Quick definition for those who don’t know: Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person’s behavior and beliefs do not complement each other or when they hold two contradictory beliefs.
Story time! Please read this in it’s entirety as there is important context as well as an actual point.
I have been spending some time with the in-laws over the past couple of weeks, because reasons. They are an immigrant family, but have been in the US since the tail end of the Vietnam war. All hold US citizenship and it’s a large family.
Politics has cone up occasionally, but for the most part, we tend to steer away from those discussions when we mistakenly bring them up in conversation. Strangely enough, some are actually Trump supporters but I wouldn’t go so far as to say anyone is full-blown “MAGA” or anything. I would describe the support as mild and truly ignorant of broader level politics.
So, there was some discussion about how immigrants needed to be kicked out of the US and there was support for mass deportations. Another conversation was about how "everyone"abused food stamps and welfare, but within about 10 mins, the discussion flipped to what products another person in the family could buy with their EBT card. Medicare and Medicaid is also a waste of the countries money, but then later there was a discussion about how to use those benefits for another family member.
Politics aside, cognitive dissonance is a bitch to deal with, especially when it’s coupled with anecdotal evidence that may not even be real. I suspect that any experience with other “immigrants” I heard over the last couple of weeks are likely the result of a single, heavily biased experience coupled with gossip. (The gossip may create false memories of a situation the person believes is true. I think there is a special name for that.)
Telling a person bluntly that they are wrong is usually counter productive. Calling out the contradictions in beliefs can also be strangely unproductive as well. When a valid argument is made and a person realizes they can’t resolve a conflicting belief, the tendency seems to be to fall back on a generic phrase like, “Well, I don’t fully understand it, but that person must know what they are doing.”, or something similar.
Provided that you actually give a shit, how do you go about cracking the shell of someone that has fallen victim to this kind of thing?
First thing to realise is that people only repair dissonance alone and in private. As you say, debates and arguments don’t help.
I just try to engage on the positive topics and not engage on the negative ones. I’m honest about why I think what I think, but I don’t try to convince anyone. I say when I don’t know something. I don’t make shit up that I can be proved wrong about, even if that means letting something go unchallenged.
You won’t convince people that something they see as a problem isn’t a problem, but what you might be able to do is get people to look at alternative solutions. People don’t want to be brutal and uncaring, but they that can get there when it’s their last option.
Then occasionally you get a “something you said stuck with me” several days later, or maybe you don’t but something did stick with them. They incorporate the idea Into their thinking and start slowly shifting.
I don’t. It’s never worked. I try really hard to not say, “That’s the stupidest fucking shit I’ve heard since the last time I came here.”
Oh I just say that to their faces every time.
The best way, IME, is to know exactly in which ways these people are mistaken so you can ask the right questions until they’re eventually left with untenable conclusions/information that doesn’t fit reality. And it definitely helps if you state at all times that you’re worried about the person, that you’re not doing this because someone’s paying you or for the fun of it but out of concern, that you could be chilling or doing anything else but you’re here hoping you can get through to them, etc etc. But even then, at any moment they can just have a small ‘frustration aneurysm’ and leave the path of logic behind… In the end, we can’t ‘force’ people to believe in what we believe in, regardless of how much sense it makes and/or how useful it would be for them; either we’re open and clear minded enough to be reasonable or we’re not. 🤷
When confronted with any questions that make people evaluate their dissonance people will often fall back on “I don’t know” and refuse to engage information that contradicts their beliefs. If they do engage at all it may come in the form of circular logic, “Things are this way because they just are”.
It can basically become a parent getting exasperated trying to explain why the sky is blue to a kid when they don’t really know themselves.
The disconnect is often that their worldview is they are “right” and they just know that they are, and trying to prove otherwise kinda circles back on the sky argument. Saying that they are wrong is like telling them the sky is neon yellow, they know you’re wrong in their mind.
So yeah I’m not sure how to get through to that other than people being social and usually abandoning ideas if they conflict with everyone around them and offer no options for people to engage with them, but that can be undone fast with an echo chamber of false information or really anything that reinforces their beliefs.
These two books have helped me enormously in having transformative conversations:
- Never Split the Difference
- Crucial Conversations
And you can understand their way of thinking and how to communicate better ideas with
- Don’t Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff
I once got my very pro-Trump very Christian aunt to agree that Trump wasn’t Christian and that many of the things he’s done go against Christian teachings.
By the next day, she was already posting tons of pro-Trump garbage on social media again. Because that’s what compartmentalization and cognitive dissonance mean.
And she had built so much of her identity around this billionaire grifter that she was unable to change.
I don’t know what the best way is to deal with these types of people, but in my case, I just completely cut her out of my life. There doesn’t seem to be any purpose to communicating with a person who is incapable of learning.
Most people get defensive when you go after their beliefs, but try going after their reasons for why they believe something, people won’t be as defensive. Some good examples of how to do this are on YouTube, look for street epistemology. I follow someone named Anthony Magnabosco most of his videos center around religious beliefs but you can apply this to just about any belief. It’s not 100% fool proof but it’s helped me tremendously when talking to people with wild beliefs.
You can’t. A person must choose to value objective truth. Likewise, they must choose to change their minds.
The book The Authoritarians by Dr. Bob Altemeyer covers this topic well. Some people compartmentalize to support their preferred foregone conclusions, and will dismiss absolutely anything that conflicts with their desired conclusions. They cannot and will not compare the things they have compartmentalized if it threatens their outlook.
Dr. Altemeyer points out that you cannot get through to people like that, no matter what. The only way to reduce their compartmentalized and authoritarian tendencies is through direct and prolonged exposure to diversity. This does not change the compartmentalization or predisposition to force their will on others, violently if necessary, it simply curbs them slightly. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, as they say.
Avoid the ones who have a chip on their shoulder and vote out of revenge. Discard these assholes from your life. They are the ones who would swallow acid if they thought it would make even a remote impact on dems. They are a lost cause.
Target the ones who don’t care or just single issue vote. These are the swing voters that make up the bulk. If these people were challenged a bit harder on their position this would have completely melted the support trump had. These are your “leopards eating face” peeps
After becoming more familiar with sociopathy (or “antisocial personality disorder” per the DSM) I’ve been wondering if a lot of what I had attributed to various personality traits among family members is perhaps instead an untreatable genetic disorder.
Block them in phone, email, and any social media, stop talking to them, and do my goddamndest to stop thinking about them as well.
That is probably a last resort and we are far from that point. The way I see it, the root cause is fairly basic ignorance that has been allowed to fester for a bit too long. If they were all-out MAGA, I would say it is willful stupidity and would write them off fairly quick. Otherwise, I am not so quick to toss family out with the rest of the trash. Ignorance can be fixed but stupidity usually can’t.
The problem is that ignorance is a decision more often than not. If someone is already at an inflection point and open to making changes - and to your input specifically - then it’s best to try to help them expand their experience. Information alone often isn’t enough, they need lived experience. If you are in such a position with your family member, you are in a better position than most. But if they are already compartmentalizing then you may have to accept that you have very little sway. A person always makes up their own mind, one way or another.
