What is cognitive dissonance

We all like to think that we base our beliefs on actual evidence. After all, isn’t that the hallmark of being rational? But when new information comes along which tells us we should change our minds, what do we do? This article takes a brief look at the behaviour called cognitive dissonance and the consequences it has on our business decision making.

What is cognitive dissonance?

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort we feel when we hold conflicting beliefs at the same time, or when our actions don’t match our values.

We have just finished an electoral period (and entering a new US kind) that was full of cognitive dissonance. We protect ourselves and our belief systems by entrusting “facts” that support our way of thinking, so we feel aligned with a universe in which we are in the middle.

In Matthew Syed’s excellent book Black Box Thinking, he explains that ‘we have an allergic attitude to failure. We try to avoid it, cover it up and airbrush it out of our lives.’ The role of cognitive dissonance in our ability to deal with failure, big or small, work or at home, is very subtle and often we are not even aware of it.

The clever tricks

Let’s say you exercise regularly and eat balanced meals in appropriate portions. But instead of eating on something nutritious as normal, you indulge in a bag of choc cookies, only to regret your indulgence later. Those feelings of guilt and shame? That’s cognitive dissonance at play.

As we’re bad at dealing with these inconsistencies, our instinct is to resolve them. We can minimise this conflict by justifying or down playing the behaviour.

“I’ll just call it a cheat day,” or point to the evidence that chocolate is good for your health!

But cognitive dissonance doesn’t just apply to minor choices. Enter the buzz phrase for the past year, fake news.

By proclaiming stories as being fake news, this shows a tendency to only accept information that conforms with our preexisting attitudes. This is tied to searching for information that is consistent with our beliefs and following like-minded news.

The consequences of these fake news stories is leading to increased and aggressive claims from all sides as they declare that their truth IS the correct truth, with the rest lying.

Closed

loops

A significant trait in cognitive dissonance is the term closed loop.

Closed loops are often used by people covering their mistakes, or kept in place when people spin their mistakes. They basically keep re-framing an argument to ensure their original decisions were correct. An open loop allows for more debate, more data to be explored and for other answers to be found. At the highest level in business, there are many examples of closed loop behaviour. The more senior you are, the more you have had your opinions heard and listened to, the more likely you are to cling to “what you believe,” even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

An old example of closed loop thinking relates to the practice of blood-letting. When a patient recovered, the doctor would say ‘Blood-letting cured him!’. If the patient died, the doctor would say that the patient was too ill even to survive the wonder cure of bloodletting. From 2AD until the 19th century, blood-letting was a dangerous example of a closed loop rationale.

After the event

We all have a tendency to underestimate the complexity of issues around us. However, this can lead to what is called the narrative fallacy, and it relates to our knack of creating stories about what we see, after the event.

A sporting example of this came in 2007, when the Italian, Fabio Capello, became England manager. He introduced a far more disciplined approach. Results improved and writers eulogised that, at long last, results were down to a tough manager. In the World Cup finals though, the team were awful and failed to perform. Almost overnight, the press flipped their narrative and it was the fault that Capello as he was too tough! All the traits that were strong, were now re-framed and blamed for the failures.

It isn’t easy to combat these traits but we can when we are more alert to them. The hallmark of pioneering institutions is that they deal with these behaviours, not by re-framing inconvenient evidence, but by creating systems from which they can learn and progress.