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Review Article | DOI: https://doi.org/10.31579/2578-8868/025

Cognitive Dissonance Revisited

  • James F. Welles 1

1 East Marion, NY, USA.

*Corresponding Author: James F. Welles, East Marion, NY, USA.

Citation: James F. Welles, Cognitive Dissonance Revisited, J Neuroscience and Neurological Surgery.2(1);Doi: 10.31579/2578-8868/025

Copyright: © 2018 James F. Welles. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Received: 05 January 2018 | Accepted: 08 February 2018 | Published: 19 February 2018

Keywords: cognitive dissonance;neurological surgery

Abstract

Cognitive dissonance (cogdis) is defined as an uncomfortable condition resulting from holding contradictory beliefs. Obviously, stupidity helps in this process, in that the dumber a person is, the easier it is for her to hold contradictory beliefs. 

Cognitive dissonance (cogdis) is defined as an uncomfortable condition resulting from holding contradictory beliefs. Obviously, stupidity helps in this process, in that the dumber a person is, the easier it is for her to hold contradictory beliefs. For us, we expand cogdis to cover the condition of a deeply held belief at odds with relevant behavior as in Crusaders who killed for Christ or a corrupt cop. In addition, we extend the principle beyond the individual to society in general, in that we find a culture may profess a belief which is contradicted by the conduct of its members, as when the institution of science is set up to protect errant members rather than correct their errors.1

            While it is reasonable to presume that a such dissonance creates a psychic tension which humans ache to resolve, this commonly is not the case: people simply live with their contradictions. As Walt Whitman observed, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then. I contradict myself.”2 This is not much of a stretch, since one can posit that a behavioral system is an expression of an underlying belief system–so you have a behavioral belief system at odds with a theoretical/ethical belief system. The expected dissonance is common mitigated[1]  by word games, which reduce cognitive tension by redefining everything to suit the super-ego individual and society. The oddity is that people then get upset when confronted by some aggravating person who, like the honest cop, presumes to act according to the explicit verbal creed and challenges the society to adapt to her, live up to itself or admit its basic ethic is a not particularly amusing self-inflicted joke.

            Opposed to cogdis is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s (1936.) insight that the mark of first rate mind is the ability to hold contradictory ideas at the same time and still function. For my money, Leon Festinger is being super-egoish[2] : His view is the way a reasonable mind should function. He and his[3]  have gathered a lot of supporting data, but to maintain their theory, they have to ignore a lot of street behavior which contradicts their view. For example, as a refutation of the theory of cognitive dissonance, Adolf Hitler was a case study in stupidity in that the more his belief in Providence (i.e., God) was contradicted by facts from his environment, the stronger he embraced it3–clearly a road map for a disastrous one-way, dead-end street. The test set up by scientists show [4] how the mind can function–not necessarily how it does function. More perplexing and confusing is the fact that even a first rate mind can function well with just a half-baked idea if it is gratifying.4

References

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