
What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015) - brahmwg
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-happens-to-the-brain-during-cognitive-dissonance/
======
amasad
Tolerating some amount of cognitive dissonance is one of the best things that
I was able to develop in myself recently. In coding for example, I used to
suffer mental anguish over seeing inconsistencies in codebases I'm working on
and have an OCD-like drive to fix them. Learning to live with those
consistencies freed me up to work on what actually matters.

Furthermore the unforgiving drive for consistency is a reason why people don't
update their beliefs when new evidence comes to light. Consider
Superforcasting[1] (a book about people with an unusual ability in forcasting
the future) the author says that one common trait among superforcasters is
that they have a larger capacity for tolerating cognitive dissonance. The
drive to avoid cognitive dissonance shackles you to your existing beliefs (see
confirmation bias).

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science-Prediction-
Ph...](http://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science-Prediction-Philip-
Tetlock/dp/0804136696)

~~~
jules
The ability to deal with uncertainty is not the same as cognitive dissonance.
There is no cognitive dissonance involved in accepting that mutually
contradictory propositions P and Q could be true, you just don't know yet
which is. Cognitive dissonance is when you believe that both P and Q are true
at the same time. Humans have a tendency to jump to conclusions because they
don't like not knowing something, and any answer is better than no answer.
It's precisely those people who _can 't_ deal with uncertainty who must deal
with the most cognitive dissonance when the conclusion they jumped to turned
out to be wrong, particularly when they've turned that conclusion into dogma.

~~~
amasad
Everyone must jump to a conclusion at some point -- you can't possibly collect
all the evidence in the world. I think it is also a case of cognitive
dissonance in believing that you can believe otherwise.

~~~
pessimizer
You never have to decide that something is absolutely true regardless of any
new evidence.

~~~
bonobo3000
If you are only thinking about it, yes. If you want to take a decision based
on the thought process, you have to pick a side at one point, knowing that it
might not be the right side.

~~~
pessimizer
Only if you think your decisions purely based on fact, rather than thinking of
your decisions as based on the best facts you have at the time.

Cognitive dissonance is believing that two contradictory theories are most
likely true based on the evidence you have. Since the evidence of the truth of
one is also evidence for the untruth of the other, it means that when
evaluating the evidence for one, you discount a different set of evidence than
you do when evaluating the evidence for the other.

This is never rational, and never something that you have to do. It's usually
done to avoid conclusions that would force you (according to your own ethics)
to give up something that you have, or not take something that you want.

~~~
riprowan
> This is never rational, and never something that you have to do.

Not sure I agree with that.

The real world is full of mutually exclusive moral problems, like when "do
unto others" runs directly into "first do no harm" when deciding to give help
to someone whose bad behavior you might be enabling.

~~~
pessimizer
The problem is continuing to hold both beliefs. You can't have two prime
directives. You can't say "never do harm to anyone" and "always defend your
children." You have to explicitly prioritize beliefs that have the potential
to cause dilemmas.

------
ItWasAllWrong
Sadly enough, cognitive dissonance is also one of the coping mechanisms that
keeps people captured in a cult. I've been raised in a high control
religion/cult. I've been out now for a while, but I was in for 24 years. The
cognitive dissonance was very high at times, and I'm not the only one [1].
Looking back at it, I almost can't believe it took soo long to realize
consciously what was happening to me.

It's a weird thing, alarm bells going off everywhere in your head, but you
still tell yourself: It's alright, I'm ok this is what I have to do, it's the
best life choice, it's not that bad, everyone else is wrong, ...

For me personally, the subconscious reason why I acted that way is that I knew
the repercussions when I would try to leave. My whole family, friends,
everyone I cared for would start shunning me. I would've been kicked out of my
the house by my parents, completely on my own, no contact at all. That's a
scary though when you've been thought the world is a wicked and evil place.
This year, the group has even become more aggressive when it comes down to
shunning, showing emotional propaganda videos on their conventions [2].

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/search?q=cognitive+dissonance&...](https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/search?q=cognitive+dissonance&restrict_sr=on)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxDAY5lVwuI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxDAY5lVwuI)

~~~
spoofball
Cognitive dissonance is everywhere. It was massive during the slavery period
of the USA. Or now, when billions of non-human animals pollute the planet and
trillions dying every year.

Cognitive dissonance makes life bearable. If I were to know that the flesh I'm
eating is dog flesh, I'd probably puke. Or if my mind always had burden of how
much I contribute to the environmental destruction with my life choices, I'd
probably commit suicide.

But with cognitive dissonance I can live a life worth living.

~~~
WalterSear
Or you could not eat meat.

What part do you think cognitive dissonance plays in the fact that you
conclude that without it, you could not "live a life worth living"?

~~~
spoofball
Well, an argument of taste comes into mind. If my life is based on daily
enjoyment in my meals then giving up flesh is lowering my happiness.

The enjoyment, the participation in a carnivorous human culture is integral to
my existence. Food being a major part of it. Dogs in China, chickens in the
rest of the world, calves, lambs and other babies. Factory farming makes their
life miserable (or maybe the fact that dog flesh is "magically better" if you
torture it before harvest, absolutely disgusting practice) and if I am aware
of that I might not enjoy it anymore. Therefore I participate in cognitive
dissonance, provide arguments which make no sense but soothe my conflicted
mind.

Organic farming, humane slaughter, cage free, all lovely cognitive dissonance.
It's always there. When slavery was actual, we tried to give them better
rights, just like we do for animals - instead of abolishing the practices that
make our minds conflicted.

Of course I can live without meat, dairy and eggs - I've been doing that for
more than 20 years.

Just love speaking from the other perspective. :D

~~~
paulryanrogers
So animal slavery is the same as human slavery?

Should animals automatically be assigned the same rights as humans?

~~~
spoofball
I'm not saying it is the same.

It's just that our reactions to the cognitive dissonance are the same.

For example, you had attempts at laws of humane handling of slaves during the
US slavery period. Slaves were disposable creatures, just like animals.

Our handling of the cognitive dissonance was attributing inferior
characteristics to slaves (intelligence, different skin, can't learn to read
etc.). Same thing is done with animals to argument their handling and
disposability.

Then you try to add "humane" into your reasoning. Which is filled with
oxymoron terms like "humane slaughter", "humane rape", "humane electrocution".

Justification of having the right to a slave's life because you feed him and
give him the right to live is absolutely mirrored in the argumentation when it
comes to non-human animals.

Nice thought experiment to confirm your cognitive dissonance is to think of
what you would do with homo neanderthals or homo erectus or maybe
australopithecus genus? Would you keep them in zoos? Have them as disposable
servants? Of course you wouldn't.

Cognitive dissonance is present because you've been raised in a certain
environment that starts to have (or you start to recognize it having)
characteristics that go against your moral stands.

If you try to have thought experiments similar to the one above (the
environment in which you didn't grow) you can think more in line with your
true positions, and leave the faulty argumentation behind.

Of course, you might try to skew the argumentation for the
homo/australopithecus case to be consistent with your actions in your non-
human animals case, but that wouldn't come natural, that would come through
cognitive dissonance (you spot the connection between the two, it distrubs
you, and instead of admitting that environment conditioned you - cognitive
dissonance comes to play).

Slavery, nationalism, fascism, heterosexual supremacy, male dominance, all are
ideologies spawned from existing environments whose supporters suffer from
cognitive dissonance. All of these ideologies share the same characteristics
as those of enslaving animals, massively killing them, poisoning the
environment etc. In that particular way, these ideologies are the same.

------
marlag
I strive to have one idea in my head, because having one idea feels like being
on a motor-way and visiting one of many ideas feels like being on a small
road. When I'm coding in a new domain or field I am sometimes flooded with
options and I reach cognitive dissonance and my pace takes a halt, for
minutes, hours, sometimes months, because of this dissonance, until one idea
has become more like a high-way an the journey proceeds. I feel that because
I'm a programmer I have to deal with and have achieved a quite healthy
approach to what is cognitive dissonance, a state that outside of work
sometimes makes me feel a bit schizofrenic.

~~~
dancompton
You should take value from those options rather than letting any one of them
define value. Then trust yourself to move forward. Software is writ in water.

~~~
marlag
I do often continue working but then with a nagging sensation of not executing
a task in the most optimal of ways, which is what I meant by having a healthy
approach to cognitive dissonance, performing a task in a way you know or feel
is not optimal but not being confused by feelings of cognitive dissonance,
instead just see it as part of the learning process. In the end, the
dissonance dissapear as soon as the learning process has finished, and I'm no
longer anxious about that option.

~~~
marlag
Which in itself is not very interesting but might be in the context of
building an AI. Apart from a NN, what else do you need for an AI? Perhaps you
need mechanisms such as "cognitive dissonance" in order to acheive "effective
learning" through coping with that dissonance. What we have today are clever
NNs. Nothing close to a talking bear (you know, the one from A.I. Artificial
Intelligence).

------
ccvannorman
A strikingly shallow and pointless article. TL:DR; We did some trivial,
questionable, narrow tests, and turns out cognitive dissonance is what you
thought it was and can be thought of as OK / survival instinct.

~~~
js8
I wonder why you dismissed it as shallow - I thought the opposite. I found it
very interesting that they can actually identify areas in the brain that are
probably responsible for the cognitive dissonance.

------
teddyh
See also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink)

~~~
wfn
..but also see consistency bias and commitment effects (e.g.:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/4e/cached_selves/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/4e/cached_selves/))

------
UhUhUhUh
As far as I know the actual cognitive dissonance involves ideas, beliefs or
values. Note that these three categories do not belong to the same class.
Beliefs and values involve an emotional component, along with wishes, desires
and all actions carried out for any sort of emotional gratification whereas
ideas do not. It is clear that we can hold contradictory ideas in our mind.
There can be no progress without that ability. Holding contradictory emotional
states is very different however. It is akin to the ability to tolerate
ambivalence, of which it is a general expression. This can drive some people
crazy (literally). The authors seem to wave at the insula (the emotional
component in that instance) to focus on the cognitive, executive component,
thus not really localizing dissonance but rather the areas involved in the
brain’s efforts at neutralizing it. A sort of homeostatic mechanism unknown to
Vulcans...

------
force_reboot
This is very interesting research. In my opinion, consistency is very
important in politics because, while consistency doesn't guarantee
correctness, it does place some bounds on what can be true. Often smart people
go to extremes in politics because they are able to see more clearly the
inconsistencies in the mainstream political parties or ideologies. But being
extreme usually just means being consistently wrong, which is not very helpful
either.

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xenadu02
Cognitive Dissonance seems like a mechanism to moderate rate of change, plus a
weak form of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

If you have strong beliefs (regardless of how you got them) it takes repeated
exposure to contrary evidence over time to change those beliefs.

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wmt
Does someone really believe that cognitive dissonance is a bad thing, as the
article suggests at the end? I've just always imagined that feeling bad for
poor decisions is how you learn not to do poor decisions.

~~~
telesilla
Think about something you wanted and couldn't have. You probably tried to
convince yourself you didn't want it anyway, and it was better for you that
you didn't have it. It certainly keeps me more happy! But I also try to be
conscious of it and use it like a tool more than a crutch.

~~~
enraged_camel
So is "sour grapes" simply a manifestation of cognitive dissonance?

~~~
ricksplat
Yes! It is often distilled to this aphorism. But from my reading of it "sour
grapes" is only one aspect. It is a more general concept that deals with how
we resolve tensions between our beliefs and facts as we see them.

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eggman
the cost to pay at the end of the road is exorbitant. with this in mind, would
anyone like to commit to a culture of holding fast to 'wrong and strong'? show
me where i am wrong and may you be rewarded. people compete to build the best
tools. fix the solution before the solution fixes you. prepare the answer
before you are prepared by the answer. the task is great. you may describe the
problem in any language you wish, veneered depravity is worse than dealing
with what it is.

------
kingkawn
Given the volume of knowable information vs potentially possible information,
cognitive dissonance is probably when you're paying the best attention to the
actual world.

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R_and_R
I know there have been scientific studies, but I think there is no such thing
cognitive dissonance.

