Cognitive Dissonance Entrenches Beliefs After Commitment

Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort experienced by a person who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.

This discomfort creates a powerful motivation to restore consistency. When our actions conflict with new information, it is often easier to reject the new information than to admit our actions were a mistake.

The Dissonance-to-Entrenchment Pipeline:

1. Commitment: An individual makes a significant commitment to a belief or group (e.g., quitting a job, donating money, severing ties with family).
2. Disfirming Evidence: They are confronted with undeniable evidence that the belief is false (e.g., a prophecy fails to come true).
3. Intense Dissonance: The conflict between their high level of commitment and the disconfirming evidence creates intense psychological discomfort.
4. Belief Entrenchment: To resolve this dissonance, the individual doesn't abandon the belief. Instead, they double down. They reject the evidence and increase their commitment, often by trying to proselytize and convince others. This is a way of justifying their initial investment and convincing themselves they were right all along.

This is a key social accelerator in the The Funnel of Misbelief. The more a person sacrifices for a belief, the more resistant they become to abandoning it. This is also known as the Benjamin Franklin Effect.

Tags: #psychology #cognition #cognitive-dissonance #belief #commitment #entrenchment #justification