Cognitive dissonance: the psychological mechanism behind "say no, but be honest"

Once, Robert Siodini, the author of Influence, and one of his friends attended a lecture on supernatural thoughts. The two young people who presided over the lecture claimed that their association can provide a unique meditation skill, which can make people realize all kinds of desired beauty, not only gain inner peace, but also enable people to master super powers, such as flying in the air and penetrating walls.

The friends sitting next to the author were on pins and needles after listening to these absurd propaganda, and stood up to refute the fallacies just now. After a short and confused silence, the two young people tried to refute, but ultimately failed, and reluctantly admitted that "further research is necessary." But something unusual happened: after the question time, a large audience gathered around the two lecturers, scrambling to pay $75 to sign up for their meditation training. The author thought that these listeners didn't understand his friend's rebuttal logic. However, it turns out that the situation is completely opposite.

The psychological mechanism behind this strange phenomenon is the theme we are going to talk about today: cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term used to describe having two contradictory thoughts at the same time, which leads to an uncomfortable tension. More precisely, it is a kind of feeling that two kinds of cognition are incompatible, that is, the so-called "sense of imbalance" (the sense of imbalance is related to the degree and importance of the contradiction of cognitive factors). "Cognition" here refers to any form of knowledge, including opinions, emotions, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.

The above is Wikipedia's explanation.

Simply put, cognitive dissonance is a kind of "inconsistency" and the "sense of dissonance" that comes with it: sometimes it is the inconsistency of behavior and attitude (the most common), and sometimes it is the inconsistency between belief and reality. The first example is the contradiction between "a strong desire for supernatural meditation to really work" and "a vague trust in well-founded refutation logic". This inconsistency brings people a sense of nervous imbalance, and then it is transformed into a powerful driving force, which makes people make changes immediately to get rid of this state.

"I won't pay on the spot, because I'm broke now. I intend to wait until the next speech. But as soon as your friends spoke, I knew it was best to give them the money now. Otherwise, as soon as I get home, I will remember what he said and never sign up again. "

An audience member explained this to West Audini after the meeting.

Suffering from maladjustment, he responded immediately, but what he did was unwise. Because he put all his eggs in supernatural meditation, he instinctively refused to change his attitude towards it and refused to listen to the voice of reason, which made him change his behavior to conform to this attitude. Taking the course not only didn't improve his present situation, but even brought him closer to bankruptcy, but the worst part is not this.

"Say no, but your body is honest", a popular sentence on the Internet, probably everyone has heard of it. Behind this joke is actually a cognitive dissonance mechanism. The real attitude in my heart is actually "want", but for various reasons, I can't show it, so I can only say "no" in my mouth, so these two contradictory "cognitions" collide, and then an unpleasant sense of imbalance arises. At this time, the unconscious means to eliminate the sense of imbalance is to show my true attitude, that is, my mouth says "don't" and my body says "want". At this time, the body movements reflect the true attitude.

Give a concrete example. Aunt gave you a red envelope during the Chinese New Year, and you refused to open your pocket at the same time from the beginning (if the act of opening your pocket while saying no is considered intentional, it may not be within the scope of cognitive dissonance discussion. For the time being, think of the following picture as the performance after changing behavior. )

At this time, the following measures can be taken to eliminate the sense of imbalance caused by refusing red envelopes:

Change your attitude.

Change your attitude towards red envelopes and be consistent with your refusal ("In fact, I already have a lot of lucky money, and a few dollars is not bad, right?" "It's also for my parents, just don't want it!" )

2.？ Change behavior

Change your behavior to be consistent with your attitude (from "say no" to "open your pocket and say no")

3. Increase the consistency of attitude and behavior

Increase consistency and make the two less contradictory ("I want to pay back the money this time, what should I do next time?" I don't accept red envelopes just to expand my vault. If I don't accept them at this time, maybe my parents will reward me. Do not accept! ")

Reduce the sense of choice

Rationalize your behavior and convince yourself that you have no choice ("Although I really want a red envelope, my parents will beat me when I accept it, so I can only refuse to accept it, alas ~")

5. Change the order of importance of cognition

Change the order of importance of these two kinds of cognition (it is more worthwhile to receive a red envelope and use it to buy what I want than to go home and get a beating)

This cognitive dissonance may be more common. Here, the desire to "ask for grapes" conflicts with the reality of "not eating grapes", resulting in a sense of imbalance and some uncomfortable external factors (such as ridicule and ridicule from others). However, you can't deny that the reality of not picking grapes is there. As a result, some people who can't eat grapes have distorted their cognition in a hurry and announced to everyone that "grapes are sour and I don't want to eat them."

Such cognitive dissonance can be seen everywhere: "It's not that I can't catch up, but that I don't want to catch up with that girl at all. She is not tall enough, her skin is not white enough, and she looks just like that. This kind of girl is all over the street. How can I like her? " ; "If you are promoted this time, you have to transfer to Beijing, but the smog in the capital is too serious and the traffic is still the same. I don't want to go, do I? What do you mean, it's useless to participate? Just kidding, if I run for public office, others will have nothing! " …

By uglifying the object we want, or emphasizing the shortcomings of the object, we deny the premise of cognition, that is, we generally assume that something and someone are beautiful and have their own advantages, so that we will want to get ta, so that we can't look down.

And denying your own cognition and making yourself "unable to step down" for a while is not only beneficial to your image, but also easy to lead to cognitive distortion.

I hope everyone here will remember the concept of cognitive dissonance next time they are in a hurry to step down. Face culture has poisoned us too deeply. )

This effect means that when people make decisions on two or more objects, they often hesitate and think that they have their own advantages and are difficult to distinguish, so it is difficult to make a choice at the moment. However, once a decision is made, the attitude of the decision-makers has changed dramatically: they particularly like the selected things and take a demeaning attitude towards the unselected things.

The cognitive dissonance mechanism contained in this phenomenon is more obscure and difficult to detect than other phenomena. To make a choice is to give up the advantages of the unselected things and accept the disadvantages of the selected things. The contradiction between the cognition of this result and the ordinary people's evaluation of themselves ('I am a rational and capable person') has caused people's sense of imbalance. In order to eliminate it, we can take action to change the original choice, but many times the choice is difficult to change, so we take the way of reassessing all kinds of things and collecting new information to alleviate the sense of imbalance brought about by decision-making. At this time, he is more aware of the advantages of the selected things and the disadvantages of the rejected things, which makes the evaluation of the two things have obvious differences in attitude.

I believe that everyone has had this experience more or less. According to cognitive dissonance theory, this phenomenon reflects the process of eliminating people's sense of internal dissonance. In the future, when we experience the changes before and after this choice, we can realize that this is a mechanism of cognitive dissonance.

Just quoted a few typical examples of cognitive dissonance in our daily life, but in fact, the phenomena and experiments involved in cognitive dissonance are far more than these: unnatural expressions when people are insincere, and strange phenomena that people believe in religion more when their predictions fail, all of which are behind the cognitive dissonance mechanism. Due to the limitation of space, I will not make a detailed analysis here, but simply list it for readers who need to discuss it in depth.

Festinger's Insufficient Rationalization Experiment

Frey, 1956

Weaken the sense of imbalance and strengthen faith (religion)

Frey, 1957

This paper studies how human beings look for consistent information from their own perspective, rather than inconsistent information, in order to prevent cognitive dissonance.

Frey, 1986

Study the human response to information that is inconsistent with its firm beliefs, opinions, etc.

Festinger, Ricken and. Schacht,1956; Tapply, Harmon Jones, burris, 1997.

Leon Festinger, the founder of cognitive dissonance theory? It is pointed out that in the process of weakening or eliminating the sense of imbalance, people generally lack a clear understanding of their psychological activities.

I don't know if you have noticed that in the above phenomena and experiments, all people who have experienced cognitive dissonance almost take actions subconsciously, that is to say, their reactions are not tortured by reason at all.

A thorough understanding of this theory enables us to be alert to what we are experiencing when we are entangled in the sense of imbalance caused by "inconsistency" and when we are about to make unwise behavior, so that this sneaky consciousness mechanism in the dark can be examined under the rational light, so as not to be disturbed by the "default procedure", and we can draw correct conclusions and make wise decisions.

Reference:

Cognitive dissonance:

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Leon Leon Festinger:

Soft. " Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58,203-211. Full text.

Festinger, l, ricken, h.w. South schacht (1956). When the prophecy fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.