This presentation considers the nature of cognitive dissonance and how it affects human society

1. WHY AWARENESS OF
“COGNITIVE DISSONANCE” IS
SO ELUSIVE
BY EARON S. DAVIS
4/20/2015
A key to understanding why
human societies become
corrupt and don’t self-
correct, why democracy
doesn’t work well, and how
we are easily manipulated
by those we trust with
power.
David Sipress, The New Yorker

2. WARNING:
THIS PRESENTATION MAY CAUSE MENTAL
DISCOMFORT
AS YOU EXPERIENCE COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
IN PONDERING HUMAN NATURE
The information and images that follow may be inconsistent with some aspects of
your religious, moral, scientific or “common sense” beliefs about human nature and
the world around us.
Common reactions to dissonant cognitive situations may include:
 Difficulty concentrating
 Anxiety and frustration
 Irritability
 Intermittent fascination
 Boredom and walking away
 Confusion and dissatisfaction
 Obliviousness – “so what?”
 Pondering and contemplation
 Or, all of the above . . .

3. FRANTZ FANON - 1925-1961
PSYCHIATRIST AND PHILOSOPHER
http://www.iep.utm.edu/fanon/

4. LEON FESTINGER
PSYCHOLOGIST, 1919-1989
“According to Festinger, we hold many cognitions about the world and
ourselves; when they clash, a discrepancy is evoked, resulting in a state of
tension known as cognitive dissonance. As the experience of dissonance is
unpleasant, we are motivated to reduce or eliminate it, and achieve
consonance (i.e. agreement).”
“Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by Leon Festinger, arising out of
a participant observation study of a cult which believed that the earth was
going to be destroyed by a flood, and what happened to its members —
particularly the really committed ones who had given up their homes and
jobs to work for the cult — when the flood did not happen.
While fringe members were more inclined to recognize that they had made
fools of themselves and to "put it down to experience", committed members
were more likely to re-interpret the evidence to show that they were right all
along (the earth was not destroyed because of the faithfulness of the cult
members).”
Source: http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html
accessed 4/19/2015.

5. CAN HUMANS GENERALLY GRASP
THEIR OWN
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE?
Cognitive dissonance refers to a quality in all human beings that gets
triggered when we seem to need to choose between a wide range of
competing realities, interests and worldviews. We may need to
choose between :
 which people to spend time with (e.g., family or friends).
 which aspects of our lives or jobs will be the priority.
 our moral views, our politics and our jobs.
 our personal interests and the interests of society.
 our present interests and our future interests.
 our privileges in society vs. our sense of justice and equality.
 two competing moral values or ethical considerations.
 our love of country and our desire for world peace.

6. OBSERVATION
The greater the dissonance between reality and our values, the more difficult
it may be to comprehend/realize that the conflict even exists. We tend to
evade conflicts between competing value systems and allegiances by using
illogical rationalizations and reassurances. This tends to make us non-
rational.
The ability we have to consciously choose our thoughts and attitudes like
this, as beautifully described by Viktor Frankl, allows us to endure terrible
experiences by focusing on meaning in our lives. However, our unconscious
flexibility in dealing with cognitive dissonance may also permit us to deceive
ourselves and fail to exercise our responsibilities towards others. Such is
the human condition. . .

7. EXAMPLES
Therefore, for the American WWII generation, who fought a war to save
democracy and create a better world, it was very difficult to see the Vietnam
war as immoral, the Vietnamese government as corrupt and the conduct of
the war being profit-motivated, inhuman and barbaric. Our government
didn’t do those things.
With slavery in the U.S., it was impossible to see that half of the population
of the Southern states was imprisoned in slave labor camps. It was easier to
see a vast economic system led by noble intentions, for the good of even the
slaves. After all, this is a democracy and a nation of “good” people, so
horrific injustice would be impossible here. Cognitive dissonance puts
blinders on people so that they cannot see the reality of what is going on.
The blinders of slavery still exist.
In fact, there was little difference between the slave labor camps for black
people in the South and slave labor camps for Jewish people in Germany and
Poland. Neither could actually be happening, in the eyes of the local
citizenry. The slaves must be happy. They sang songs. The concentration
camp inmates played classical music concerts, after all. The illusion was fed
by skilled sociopaths and propagandists. Those will the strongest moral
values either became agitated and disturbed or, to survive, rationalized that
everything was okay.

8. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE CLOUDS OUR
JUDGMENT

9. MILGRAM’S EXPERIMENT
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HUMANS MUST CHOOSE
BETWEEN
THEIR MORAL VALUES AND AN AUTHORITY FIGURE?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOYLCy5PVgM

10. OBSERVATION
So, what happened when steel mills were killing those who worked there? In
the 1960’s, even the unions fought against environmental and occupational
protections for steel mill workers and their neighborhoods.
To these people, the smoke and grit and stench were signs of jobs and
people rising from poverty into the middle class. How could it be killing
them? Obviously, that was not the case. The jobs were great jobs!
Cognitive dissonance is often resolved in our short-term economic interests,
ignoring competing concerns for long-term health and ethics.
There is also a devastating presumption among the population that if a
chemical inflicted cancer on many people it would not be allowed. Most
educated people understand that is a fantasy. However, it represents
cognitive dissonance in which the strongly held value of our economic elites
as responsible and humanitarian is pitted against the opposite reality,
coupled with the need to see corporations as being law-abiding and
contributing to a better future for everyone. Such is our working class
mythology and it apparently is not going to change soon.

11. WHAT IS IT THAT AMERICANS CAN’T
UNDERSTAND BECAUSE OF COGNITIVE
DISSONANCE?
There is an awfully long list of things we have difficulty grasping due to our strong values for
humanity, decency, fairness and democracy, which can provide us with rose-colored glasses:
 President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney approved torture,
making them War Criminals. If the U.S. weren’t the most powerful and arrogant
nation on earth, they would be on trial.
 U.S. committed massive massacres and atrocities against civilians in North Korea
and North Vietnam, again clear violations of international law and our basic
moral values.
 Corporations routinely behave as thugs, using the police and their economic
power and clout to protect their interests and give them immunity from the most
basic of criminal and ethical standards.
 African Americans continue to be systematically oppressed and victimized today.
 The United States committed a massive genocide against Native Americans,
which continues today.
 The United States has never allowed all Americans equal votes.
 Many U.S. founders were slave owners. Some had babies with their slaves.
 White slave owners in the South routinely forced sex on female slaves and later
sold their own children at auction.

12. HAD ENOUGH?

13. IS THERE A CURE FOR COGNITIVE
DISSONANCE?
Not as long as we have competing needs,
interests and values !!! This is part of the human
condition.
Cognitive dissonance appears to be a feature of our human nature.
Keeping our lives relatively simple and un-stressful is helpful, but we
still tend to jump to conclusions and rationalize more than we are
aware. Understanding our emotions is one of the keys to thwarting
the destructive impacts of the illusions created by cognitive
dissonance. Mindfulness and Yoga practices are aimed at doing this.
It is not coincidental that Yoga masters have described Yogic
meditation as an attempt to “control the modifications [illusions] of
the mind.” http://www.swamij.com/swami-rama-emotions-
mind.htm
We need to come to terms with the fact of cognitive dissonance as a
feature of humans that predisposes us to self-delusion, bias and
blindness to our errors and biases. We can give up the struggle for
truth and adopt the feel-good illusions that trap us in a matrix of lies
and deceit. However, these illusions are dangerous.

14. FACTORS THAT COULD HELP SOCIETY RESIST
ILLUSION?
 A Free Press and a thriving profession of independent journalists
with high ethical standards
 Freedom of Speech and the Right to Peaceably Assemble
 Separation of Church and State and promotion of the civic values
we have in common
 Ethical constraints (regulations) on industry, government,
science and technology
 Transparency in Government and Private Sector
 Full Internet access to all users
 Configuration of media to allow for diversity and roll back
current consolidation
 Enforcement of fairness and accuracy requirements in the
conduct of media outlets
 Limits on the ability of individuals and groups to accumulate
wealth and power
 Cultivation of mindfulness and spirituality as civic virtues,
separate from religion
 Eliminate discrimination against gender/orientation, racial,
religious and ethnic minorities
 Civilian governmental control of all military and surveillance
activities

15. AYN RAND AND HER “OBJECTIVISM”
The “free marketplace” is a grand illusion for those in power to promote in
order to justify dominance over those who are less privileged. Of course, it
is based on greed being a virtue, which is quite a leap from our morality.
This is why Rand didn’t become popular during her lifetime, while she freely
revealed her views (see below). “Objectivism” is a fantasy that somehow a
productive, rational and just future comes out of cultivating the darkest
sociopathic inclinations of people, rather than kindness. Of course, it floats
the boat of those in power. This makes it popular, to be sure, to those who
are privileged, but not rational.

16. THE ILLUSION OF UNREGULATED
CAPITALISM
TODAY’S NEO-CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HOLDS THE
“FREE MARKET” TO SOLVE ALL OF OUR PROBLEMS, AN INVISIBLE HAND
THAT GUIDES OUR LIVES AND PRESERVES OUR FUTURE.

17. THE TRANSCENDENT PARADOX OF SELF-
AWARENESS
http://www.academia.edu/10083864/The_Transcendent_Paradox_of_Self-
Awareness
It is a cruel paradox, indeed, that most people do not understand cognitive dissonance
because, ironically, it causes great discomfort to admit that humans are irrational and
prone to profound illusions. Cognitive dissonance is inconsistent with our strong values
of intellectualism, rational science and free will. So self-awareness of our attachment to
illusions continues to elude us.
I have hopes that slowing down our overstimulated culture is another key to allowing
our conflicting realities to reveal themselves to us. Yoga, Mindfulness, and other forms
of meditation, martial arts, simplicity and other stress reduction techniques can open
the doors of reality. Yet, it is up to each of us to step out of our roles as
consumers/worker drones and claim the role of citizen. We must walk through the
doors of illusion and stand firm, spreading the new awareness and reinforcing and
supporting thoughts and actions that affirm our humanity and work for a better future.
For further reading on this concept, and how difficult it is for humans to reason out that
we are irrational, here is an essay I’ve written on the topic:

18. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE IS WHY THE MOVIE,
“THE MATRIX” RANG SO TRUE IN OUR CULTURE
AMONG TEENS AND YOUNG ADULTS,
WHO MAY NOT BE AS ACCLIMATED TO THE DOMINANT
ILLUSIONS AS THEIR ELDERS
However, to resolve the dissonance, many have turned to the illusion of Ayn Rand
and libertarianism.

19. AS POGO SAID, “WE HAVE MET THE
ENEMY AND HE IS US.”
OUR ABILITY TO BELIEVE (OR BE CONVINCED) THAT WE ARE RATIONAL BEINGS
LEAVES US OPEN
TO ALL SORTS OF MANIPULATION AND DECEPTION. LET’S SAFEGUARD OUR
LIMITED REASONING
ABILITIES WITH CRITICAL THINKING, INSTITUTIONAL TRANSPARENCY, WISE
REGULATIONS,
POLITICAL COURAGE, ALTRUISM AND HUMILITY.

20. BUT MANY OF OUR BEST QUALITIES ARE A-
LOGICAL, ALSO!
Sexual Attraction
Friendships
Loyalty
Creativity
Community
Visions for the Future
Enjoyment and Pleasure
Passions
The trick is to balance our passions so they fit into generally reasonable sets of
boundaries, giving us a sense of freedom and a sense of security. This is the task of
culture in humans. Culture needs to help us remain sustainable and safe in our
environment and among social groupings such as nations, religions, ethnicity,
gender, disability and group identities.
When we believe that we are fully rational, we can be easily manipulated into
doing stupid things that undermine human society. Thus, science and technology
must be balanced with cultural values in order to keep humanity safe and sane. And
religion and belief must be balanced with scientific reality. Science must be set in a
context of humility and reason, not hubris.

21. ONE FINAL CONUNDRUM
Do we finally become rational when we recognize that we are
irrational? Nope!
We can be reasonable and intelligent, at times. We can have self-awareness and
insight.
However, we will not become fully rational. This is why we need to live in diverse
communities. Being consistently rational is simply not in our nature. No matter how
wise, we will eventually stumble. Our ability to deal creatively with reality also opens
the door to illusions and self-deception. No matter how humble we may be,
something will slip past our awareness, or our deeds or words will mislead others.
No matter how we study cognitive dissonance and define it clearly, we will not always
be aware when it is undermining our ability to reason.
We are not computers or machines. We are human animals. Power and creativity
both ennoble and corrupt us. We can’t consistently choose well, but we can try. We
are each a work in progress, as are our cultures.
We are creatures who flourish in balance, but yet always tend to push the envelope.
When our cultures promote transparency and resilience and remain within the
changing constraints of our natural world, our natural environment, we seem to do
well.
When our cultures allow excess and megalomania, and worship wealth, we can self-
destruct, especially through false choices, “logic” and “reason” that are distorted -
and empowered by cognitive dissonance.

22. DON’T WORRY, WE CAN MOVE FORWARD IN
A GOOD WAY
Like the waves on the beach, the ebb and flow of our lives will
continue to bring awareness of our dissonances and then sweep them
away. There is a saying in sports, about statistical matchups and
fantasy leagues. On any given day, anything can happen. That’s why
we actually play the games. Seize the day!

23. EARON S. DAVIS, J.D., M.P.H.
EARONDAVIS1@GMAIL.COM
Don’t be discouraged. When
enough people become aware of the
illusions our society operates under,
we can use what remains of our
democratic institutions to further
change. As the illusions begin to
crumble, more people will see the
folly of allowing more and more
power to the forces of tyranny and
oppression.
We must persist. When reason isn’t
enough, contemplate a better future
and, most importantly, have faith.
We cannot allow ourselves to be
oppressed by a privileged
aristocracy once again. We need
limits on the power of wealth and