Carol Tavris, Ph.D. & Elliot Aronson, Ph.D.: Recognizing and overcoming cognitive dissonance

We all have blind spots, and perhaps the ultimate blind spot is the belief that I don't have a blind spot.

The more people understand how cognitive dissonance operates and how we are all susceptible to it, the more helpful it is in understanding our own behavior. So, to know that the minute we make a decision—whether it's about a car or partner or a house or how to live with COVID-19—any time we make a decision, we're going to be motivated to throw support for that decision and ignore evidence that we're wrong. The moment that we understand that gives us a whole new toolbox of ways of dealing with our own beliefs and attitudes.

When a friend makes a mistake, the friend remains a friend and the mistake remains a mistake.

Serious self-reflection is a lot more difficult than self-justification. The easy route is to leap directly into self-justification, but as we've seen, one step at a time, that can lead us down the primrose path. But self-reflection—'I did a stupid thing. Why did I do that? How could I learn something from that?'—is our recommendation for the way to go.

This, to me, is one of the most interesting things about dissonance: It's to the extent that a belief is really deeply important to us—that's when we become most tenacious in holding on to it. It's why, for example, it's not just dumb people who feel the need to reduce dissonance; the greatest danger comes from smart people who refuse to accept the evidence that they have done something foolish or stupid or that they were holding on to a belief or a medical practice long past its shelf life.

I like to think of dissonance theory as an incredibly helpful mechanism of understanding that is a form of arrogance control... If we can learn to have passionate beliefs that give our lives color and meaning... but to hold them lightly enough so that if the evidence comes along that our favorite diet is wrong, we can say, 'You know what? I was wrong on that one.'

I think racism in police departments is a very complex issue, but it begins with, I think, a false and illusory correlation: Since most street crimes happen in poor neighborhoods, and since a lot of poor neighborhoods consist of ethnic minorities, black, and brown people... police have learned that... street crimes are often caused by black people. Then, they become suspicious of all black people and become quite brutal... in their behavior toward them.

What social psychologists like Deborah Davis have shown is that a person doesn't have to be lying to be wrong in making an allegation, and a man doesn't have to be lying—he can be self-justifying—in responding to an allegation.

There's really no one who is immune from this. Whether you're a doctor, a lawyer, a DA, a mental health worker, [or] scientist, we all suffer from the pain of cognitive dissonance.