Click Here to Print This Page

Previously, I’ve explained and described how an individual reaches a state of Cognitive Dissonance when they have an imbalance between an attitude, emotion, belief or value, or even a mixture of these. In this part of the series, I’ll tie in issues related to Brain Injury and disability to help readers learn to deliberately overcome dissonance.

Sources of Dissonance can include new information that differs from our accepted position, uncontrollable circumstances, logical inconsistency, inclusion of a specific attitude within a more general attitude, cultural mores, and inconsistency with past experiences.

It is the avoidance of pain that drives the individual to seek consistency by eliminating contradictions. One way to reduce Cognitive Dissonance involves distorting the truth, which can cause wrong decisions. The drive to regain cognitive consistency or consonance among beliefs, ideas and attitudes motivates us to do whatever we find is easiest to eliminate or reduce inconsistency in our mind. We may not necessarily seek truth, only consistency. Festinger studied a group of people who were deluded into believing that a space ship was going to be picking them up on a certain date to save them from a flood. When it did not happen, what do you think they did? The leader of these people received another ‘divine’ message: the world was saved through their faith. This led the believers to become more faithful than ever. Given the failure of a precise prophecy, we might expect the opposite, that is, to abandon the beliefs produced by the earlier prediction. However, Cognitive Dissonance Theory says otherwise. It was too painful for these people to admit that they were mistaken. They had invested far too much in their belief.

People experience Cognitive Dissonance whenever traumatic events occur. For example, many people sustain Brain Injury every year. Some are injured severely and their abilities are reduced significantly. Many face serious physical and cognitive impairments. Others are mildly or moderately injured and left with varying degrees of ability. Substantial differences exist among this diverse population. Some receive medical and habilitation services. Others do not. Both sets and subsets of people continue to live after their injuries. Survivors experience Cognitive Dissonance when their lives are altered by deficits and disability which do not fit into their self-perception. Oftentimes, individuals describe a ‘loss’ of a sense of themselves and family members describe their loved one as "a different person" post injury.

Learning About Brain Injury and Cognitive Dissonance

Medical schools teach the currently known consequences of brain injury. They teach symptom-based strategies of ‘fixing’ whatever is 'broken.' Hospitals and rehabilitation companies are staffed with people who understand many facets of brain injury, cognitive impairments and disability. They meet and treat a percentage of the population of people who survive Brain Injury. However, they never get to meet a full representative selection of those who survive because of the vast number of people who never come through their doors. Understandably, this limits their comprehension and knowledge base of the full scope of Brain Injury Survivors. Nevertheless, habilitation focuses on overcoming whatever is perceived to be ‘wrong’ with the individual instead of working within the person’s abilities. And that is one very difficult nut to crack among the funding sources. Too much dissonance occurs to accept that we would better the outcomes of people by assisting them in developing their abilities instead of focusing on whatever doesn’t work the way it once did.

To many a person who works in the trauma center, most of the people who sustain brain injuries fit into a category of moderate to severe. People who meet survivors in a rehab setting might categorize most or all of those individuals into certain classifications of disability and impairment. Their professional experience ‘teaches’ medical company employees to believe that ‘all’ people who survive Brain Injury are similar or the same.

Now, let us look at another societal influence. Our current mass media projects a certain perception of Brain Injury, cognitive impairment and physical disabilities. Society has become ‘conditioned’ to believe certain things about ‘all’ people who sustain Brain Injury. These beliefs can limit the general public from fully understanding the issues, concerns and implications of Brain Injury. And they set the boundaries within which most people operate in relation to their thoughts regarding individuals who sustain Brain Injury. The general public’s thought garden is bound like a narrowly defined precinct within which they only permit certain ideas to grow and flourish. This is because they are restricted in their consumption (water and fertilizer) of accurate, relevant information. Everyone’s understanding is limited to varying degrees.

Perceived Differences Cause Dissonance

Humans are uniquely wired to perceive differences. Yet with three billion letters in the DNA map, only one in 12,000 is different from others. That makes us 99.9 % the same, regardless of abilities and surface appearance. Some people who survive Brain Injury become different-looking because of their physical impairments. Armed with societal or media-based information or medical model-based education, our encounters with people who appear to be functionally different from us can lead us to believe or feel that we are superior to them. This is because of conditioning. We have preconceived attitudes and judgments about what constitutes ‘normalcy’ in appearance and function.

The people who survive Brain Injury that exhibit visible change in physicality, behavior, thought processing and emotions post injury, do not fit into our notions of ‘normal.’ Therefore we might think differently of them or treat them differently. We might even feel uncomfortable in their presence. That discomfort would be due to the disharmony that exists between what we see and our preconceived ideas, judgments and opinions. And it could be based upon our fear of Brain Injury. The problem is that we would be basing our superiority judgment on the status of functional and appearance characteristics, not on any valid measurement of whom, in fact the individual is. Most would agree that this is like racism.

If someone does not look different from us, we might not know that they have sustained a brain injury. Therefore, unless they tell us, we might not treat them any differently. Would you agree? I know this to be true from within my personal experiences. In fact, I’ve spent many years testing this idea as I interact with others. I’ve met numerous people who ‘pass’ as non injured. Many blacks ‘passed’ as white after the end of slavery too.

If we learn that a person survived Brain Injury, Cognitive Dissonance occurs because they appear to be ‘normal’, as per our judgment, yet do not fit into our notions of people who survive Brain Injury. It is at this point that we must invest energy into resolving the conflict between our belief in one sense about ‘normalcy’ and what we believe in another sense about Brain Injury and cognitive impairment. Often, people rationalize away the dissonance.

It has also been my experience that many people invoke their ideas of superiority over the individual who admits to having survived Brain Injury once they face the Cognitive Dissonance caused by the inconsistency between their ideas and the reality. The discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what we already know or believe about Brain Injury, and new information or interpretation is Cognitive Dissonance. It becomes necessary therefore to accommodate new ideas to eliminate the dissonance or to dismiss the new information, even if uprooting the new information is illogical.

The strength of the dissonance is affected by two factors: the number of dissonant beliefs, and the importance attached to each belief.

Choose to:

Often, rationalizing becomes the shovel to dig Cognitive Dissonance out of our thought garden. Individuals experiencing dissonance will often focus on facts, logic, or experience which reinforces their existing world view in order to resolve dissonance. In most instances, the (new) offending inconsistent evidence is dismissed (uprooted) totally as a result of this narrow focus on existing compatible beliefs, judgments, ideas etc. The individual seeks out semi-logical conclusions using their current ‘garden’ of thought material and newly created consistent ideas in order to find a way to invalidate the inconsistent evidence. Whenever someone is faced with learning something which contradicts what they already think they know, particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge, they are likely to resist the new learning.

Dissonance often leads to:

• misconception or misinterpretation of the fresh information,
• rejection or refutation of the new information,
• seeking support from those who agree with your convictions,
• and attempting to persuade others to accept your belief.

Racism is a prime example. So is discrimination against people with disabilities.

Converting people from one set of beliefs to another about Brain Injury and those who survive Brain Injury has been one of my most difficult challenges. I’ve faced it in my personal life, in society and among the people who have been formally taught within the medical community. As difficult as the struggle has been, my family has been easiest to convert.

Belief verification is easy when we surround ourselves with like-minded people. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "People only see what they are prepared to see." When we become committed to an important view that is specific enough to be considered unmistakable, we resist learning new information that confronts our accepted position. However, it can become easier to plant the new information and fertilize it with evidence to support rooting and growth into our thought garden when we are isolated from the group. Unfortunately, barring any unforeseen catastrophic event, we are rarely if ever isolated from our sphere of influence.

We avoid information that is likely to increase dissonance. We become comfortable traveling the same path to familiar destinations like to work, a favorite restaurant or grocery store to protect ourselves from the possibility of dissonance. To reduce our chance of experiencing dissonance, we choose reading material, television programs and movies that are consistent with our existing beliefs. Likewise, we surround ourselves with people that we believe are similar to us and we avoid others who we perceive to be different from us. This is especially true regarding narrowly focused, like-minded people. The people we surround ourselves with become our ‘peers’ who buffer us from ideas that could cause discomfort. In that sense, the process of making friends is an example of selecting our own information to support our beliefs. We subscribe to many systems of propaganda in our lives that shield us from dissonance.

Groups and Consonance

We join or form the following types of groups and organizations to increase consistency in our cognitions: cliques, fraternities, societies, clubs, leagues, associations, gangs, confederations, guilds, fellowships, teams, crews, support groups and committees.

Some of the above are formed by people having a common interest, activity or purpose. Others form on occasion by chance. Think about the set of friends you surround yourself with. What kind of people do you permit within your circle? What kind of ‘crowd’ do you ‘run’ with? Reflect upon the groups you have belonged to or still do. What kind of dissonance producing ideas motivate people to join. Why did you join the frat? Why become a member of the Elks, Moose or Eagles? Why do children join gangs? How do cliques form? Each of these illustrates the avoidance of dissonance in different ways and degrees.

Dissonance theory applies to all situations involving attitude formation and change. It is especially relevant to decision-making and problem-solving. The generation of dissonance can be a major feature of teaching and learning. This is simply because dissonance can be used as a kind of intellectual wedge between learners' current beliefs and "reality." What kind of dissonance producing ideas motivate people to become educated? Peer pressure? Familial pressure? Fear of poverty? Intellectual superiority? Societal class beliefs? Desire to become ‘someone’ and to make ‘something’ of their life? Or a selfless desire to better the planet?

If our learning has been expensive, difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, we are not likely to admit that our knowledge or understanding is in error or not valuable. To do so would cause additional, sometimes unbearable dissonance. Pain and anguish that tests our resiliency and character can be an effective (even false) way of conferring value on any experience, including educational experience. People committed to a narrow focus find it most difficult to assimilate new information because it can be interpreted as devaluing their acquired educational experience.

Two ideas can be found to be true in relationship to difficult and expensive real life experiences or education courses:

• participants are more likely to reinforce their value of it and to view it favorably regardless of its real quality, and
• the less likely they will be to permit the seeds of different or conflicting beliefs and ideas to be planted in their thought garden.