Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.
For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance.
A STORY THAT EXEMPLIFIES COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
This is the theory of cognitive dissonance, first proposed by Leon Festinger, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota. In the summer of 1954, Festinger was reading the morning newspaper when he encountered a short article about Marion Keech, a housewife in suburban Minneapolis who was convinced that the apocalypse was coming. (Keech was a pseudonym.) She had started getting messages from aliens a few years before, but now the messages were getting eerily specific. According to Sananda, an extra-terrestrial from the planet Clarion who was in regular contact with Keech, human civilization would be destroyed by a massive flood at midnight on December 20, 1954.
Keech’s sci-fi prophecy soon gained a small band of followers. They trusted her divinations, and marked the date of Armageddon on their calendars. Many of them quit their jobs and sold their homes. The cultists didn’t bother buying Christmas presents or making arrangements for New Years Eve, since nothing would exist by then.
Festinger immediately realized that Keech would make a great research subject. He decided to infiltrate the group by pretending to be a true believer. What Festinger wanted to study was the reaction of the cultists on the morning of December 21, when the world wasn’t destroyed and no spaceship appeared. Would Keech recant? What would happen when her prophesy failed?
On the night of December 20, Keech’s followers gathered in her home and waited for instructions from the aliens. Midnight approached. When the clock read 12:01 and there were still no aliens, the cultists began to worry. A few began to cry. The aliens had let them down. But then Keech received a new telegram from outer space, which she quickly transcribed on her notepad. “This little group sitting all night long had spread so much light,” the aliens told her, “that god saved the world from destruction. Not since the beginning of time upon this Earth has there been such a force of Good and light as now floods this room.” In other words, it was their stubborn faith that had prevented the apocalypse. Although Keech’s predictions had been falsified, the group was now more convinced than ever that the aliens were real. They began proselytizing to others, sending out press releases and recruiting new believers. This is how they reacted to the dissonance of being wrong: by becoming even more certain that they were right.
IMPLICATIONS FOR CORONAVIRUS
Will people embrace change based on realisation or simply move into denial and stick with old ways of thinking and old methods of working. Perhaps making every effort to return to a past that cannot be recreated.
It has been suggested to me (and I readily agree) that in a time of crisis we are all in this together and there is little room or tolerance for maverick thinking. Any challenge is likely to be met with resistance and distancing from the social group which is clinging to itself and relying upon social cohesion to survive (like Keech’s followers gathered in her home).
However once the crisis is past you may see recriminations and blame, instead of new harmony you will see division. In political terms alliances may reach an end and inevitably compete for votes rather than collaborate for the future.
So it seems we have a temporary harmony which will be followed by [a] a new way of thinking and doing [b] a return to old beliefs and actions [c] division and debate about the future. Which do you subscribe to?
Me? I am waiting for the next spaceship to planet Clarion
USEFUL REFERENCES
What happened December 20, 1954.
https://www.wired.com/2011/01/cognitive-dissonance/
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