Remember that cognitive dissonance is just the discomfort we feel when our beliefs or attitudes contradict each other. Such evidence shows us that our behaviors are often at odds with our beliefs. This is not making sense.” To err is human, but humans then have a choice between covering up or fessing up. This is because the information is not rejected because it is false but because it makes us uncomfortable. What can be mitigated, is our natural response to it. The results showed that eligible participants reported less favorable attitudes toward the unpleasant screening than those who were ineligible. Festinger concluded that members had this response to lessen the pain of disconfirmation, which sparked an inquiry into cognitive dissonance.5. Confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance are going to crop up in a lot of topics about attitudes, beliefs and behaviours because they play major parts in why it’s hard to change people’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. Looking further into the effects of cognitive dissonance leads to troubling conclusions across academia and political society. The confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to search for, favor, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms their preexisting beliefs. So, we should instead seek to associate change with gratification and gain. Cognitive dissonance, first described in 1957, is one; confirmation bias is another. But because of that, it’s useful to know how to avoid confirmation bias. The mindless self-justification has drawn them deep into disaster. You look up to make sure no one saw you. It blocked out their ability to even see errors, let alone correct them. When the transition started, they claimed that they know they did something wrong, but they think it was not their fault and the situation is complex. TPLF press whipped up hatred and ran scare stories about key Federal leaders and pointed attack on the PM with an exaggerated respect for their military and political Darwinizations. Think of an executive who is convinced that the product they are launching will succeed, and to avoid the painful realization that it may not, refuses to acknowledge the cries of his engineering team who claim that the product will malfunction. When directly confronted by the majority of the people through rebellion, they could not change their point of view or course of action but justify their actions more tenaciously. Psychologist Leon Festinger is credited with pioneering cognitive dissonance. Just as we have armchair epidemiologists, we can easily become armchair cognitive scientists, and mischaracterization of these concepts can create new forms of misinformation. https://ethiopoint.com/the-confirmation-bias-and-cognitive-dissonance They are conscious hypocrites. Voters are likely to remain loyal to their chosen candidates and party even when evidence that should challenge those loyalties is presented.1, “When people feel a strong connection to a political party, leader, ideology, or belief, they are more likely to let that allegiance do their thinking for them and distort or ignore the evidence that challenges those loyalties.”, – Social psychologists Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris. It distorted reality, keeping them from looking into all the information they need and asses issues clearly. The self-justification not only minimizes the horrendous mistakes they made, it is also the reason, that every Ethiopian see the hypocrisy in action except the hypocrites. The strength of cognitive dissonance, or the pain it causes, depends on the number and relative weight of the conflicting beliefs. As we experience a rise in cognitive dissonance, we see a corresponding increase in confirmation bias. So, the unpleasantness of a medically reviewed screening affected candidates’ attitudes towards it more than non-candidate’s attitudes. Our loyalties do the thinking for us. hbspt.forms.create({ In an eye-opening talk, meteorologist J. Marshall Shepherd explains how confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect and cognitive dissonance impact what we think we know -- and shares ideas for how we can replace them with something much more powerful: knowledge. Cognitive dissonance. To deal with this dissonance, many participants looked down on the screening.6 These results speak to a broader tendency for people attempting to deal with dissonance by avoiding actions that actually benefit them. He studied their response, noting that instead of abandoning the cult and their philosophy, committed members doubled-down and increased their efforts to recruit others. The change they often call for requires many people to change their existing beliefs and behavior. John is a champion of the environment. The resulting discomfort motivates us to pick between beliefs by rationalizing one and rejecting or delegitimizing the other(s). The dog’s pet parents invested in one of Washington’s top dog trainers and felt secure letting their dog be off-leash wearing its “e-collar” in a large on-leash nature park. This may condition us to favour it as a response to mental conflict rather than rejecting, rationalizing, or avoiding information. We often rely on irrational thought patterns—such as confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance and recency bias—to reduce our discomfort, affirm our beliefs and access information when making investment decisions. It's also commonly referred to as the "I knew it all along" phenomenon. Smoking, for example, has been shown to cause cancer and contribute to various other chronic health conditions. Environmentalism and its associated climate change action movements are a good example. He was curious about how they would react when the prophecy failed. Confirmation Bias: A Cognitive Dissonance Perspective The postulation that individuals prefer messages that align preexisting attitudes over those messages that challenge them ( Festinger, 1957 ) has not found consistent support throughout decades of research ( Donsbach, 2009 ). With a number of factors coming together, TPLF created the perfect storm for an open conflict with a heavy cost to Ethiopia. What is illusion of explanatory depth? In one study, Israeli Jews were found to evaluate a peace plan less favorably when it was attributed to the Palestinians than when it was attributed to their own government. So confirmation bias, Dunning-Kruger and cognitive dissonance. When their backs are nailed to the wall few times, they reluctantly acknowledged errors, but not responsibility. By Ezana Minas December 15, 2020. To get rid of the pit in his stomach and resolve the identity crisis he is having, John quickly concludes that the speaker must not know what they are talking about. This can have the added effect of preventing conflict resolution. But, John doesn’t think he is willing to stop eating meat and he knows his family won’t be. You flail around on your mat and fall over in a big thump. Rejecting, rationalizing, or avoiding information that conflicts with our beliefs can lead us to make poor decisions. (2016). It is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person or a group holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent. Cognitive dissonance and attitudes toward unpleasant medical screenings. In one of the studies, participants were told about an unpleasant test for a virus. In 2002, a team of researchers led by social psychologist Lee Ross investigated the tendency for political enemies to derogate each other’s compromise proposals by conducting studies on Palestinian-Israeli perceptions. In so doing, I draw heavily on ideas of cognitive dissonance, self-justification and confirmation bias, articulated and elaborated by the psychologists Leon Festinger, Elliot Aronson and others working in this field since the 1950s. In his seminal book published in 1957, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Festinger details his theory and points to its influence in the psychology of learning. Confirmation bias fallacy is one of those psychological biases that you can see everywhere. The subconscious confirmation bias occurs when we selectively collect evidence that overvalues or supports... Cognitive Dissonance. There is no way of avoiding cognitive dissonance itself. So it sounds like cognitive dissonance manifests in justifying behavior, or in avoiding information that you don't want to hear. Three concepts from psychology – cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, and confirmation bias – are perhaps surprisingly closely related and have been used productively in a variety of fields in economics, more so over time. formId: "c197bd05-908a-42d5-95a3-89c07b6ca4f4" TPLF and its apologists should stop the impulse to justify themselves and end avoiding to take responsibility for all the action that turned out to be harmful and immoral. TPLF motives are as old as itself: ambition and greed, tribal ideology and ethnic calculations, and fear of what the other side might be intending. And as always, being aware of a cognitive bias that normally occurs subsciously can help us recognize when our decisions are influenced by it. In other words, we often ignore or distort evidence that challenges our political beliefs. What can be mitigated, is our natural response to this discomfort (ie. One form of cognitive bias is called cognitive dissonance. In fact, many of us go further by avoiding situations or information that might clash with our existing beliefs to create dissonance. The hindsight bias is a common cognitive bias that involves the tendency to see events, even random ones, as more predictable than they are. One reason for this, the researchers conclude, is cognitive dissonance. Over time the self-serving distortion of memory of the crime they committed kick in and they forget or distort past events, and they come to believe their own lies. Confirmation bias is a cognitive shortcut. However, we can only learn if we first admit we made mistakes. As a result, we usually stick with the beliefs we already hold, as opposed to adopting new ones that are presented to us. All Rights Reserved, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leon-Festinger/Cognitive-dissonance, Aronson, E., & Tavris, C. (2020, July 14). It kept them from changing their outdated attitudes and procedures that was harmful to the Ethiopian people at large. Just as we have armchair epidemiologists, we can easily become armchair cognitive scientists, and mischaracterization of these concepts can create new forms of misinformation. if we deal with dissonance through rationalization), we might also be subject to hypocrisy. Cognitive dissonance may also facilitate a political divide. And although, as Festinger said, conflict and change “may be painful or involve loss,” it often doesn’t. But then, there's literacy and … Normalcy bias: Cognitive dissonance: The refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before. Israeli Jews were found to evaluate a peace plan less favorably when it was attributed to the Palestinians than when it was attributed to their own government. The effectiveness of social causes is also threatened by cognitive dissonance. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://www.panarchy.org/festinger/dissonance.html, Suls, J. }); hbspt.forms.create({ So, we should instead seek to associate change with gratification and gain. All Rights Reserved. It allowed them not to see or recognize their moral lapses. We have a tendency to interpret information given by our political adversaries in a way that meshes with our own political convictions. To resolve the inconsistency revealed by this new information on certain animal products, John rejects and rationalizes the speech so that his identity as an environmentalist isn’t painfully compromised. His opinions and attitudes, for example, tend to exist in clusters that are internally consistent.”- Leon Festinger. We all suffer from it. To his dismay, John realizes that he uses many of those products on a regular basis. ... etc. Cognitive dissonance occurs when people hold contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values and are typically experienced as psychological stress when people participate in an action against one or more of them. (2020, May 04). They have been making decisions and running the country for more than 27 years affecting the lives of millions of Ethiopians. WHAT IS COGNITIVE BIAS Cognitive bias is a genuine deficiency or limitation in our thinking. We see how they self-righteously create a rift with the people of Ethiopia. Abstract. We tend to pick the belief or idea that is most ingrained in us, which is the one we already hold. They have a remarkable capacity to convince themselves that they did nothing wrong and a fantastic capacity to persuade themselves that the “truth” which is convenient for the present is the “TRUTH” and anything that conflicted with it is the prevarication of enemies. It is natural for us to look for internal psychological consistency, as it forms our identity and allows us to make sense of the world. They have looked at disconfirming evidences with criticism, distortion and dismissal so that they can maintain and strengthen their existing belief and privilege in front of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. }); hbspt.forms.create({ The clash is usually dealt with by rejecting, debunking, or avoiding new information. As mentioned earlier, we often don’t give enough credence to evidence that challenges the political figures or ideologies that we believe in. formId: "9609991e-ad72-49ac-966c-898cf34fd2c6" Information that is both true and useful can often have this effect. The clash is usually dealt with by rejecting, debunking, or avoiding new information. When we only look for what confirms our beliefs (confirmation bias), only side with what is most comfortable (cognitive dissonance) and don’t scrutinize contrary ideas (motivated reasoning) we impede social, economic, and academic progress. Loading... Making Sense of the News: News Literacy Lessons for Digital Citizens. Adversaries may devalue or reject peace proposals in order to rationalize their history and beliefs. Increasingly and progressively resorting to confrontational politics, in substance as well as in style, did not address the need of the Ethiopian people. He offers three explanations for why someone might be unwilling to change their existing beliefs or behaviour in light of new, conflicting information: Festinger goes on to point out that it is natural for us to look for internal psychological consistency. We have already noted the harms associated with doing this. When we believe strongly in a political leader or ideology, we are more likely to dismiss information that does not support their message. This article outlines the reasons why we are susceptible to fake news, and we can fight the uptake of false information. But the evidence championed by these movements often indicates that we aren’t doing enough as individuals. Confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance and recency are behavioural patterns that we call on to alleviate discomfort, affirm our beliefs and access information when making investment decisions. In a particularly memorable section, the authors examined the followers of cult leaders who predicted that the world was going to end on a specific date, and told everyone to prepare. If the contradictions between our beliefs and behaviors are not sorted out by making such changes (ie. None of us can live without making blunders. In support, the author claims that individuals’ cognitive dissonance can influence the probabilistic models used to make policy decisions. A 2002 study investigated the tendency for political enemies to derogate each other’s compromise proposals by conducting studies on Palestinian-Israeli perceptions. Remember the smoking example? Likewise, many of us might reject evidence that our careers are not headed in the right direction, instead justifying our choice to keep on the same tracks and consequently forgo a more fruitful path. This is part of the reason why it is so difficult to change someone’s mind on political issues. It’s both humorous and serious. Now they cannot distinguish the difference between the conscious lie they lie to fool others and the unconscious self-justification to fool themselves. When faced with irrefutable evidence they could not pierce their mental armor of self-justifications. Behavioral Finance: Confirmation Bias, Cognitive Dissonance, and Recency Confirmation. Seeing this contradiction, many of us respond by either rationalizing our behaviors, rejecting environmentalism and the evidence it relies on, or adopting the belief that our individual actions have a negligible effect on the environment. Participants were caught in a clash between the obligation they feel towards maintaining their health through screening, and the discomfort of going through the screening. CONFIRMATION BIAS. Confirmation bias fallacy is one of those psychological biases that you can see everywhere. Those exhibiting this bias pay little attention to opinions and data that may offer alternative possibilities. This makes sense: it would be difficult to think of yourself as a whole, and complete person if all your beliefs and opinions logically contradicted each other or never lined up with your behaviour. This most commonly occurs when our attitudes and behavior do not align with our attitudes – we believe one thing, but act against those beliefs. A proposal by an adversary is likely to be devalued because it was proposed by the adversary— even when it is objectively beneficial. We tend to pick the belief or idea that is most familiar and ingrained in us. How To Fight Fake News With Behavioral Science. Self-justification added to lying to save their own skin at the expense of the people on whose behalf they claim to speak is beyond belief. To function by that expectation of existential consistency, people continually reduce their cognitive dissonance in order to align their cognitions (perceptions of the world) with their actions. In reality, the peace plan was actually Israeli-authored. An Introduction to the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. And as always, being aware of a cognitive bias that normally occurs subsciously can help us recognize when our decisions are influenced by it. Evidence that runs counter to these beliefs often causes cognitive dissonance… It’s both humorous and serious. We all suffer from it. formId: "d2680a24-ef55-4af1-a66a-1777d7774a7d" The ruthless dictatorship, the greedy Party Parastatals ownership, the zealots security murderers, etc.. are all coerced by self-justification. One reason for this, Ross says, is cognitive dissonance. Later research documented that only conflicting cognitions that threaten individuals’ positive self-image cause dissonance (Greenwald & Ronis, 1978). The choice we make is critical to what we do next. Similar to cognitive dissonance. The engine that drives self-justification, the energy that produce the need to justify one’s action and decision – -especially the wrong ones—is an unpleasant feeling called “COGNITIVE DISSONANCE”. Cognitive Dissonance “And of the people is he whose speech pleases you in worldly life, and he calls Allah to witness as … This is to say, understanding and looking for cognitive dissonance in our decision-making can help us realize when our decision to reject rationalize, or avoid new information is caused by it. how we approach dissonance reduction). We convince ourselves that the symptoms are ‘probably nothing’ and that it will ‘go away by itself.’ This can be problematic for public health. Cognitive Dissonance, Fundamental Attribution Error, Confirmation Bias and Your Dog A local dog went missing. Changing our beliefs when they are challenged by new information is often better than ignoring this information or rationalizing the existing beliefs which may be wrongly held. And this is part of the problem. This cannot be! They are justifying behaviors that the entire country know is wrong. I think those shape biases and perceptions that people have about science. Reactive Devaluation of an “Israeli” vs. “Palestinian” Peace Proposal. The theory of cognitive dissonance has had profound impact on research in social psychology, Its influence goes beyond that field, however. Cognitive Dissonance, Confirmation Bias & Media Censorship. Posted on October 12, 2019 March 16, 2020 by Dr Nauman Shad. We should look to make this a more viable response to internal conflict. Confirmation Bias – This bias, a form of cognitive bias, is a condition of the human mind that occurs when we seek or interpret information in a manner that tends to confirm our existing beliefs or hypothesis. Three cognitive biases are components of dissonance theory. Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. Smokers often rationalize their detrimental decision to continue smoking by either denying evidence that supports its health risks or by considering themselves to be the lucky exception. Cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort we feel when our minds have two contradictory concepts at the same time, while confirmation bias is the tendency to give more importance to information that confirms our beliefs. One reason why we are influenced by fake news is that it can be consistent with our own beliefs. Maoz, I., Ward, A., Katz, M., & Ross, L. (2002). One day, he decides to attend a lecture on the negative environmental effects of certain animal products which apparently contribute significantly to climate change. As said before, our natural response to cognitive dissonance is to rationalize our existing beliefs or reject and avoid information that conflicts with them to cause dissonance. Your email address will not be published. No need to scientifically prove that. To deal with this dissonance, many participants looked down on the screening. In one of the studies, participants were told about an unpleasant test for a virus (which was fictitious). Cognitive dissonance describes when we avoid having conflicting beliefs and attitudes because it makes us feel uncomfortable. Everything you need to know about behavioral science, and how to apply it to your work. This mental conflict and the resulting discomfort motivates us to pick between beliefs by justifying and rationalizing one while rejecting or reducing the importance of the others. Particular groups at the receiving end of this are known. However, relying on these automatic and almost reflexive behaviors as the sole basis for … Some examples of the hindsight bias include: Insisting that you knew who was going to win a football game once the event is over Bringing about a sustainable future through nudging, Translating good intentions into scalable progress, Unlocking every classroom's potential using behavioral science, Empowering customers to take control of their finances, Fostering holistic wellness through science and design, Helping investors avoid bias and grow their impact, Using science to find new ways to deliver value to clients, Generating low cost, high impact interventions in public policy, Designing positive choice environments for consumers and brands, Unlocking product's potential through behavioral design, Using machine learning and AI to deliver hyper-personalization, Designing people-centered next generation products and services, Understanding consumer decision making and how to design for it, Leveraging behavioral science to achieve operational excellence, Cultivating talent and fostering wellbeing through behavioral design, Leaning on science to generate positive & scalable behaviors, Using evidence-based approachs to solve thorny strategic problems, Thought pieces on how behavioral science creates positive impact, Conversations with some of the world's most influential voices, A practical guide on how our minds understand the world around us, How some of the world's most influential thinkers got there, Foundational concepts to help you understand decision science, A Behavioral Approach to COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy, Beating Bias: Debiasing Strategies for Everyday Decisions, How to screw up less when it matters most: Olivier Sibony, We're on a mission of empowerment through evidence based choice, Diverse perspectives, brought together by a passion for impact, Thought leadership from the front lines of behavioral science, Join us on our mission to help the world make better decisions, Example 2 - Not listening to the other side, © 2021 The Decision Lab. The consequences are tragic and a national canvas. If we are hard-headed in our ways and unwilling to consider information that runs against our stance, then we will be less responsive and adaptable to situations in our workplace. Ethiopians look at their behavior with amusement and alarm. We have a tendency to interpret information given by our political adversaries in a way that meshes with our own political convictions. Alec Smart discusses a myriad of forms of self-persuasion that people use to convince themselves they are doing the right thing. Cognitive Dissonance is a theory proposing that we avoid having conflicting beliefs and attitudes because it makes us uncomfortable. To say that confirmation bias's use is to avoid cognitive dissonance is something that derives from the definition of both.We do indeed avoid holding two opposing beliefs at the same time to avoid the psychological distress caused by it. Also, he thinks, even if animal products aren’t great for the environment, he has done so many other things that are good for the environment, that it must even out (at least). Confirmation bias at it’s best (as well as cognitive dissonance, what Orwell called doublethink — the idea of holding conflicting ideas and believing both simultaneously). One reason why we are influenced by fake news is that it can be consistent with our own beliefs. The bias that one does not have any biases, the bias that one is "better, kinder, smarter, more moral and nicer than average" and confirmation bias. Fill out the form below to get in touch with our team. TPLF’s troubles were piling up in domestic politics with acute political division in the ruling coalition, growing youth unrest, rising ethnic nationalism and a poisonous residue of mutual suspicion and resentment. Confirmation bias is a cognitive shortcut that can lead to some pretty horrendous decisions. The government was on the receiving end of a threatening actions and harsh rhetoric. It prolonged and widened rifts between themselves and the rest of the nation. Similar to cognitive dissonance. In psychology, cognitive dissonance ... or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance (confirmation bias). Thinking of change negatively may cause us to avoid employing it when in dissonance. In reality, the peace plan was actually Israeli-authored. Changing our beliefs isn’t easy, nor is changing the attitudes and behaviour associated with them. The theory has, for example, also figured in the design of interventions to address a variety of societal problems. This article looks at how artificial intelligence helps us make decisions or makes decisions for us. John’s mind is put at ease. portalId: "3834397", Those who speak on their behalf have refined the art of speaking in double tongue. Cognitive dissonance, first described in 1957, is one; confirmation bias is another. TPLF need to overcome the hardwired psychological mechanism that that created self-justification and protect their tribal instinct. Oh mistakes were made but not by us as leaders. Those are extreme examples of confirmation bias, which must be avoided if you want to use critical thinking. Avoiding dissonance may prevent us from considering new information and consequently, from changing harmful behaviors. “A list of these psychological barriers might begin with cognitive dissonance, which can lead disputants to reject present settlement offers to rationalize past struggles.”. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-conditioned-response-2794974. Confirmation bias, Cognitive dissonance, TPLF. We all should learn from our mistakes. This is the feeling of discomfort you can experience when your beliefs are not in line with your actions or new information. Most of us care for nature and want to preserve it. Cognitive dissonance theory proposes that people seek psychological consistency between their expectations of life and the existential reality of the world. If researchers tend to analyze information in a way that supports conclusions that are consistent with their own beliefs, then cognitive dissonance may threaten the objective methodology that underpins much of academia today. 2. by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance (confirmation bias). We can all think of past behaviors and attitudes that we are thankful to have changed. TPLF managed to reduce dissonance in many ingenious self-deluding ways, with self-flattering ideas of processing information illogically. Unfortunately, none of these generally produce the results we want in … Results showed that eligible participants reported less favorable attitudes toward the unpleasant screening than those who were ineligible.
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