Today, misinformation is more easily available than actual information, and possibly more influential in terms of some people’s thinking.
The result is that we live in a world of seeming contradictions where some people, while they may not, for example, understand or accept science, do not accept arithmetic either.
More than 60 years ago, psychologist and author Leon Festinger wrote: “A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.”
Festinger in his book A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance proposed what became one of the most well-known and lasting theories of contradictory behaviour in psychology.
Cognitive dissonance is a psychiatric condition in which the patient denies any discomfit in finding themselves unable to accept realities that conflict with his/her prejudices or offends the validity of a proposition he/she has come to accept as truth.
A harmless everyday form of cognitive dissonance would be saying one thing and doing another: “I really need to diet and lose some weight. I’ll begin as soon as I have finished this doughnut,” or “I’ll quit smoking as soon as I’ve finished this cigarette,” or “I’ll quit drinking right after this one.”
More serious cognitive dissonance is the discomfit experienced or denied when our personal beliefs, ideas, or attitudes are contradicted by irrefutable evidence based on proven expertise.
At that point, the response by some people is to refuse to examine their beliefs in the light of reality, but are prepared to tolerate any dissonance between the two.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases across B.C. as of Sept. 29 was 186,994, while COVID deaths rose to 1,962. In the United States, the COVID death rate had reached 700,000.
Yet the number and intensity of vitriolic anti-mask and anti-vax street demonstrations denying all COVID-related evidence to the contrary has continued to increase, with protesters sometimes physically assaulting and spitting on health-care workers going to work in the same hospitals where COVID patients in the ICUs of those same hospitals are struggling for every breath to stay alive.
A second example of contemporary cognitive dissonance occurs as opponents of COVID vaccines and mask mandates now target schools when children are present in those schools.
This while the demographic makeup of COVID-19 cases in British Columbia has shifted dramatically in recent weeks, with children under 10 now making up the biggest share of confirmed new infections across the province and masks being made mandatory for all students K-12.
A third example of modern-day cognitive dissonance causes some people to ignore the fact that, as of July this year, a total of 1,204 people have died in 2021 in B.C. from street drug overdoses.
That number of drug-related deaths puts this year on track to become the deadliest ever for overdoses.
Since 2015, illicit drugs have been the leading cause of unnatural death in B.C., vastly outnumbering suicide, motor-vehicle incidents and homicide.
Nonetheless, people continue to buy, sell and use street drugs they know might kill them and their friends.
Festinger’s theory also goes some way to explaining the emergence of cults and cult behaviour, which has become associated with the wilful ignorance both of some high-ranking politicians and certain proponents of extreme forms of organized religion.
Festinger and his associates studied a group that believed that Earth was going to be destroyed by a flood on a certain date.
This belief led group members to gather in the same location and pray, believing that by doing so they would be saved.
When there was no flood and no end of the world, these individuals should have been able to recognize and tolerate the dissonance between their beliefs and the evidence before them, as uncomfortable as that might be.
However, because of the large gap between their beliefs and the evidence at hand, individuals within the group were more likely to reinterpret the evidence by claiming that Earth was not destroyed because they came together to pray.
In fact, some psychologists have gone so far as to suggest that a lack of ability to accept and live with the discomfit of cognitive dissonance may be a form of sociopathic behaviour bordering on even more dangerous antisocial behaviours.
As politician, sociologist, and diplomat Daniel Patrick Moynihan stated: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
gfjohnson4@shaw.ca
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
