red packet. behavior of refusing ("Actually, I already have a lot of New Year's money, so it's not that bad, right?" , "If I take it, I'll just turn it over to mom and dad, so why don't I just don't want it? ")
2. ? Change behavior
Change your behavior to be consistent with your attitude (from "saying no" to "saying no while opening your pockets")
3. Increase consistency between attitudes and behaviors
Increase consistency to make the two less contradictory ("I don't care about the money, right?", "I'll just give it to Mom and Dad!")
2. ? Make the two less contradictory ("If I take the money now, I'll have to give it back later, what if I'm asked to pay for it next time? I'm not accepting the red packet to expand my coffers, and if I don't accept it now, maybe my parents will even reward me. Do not accept! "
4. Reduce the sense of choice
Rationalize your behavior and convince yourself that you don't have a choice ("Even though I really want the red packet, if I accept it, my parents will beat me up, so I have to not accept it, ehhh...")
5. Change the order of importance of perceptions
Changing the order of importance assigned to the two perceptions (it's worth it to take the red packet and use the money to buy the action figure I want than to go home and get beaten up)
This kind of cognitive dissonance is probably more common. Here, the desire to get grapes clashes with the reality of not getting grapes, and the resulting dissonance, along with external factors (such as ridicule and derision from others), makes people uncomfortable. However, the reality of not being able to get the grapes is right there, so you can't deny it, so some people who can't eat the grapes hastily distort their own perceptions, and declare that "the grapes are sour, I don't want to eat them".
Similar cognitive dissonance phenomena abound: "It's not that I can't catch up, it's that I don't want to catch up with the girl at all. Not tall enough, not white enough skin, looks like that, this girl is full of streets, how I would like her"; "This time if the promotion to transfer to Beijing, but the capital is too serious haze, the traffic is still like that. I don't want to go. What do you mean, it's useless to participate? Just kidding, if I go to the campaign, there is no one else!" ...
By vilifying the object we want, or emphasizing the object's shortcomings, we negate the premise of cognition, that is, we generally assume that something or someone is good and has its own merits, and we will want to go to get ta, thus making ourselves look "down to earth! "The first is that it is not a good idea to have a good time, but to have a good time.
However, the practice of denying one's own perceptions to make oneself look good for a moment is not only unhelpful to one's own image, but also likely to lead to cognitive distortion.
I hope you'll remember the concept of cognitive dissonance the next time you're in a hurry to get off the stage. （We've been poisoned by the culture of face.)
The effect is that people are hesitant to make decisions about two or more objects, and think that each has its own merits, and it is difficult to distinguish between them. But once a decision has been made, the decision-maker's attitude changes radically: he or she loves the chosen object and treats the unchosen object with a disparaging attitude.
The cognitive dissonance mechanisms underlying this are more subtle and harder to detect than in other phenomena. Making a choice means giving up the advantages of the unchosen thing and accepting the disadvantages of the chosen thing, and the contradiction between the perception of this result and the average person's evaluation of himself ('I am a sensible and capable person') creates a sense of dissonance. In order to eliminate it, action can be taken to change the original choice, but in many cases the choice made is difficult to change, so the person reevaluates things and gathers new information to alleviate the feeling of dissonance caused by the decision. At this point, he is more aware of the advantages of the chosen thing and the disadvantages of the rejected thing, resulting in the evaluation of the two things in the attitude there is a clear difference.
This is an experience that I believe we have all experienced at one time or another. Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that this phenomenon reflects an internal process of eliminating the sense of dissonance. Going forward, as we experience this change before and after a choice, we can realize that it is the cognitive dissonance mechanism at work.
The preceding examples are just a few of the more common and representative examples of cognitive dissonance in our lives, but there are many more phenomena and experiments involving cognitive dissonance: from unnatural expressions when we don't mean what we say to the strange phenomenon of believing in a religion when the prophecies we believe in don't work, all of these are the result of cognitive dissonance mechanisms. I won't analyze them all in detail for space reasons, but will simply list them for readers who want to explore them in depth.
Festinger's Inadequate Rationalization Experiment
Frey, 1956
Enhancing Beliefs (Religion) by Weakening the Sense of Dissonance
Frey, 1957
The study of how human beings prevent cognitive dissonance from occurring by finding consistent information in terms of their own perspectives, rather than inconsistent information
Frey, 1986
Study of how humans react to information that is inconsistent with their strongly held beliefs, views, etc.
Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter, 1956; Burris, Harmon-Jones, Tarpley, 1997
Cognitive dissonance Leon Festinger?the founder of the theory, noted that people generally lack a clear sense of their state of mental activity in the process of attenuating or eliminating a sense of dissonance.
I don't know if you've noticed, but in the phenomena and experiments mentioned above, all the people experiencing cognitive dissonance acted almost subconsciously, which means that their responses have not been subjected to rational scrutiny at all.
Insight into this theory allows us to be aware of what we are experiencing when we are struggling with the dissonance of inconsistency, when we are on the verge of behaving unwisely, and to have this shadowy mechanism of consciousness examined in the light of reason, so that we are not distracted by the "default program", and so that we can be free of the "default program", and so that we can be free of the "default program". default program", so that we can come to the right conclusions and make wise decisions.
References:
Cognitive dissonance:
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Leon Festinger:
pliance". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203-211. full text.
Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.