Carol Tavris’s book with Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), has just been published in a third edition with a lengthy added chapter, “Dissonance, Democracy, and the Demagogue.” This article is based on her Skeptical Inquirer Presents live online conversation on August 27, 2020, with host Leighann Lord,with some updates and revisions for this print version.
Leighann Lord: Carol Tavris, you’re a social psychologist. What is that, and what do you do?
Carol Tavris: So many people think that “social psychology” is just another kind of therapy—maybe one that requires you to go to a lot of parties—but it’s an academic branch of psychological science. As Elliot [Aronson] puts it, clinical psychology is the study of how to fix people’s personal problems; it’s about repair. Social psychology is about change—changing our environments, changing our lives, changing our behavior, and understanding how other people influence us all the time. Social psychology is an empirically based field that studies the influence of other people on us, whether we’re sitting alone in our room or out on a protest march. We get to study everything from love to war, from prejudice and hatred to sex and joy. Pretty broad charter! When I was starting out, I became passionate about the importance of communicating good social-psychological research to a public that was—and still is—used to getting its stories about psychology from therapists. Therapists have the public ear, if you will, as advice columnists, in their roles on TV and in film, and in the courts where they testify as experts. That’s why you didn’t know what a social psychologist is!
We have tossed around the term cognitive dissonance, and it’s in the title of this conversation. Can you please define it for us?
This term has made its way into popular culture. It’s everywhere: in the media, in cartoons, in political commentary, and it even made Jeopardy! People sometimes get it right! Cognitive dissonance is the experience of having two beliefs contradict each other or holding a belief that is contradicted by your behavior. The classic example is the smoker who knows that smoking is harmful but who wants to keep smoking. Dissonance is a very uncomfortable feeling, and as Leon Festinger—who first developed the theory of cognitive dissonance in the 1950s—said, it is as motivating and uncomfortable as hunger or thirst. We don’t live easily in a state of cognitive dissonance; we must reduce it to maintain comfortable consonance. The smoker has to quit smoking—or justify smoking. Likewise, a person who is confronted with indisputable evidence that their lifelong belief in X, Y, or Z is wrong is going to face dissonance over this new information. What to do? Change that lifelong belief or tell the bearer of that evidence where they can stuff it? How many people will say, “Oh, thank you so much for this terrific study showing that my belief in the powers of kumquat juice is wrong”? We are faced personally, professionally, and politically all the time with ideas that cause some dissonance with what we believe and what we do, and how we resolve that dissonance has huge implications in our lives.
Elliot advanced cognitive dissonance theory by emphasizing its power of self-justification. If you have a favorite celebrity who behaves like a dork, the resulting dissonance will be uncomfortable for you but usually you can live with it. If the celebrity is someone for whom you have immense admiration but who then turns out to be a child abuser—say, Michael Jackson—your dissonance will be greater. Some of his fans reduced dissonance by denying the allegations against him, and others did so by swearing never to listen to him ever again. But dissonance is most painful when evidence collides with a fundamental concept we hold about ourselves. For example, when we believe ourselves to be skeptical, smart, and ethical and then we’re shown that we gullibly bought into some internet scam, did something dumb, or behaved unethically—that creates a dissonance that we find hardest to accept.
One of the great themes of our book is that it helps us understand that the problems we face are not just caused by bad people who do bad things and justify the bad things they do. (I’m sure we could all think of the few people who fit that description.) Our problems stem from good people who justify the bad things they do to preserve their belief that they’re good people.
Let me make it clear that self-justification is different from normal lying to others to get off the hook, to get your way, to get the other person to like you, to avoid a divorce, to get a job, to get a promotion, or to make money. People lie; that’s not what’s interesting. Dissonance is the mechanism by which we lie to ourselves to preserve our beliefs that we are good, kind, competent, moral, intelligent people when faced with evidence that we weren’t so kind or smart. Most people, to protect their positive self-concepts, won’t reduce dissonance by admitting they were wrong, harmed another person, or held an opinion that should have been relegated to the trash bin in 1987. They will keep doing what they were doing—and justifying it all the more fervently as being right, moral, and appropriate.
What is the confirmation bias?
The human mind comes equipped with a whole little armamentarium of cognitive biases. These help us get along in life. They help us manage our beliefs. They keep our beliefs consistent. They keep us operating in the world. My very favorite is the bias that we are not biased: “I see things clearly as they really are. Therefore, if I just sit down with you and explain clearly and calmly why you are wrong, if you don’t agree with me, it is because you are biased and not seeing things clearly.”
But of course, the other crucial bias in how the mind operates is the confirmation bias—the disposition to accept and remember evidence that confirms what we already believe and ignore, minimize, or trivialize any information that is dissonant with what we believe—that disconfirms what we believe. Seeking confirming evidence and rejecting non-confirming evidence is really the fundamental way that we reduce dissonance. This is one reason science is so annoying to so many people, because science makes us put our beliefs to the test. It makes us face the dissonant possibility that we are wrong in our hypotheses.
What is the pyramid of choice?
This is a metaphor that we developed and that has, I think, extraordinary applicability. Imagine a pyramid—a simple triangle. Let’s say you have two students at the top of this pyramid with the same middling attitude toward cheating. They know that cheating is not a good thing; they really shouldn’t cheat, but hey, it’s not the worst sin in the world. Now, these two students are taking a final exam on which their grade in the course rests, and they completely draw a blank. No idea what the answers are. Now what are they going to do? They’re going to flunk out of this class! They will never get a job! No one will like them, including their cat! Their lives are ruined! Suddenly the student next to them makes her paper visible, and the students must make an immediate decision: cheat (look at those answers) or don’t cheat. Now, this is the key: The minute you step off the pyramid in making one decision or another, you will be in a state of cognitive dissonance and need to put your behavior in consonance with your attitude.
So the student who cheated will now think that cheating is really not a bad thing at all: “Oh, for goodness’ sake, everybody in this class is cheating. It’s no big deal. It’s a victimless crime. Who cares? I’ll never cheat again anyway. It’s just this one time, just for this test.” Whereas the student who resisted cheating, to maintain integrity, will now come to believe that cheating is not a victimless crime: “We all suffer from cheaters. It’s the wrong thing to do. And I would rather be morally correct and not cheat than get a grade that way.” Over time, as the two of them continue justifying the choice they made as they go down that pyramid, they will end up at the base, very far apart from one another in their views about cheating.
Now, some people say, “Oh, well, aren’t you just describing the slippery slope?” Yes, in the sense that expression means you start something and then before you know it, you’ve gone farther than you thought. But a slippery slope is not the right metaphor for dissonance, because the slippery slope is, well, slippery. You’re sitting there in the mud and you happen, passively, to slide farther along the path—you can’t help it. In contrast, cognitive dissonance is the active cognitive mechanism that we put into justifying any decision we just made. Imagine that here you are at the bottom of this pyramid; you have now spent days and weeks justifying your decision to cheat “just that once.” How likely is it that you will go back up the pyramid and rethink that initial decision you made? Not very. You are investing more and more mental time and effort in making sure you believe you’ve done the right thing. And with each justification you put in, you are increasing the likelihood that you will cheat in the future.
When we look at the behavior of people who seem to be doing really crazy things or holding lunatic beliefs—the people who joined the Heaven’s Gate cult, for example, who ended up committing suicide believing they were shedding their earthly bodies and would be rescued by a spaceship following in the trail of Halley’s comet—we think: Huh? How can they believe that? How could they have done that? What we’re not seeing is how they started off, the process of step-by-self-justifying-step by which they fell from a neutral position at the top of the pyramid to sincere and deep commitment at the bottom.
Well, I think that puts us in the perfect place then, because I think many of us Americans, we’re at the bottom of this pyramid. And by this pyramid, I mean the pandemic. Those of us on one side of it cannot understand the people on the other side of it. We’re not even asking how they got there; we’re just assuming that they’re stupid. So I want to go out on a limb here and say a lot of that dissonance was generated by the actions of a certain person at the top.
Well, you have two things in your question. One is the polarizing issue about wearing masks and how mask-wearers and anti-maskers see each other. The other is how that polarization came to be, and yes, it started at the top. That’s normal; most people let their political, religious, or identity commitments do their thinking for them. “I am an X; X’s believe this way; therefore, if an X thinks this is a good idea or plan, I’ll go along.” This shorthand way of coming to a belief is mostly efficient and effective.
But once we see ourselves as being part of a group or ideology, dissonance keeps our commitment in line. If you’re a Democrat and a Republican does something corrupt, offensive, and immoral, you feel no dissonance because those people are always doing things that are corrupt and immoral. If someone in your own party does exactly the same thing, you will be inclined to minimize, forget, or trivialize their behavior. So what we saw at the beginning of this tragic pandemic is the utter failure of leadership by Donald Trump and his administration, the failure to set a coherent and cohesive policy supported by top scientists who are experts in pandemics. Instead, Trump repudiated most of the scientists or contradicted them if they said anything he didn’t want to hear. And what he didn’t want to hear—for himself especially—was “Wear a mask. Maintain social distancing.”
To be sure, Dr. Anthony Fauci made a big mistake by telling the public, at the outset, that he didn’t recommend wearing masks and didn’t think they would help much. He may have said this because he thought he was making sure the masks would be available for health care workers instead of being hoarded by citizens. But by the time he changed his mind—by the time the majority scientific advice was that masks are an important element in slowing the spread—Trump’s supporters had already slid down the pyramid in believing Trump’s initial claims. They believed the whole pandemic was just a hoax and a fraud, not really something to be seriously considered. They were taking their direction and justifications from Trump. “Masks interrupt my freedom; they don‘t work anyway, and I don’t need them.” In this way, masks quickly became a symbol of whether you were a Trump loyalist or one of those idiot, pro-science, Democratic nerds. This process underscores the importance of a coherent governmental policy, which so many other countries have managed to institute, along with a persuasive and well-informed leader, such as Angela Merkel, to avoid dividing and confusing the public and turning best-practice medical advice into political signaling.
There was a video of some anti-maskers in a local supermarket in California. They were pulling every reason in the book, including “It’s my freedom.” At some point I heard Jesus mentioned.
Note that the screaming woman in the supermarket was not at the beginning of the pandemic but many months later—time enough for her and countless others to have landed at the bottom of the pyramid of their anti-mask determination and loyalty to Trump. She reminded me of a wonderful cognitive dissonance study titled “When in Doubt, Shout.” I think we all know this experience. I know I don’t really have an argument against you; in this case, I really don’t know how to rebut your incontrovertible evidence that masks will slow the infection rate and save lives. Therefore, I will just scream at you until you shut up. If I can shout you down, I don’t have to examine whether my belief is justified or not.
But in terms of dissonance, the supermarket woman was perfectly predictable. What would it take for her—and for all the others who for months had been aligning themselves with Trump’s views about the pandemic—that it’s all going to go away like a miracle and we’re going to get our economy back—to say, “I was wrong, and my beloved president was wrong”?
If I’ve read the work correctly, saying “I was wrong” or “I made a mistake,” or changing my mind is one of the absolute hardest of all things to do.
Oh, yes. You know! One of the enduring lessons of dissonance theory is that the more time, effort, money, and heartache that we invest in something—a belief, program, friendship, relationship, marriage—the harder it is going to be for us to say, “Time to rethink this.” Those relationships survive because of our ability to reduce dissonance—to focus on the things about the relationship that we enjoy and value and to minimize, ignore, forget, and trivialize information that is discrepant with our wishes for that relationship. This is the reason for the mysterious phenomenon that the minute a couple decides to divorce, they can’t remember why they ever liked each other. What happened? Nothing happened. Nobody changed. It’s just that their focus of attention shifted to all those negative things about the other person that they once overlooked but which now confirm their decision to leave.
Or consider the many “he said/she said” misunderstandings in our lives and in the news. Most of us jump off the pyramid impulsively, believing one side or the other, and shutting out any dissonant evidence that we could be wrong. We assume one side is “lying.” But people don’t have to be lying to be mistaken. They may be misremembering, misperceiving, or self-justifying.
When we understand how dissonance works, what it feels like, we can learn to put some space between the two cognitions that are dissonant and consider each on their merits. Years ago, Ronald Reagan agreed to go to the cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, for an official state visit involving the laying of wreaths to symbolize postwar reconciliation. When it turned out that forty-nine Nazi Waffen-SS officers were buried there, there was a furious outcry. Holocaust survivors and many others were outraged, but Reagan did not back down. A reporter asked Reagan’s good friend Shimon Peres, then-prime minister of Israel, what he thought of his friend Reagan’s action. Peres said: “When a friend makes a mistake, the friend remains a friend, and the mistake remains a mistake.”
What a wise observation! Because what would the normal impulse be when a friend makes a mistake or does something we abhor? “Friendship over. That’s it. We’re done.” Or we minimize the mistake or the harm our friend caused. “Let’s just get on with it. The friendship is more important.” What Peres was saying was we should take the harder, more thoughtful route: No. Let’s consider both of these things and weigh them equally. And consider thoughtfully, rather than impulsively, what we want to do. We might even decide that living with dissonance is the best option.
Does Trump Feel Dissonance? Why Do We Feel It? What about Us?
The viewing audience sent in questions during Carol Tavris’s conversation with Leighann Lord. Here are a few along with her answers:
What is the difference between cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization?
Compartmentalization refers to our ability to say, “I’m this kind of person at work, this kind of person at home; I’m competitive here but shy there.” It’s the ability to focus on one thing and put other concerns out of our minds as we do. As a social psychologist, I would say that’s a normal process; that’s how we all live. Our behavior changes in different situations. But the ability to compartmentalize can help us reduce dissonance on some occasions; for example, justifying bad behavior by saying, “Yeah, I was pretty mean to my coworker, but that’s part of my job; I’m really much nicer everywhere else.”
Does Donald Trump ever feel cognitive dissonance?
I’d say no, he doesn’t, because, after all, in his mind he is the only person on the planet who never makes a mistake. More to the point, to feel cognitive dissonance, you have to have the capacity for empathy, guilt, remorse, sorrow, and understanding the human emotions that connect us to one another. If you don’t have that capacity, then you can’t feel dissonance when you learn that you have caused hurt or harm or made an error. Trump, who has, as far as we can tell, no such capacity, is the classic con artist. Con artists don’t feel dissonance over their cruel or manipulative behavior because they think anyone who falls for their deceit and tricks is a chump. It’s the chumps’ fault if they are so stupid that they give you their money for Trump steaks or Trump University or Trump any-other-con. Does Trump care that he stiffed his contractors who worked for him, that he denied housing to the African Americans who applied for rentals, or that more than 270,000 Americans have died on his watch of COVID-19 [as of December 2020]? No, he has no feeling for any of the people he harmed by his actions, and therefore no dissonance to reduce.
How does one go about recognizing their own cognitive dissonance?
Well, given that it’s mostly unconscious, it’s not an easy thing to do. Sometimes it is a feeling of queasiness, embarrassment, or shame that follows the realization that you might have goofed up, that you were seriously wrong about something you did or a belief you held. So the first thing is to pay attention to those feelings of discomfort and embarrassment and acknowledge to yourself where they are coming from. Second, remain aware that every time we make a decision, small or large, dissonance will follow, and we will immediately start looking for evidence that the decision was the right one. The choice you didn’t make will seem less and less attractive to you. That’s why it’s as important to keep an eye on disconfirming evidence as well as evidence that reinforces our certainties.
Cognitive dissonance doesn’t seem very adaptive. Why do we have this tendency? Why do we have such a strong need to see ourselves as good or intelligent at the cost of deceiving ourselves about what’s true?
Right! What can possibly be beneficial about it? Yet obviously it has been adaptive for most of human history. It’s what lets us sleep at night, without worrying that we have done the wrong thing. It preserves our feelings of self-worth. It strengthens our commitment to our groups, making us willing to fight and maybe die for the “one true cause” or being part of the best ethnic group or nation. This is why most countries work hard to suppress dissonant evidence from history that they committed heinous acts. Us? Impossible.
What do I do with people who are on the complete opposite side from me? How do I reach across the aisle? How do I heal this rift? How do we even talk to this person?
It’s the heartbreaking question of our time. Skeptics and scientists have dealt with this question forever and ever and ever—how do we convince people who don’t accept the science, say, on vaccines or homeopathy? But over the years, the political polarization of America has worsened, and today many people say they would rather their son or daughter marry somebody from a different country or ethnicity or religion or even—God forbid!—an atheist than somebody from that other party. Families have always consisted of people with different political opinions, but nowadays rifts between relatives and friends have intensified. No surprise. When you think that somebody who holds an opposing view is not just misguided but evil, there’s no arguing with you.
And so, how to reach across the aisle? How have any warring factions ended their hostilities? Talking, compromising, finding common ground and shared goals. Dissonance theory teaches that when you argue with the other guy, you don’t do it in a way that makes them feel stupid, as in “What were you thinking? How could you vote for that person?”Because their only response will be that they were thinking they were pretty smart to vote for that person, thank you, and now they will double down on that certainty. But if you ask your friend or relative why they believe as they do, while being willing to listen, you might actually learn something. You might learn they have doubts. You might find shared concerns. And you might learn that nothing will change their minds, any more than you will change yours.