I Am Not Sure That Festinger Got It Right, And I Am Perplexed That So Many Feel That His Ideas Are Sound Enough To Be Invoked At The Drop Of A Hat To Explain Behaviour.
You shouldn't be perplexed about so many people thinking Festinger's ideas are sound. When you think about it...most people just follow a leader blindly not truly knowing or understanding who and what they are following...but I digress...You probably already realized that...hence the comment...
Let me give you another view on cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive Dissonance is the norm in the siocety, not an exception.
Everywhere you look: religions, cults, blind beliefs, this movement, that movement, insert your favorite presient(s) here. Most nobody questions anything, just follow the "leader".
When you confront irrational people with questions and evidence there is no "discomfort", instead there is a violent outburst defending the undefendable. Closing eyes, denying the reality. Haven't you learned anything from the covid episode? If you keep pushing or the reality smacks the "believer" hard in the face there is a complete nervous break down, there is no logic, reasoning, correcting "the course, the irrational person is simply incapable of it. The limbic brain runs the show, the neo-cortex takes the back seat. That is why fear-mongering is such a successful stratgey - it works on 90% of the population.
Why do engineers (and pretty much everybody who needs hard logical assessment of relity for their survival) view psychology (even more so psychiatry) as a quack? Because most of ideas ae just BS, never tested against evidence. The observations directly contradict the theories.
Irrational people make zero effort to adjust their beliefs, instead they seek comfort in groups = echo chambers and would gladly get rid of people who challenge their beliefs.
I don't fundamentally disagree Igor; I just think that the "cognitive dissonance" lens is pretty badly used—somewhat fogged—maybe frosted. There is something to it, but not as much as people seem to think.
I find that a study of bias of various types is somewhat more informative, but as a former student in the discipline of psychology, I have come to regard that field as something far from ready for prime time. I have written drafts and drafts on that.
I probably produce 10 drafts on any topic for every 1 that makes it to the site. Also, given my age and cognitive decline, I often forget what I have published and what I have only done as a draft. That sucks.
I find a more useful way of looking at things to be my argument that we can only understand and argue from our existing understanding of the world, consisting of, at the least: memories, beliefs, biases, emotions, and understanding. Couple that with our incredibly diverse range of cognitive strengths and weaknesses—more like a mountain range than multiple intersecting bell curves—and you get the incredible diversity of opinion that is normal on all but the simplest of topics. Worldview trumps all—simplistically said, at least. Nietzsche was on to something with his glib remark that there were no facts, only interpretations (or was he just on something)?
Psychology has some good things that are useful/working (where do you think the psyop is coming from?) and a lot of noise. You can cherry pick what ineterests you or just take an idea/experiment and develop working theory by yourself.
You shouldn't be perplexed about so many people thinking Festinger's ideas are sound. When you think about it...most people just follow a leader blindly not truly knowing or understanding who and what they are following...but I digress...You probably already realized that...hence the comment...
Yeah, I'm just pretending to be perplexed. ;-)
Let me give you another view on cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive Dissonance is the norm in the siocety, not an exception.
Everywhere you look: religions, cults, blind beliefs, this movement, that movement, insert your favorite presient(s) here. Most nobody questions anything, just follow the "leader".
When you confront irrational people with questions and evidence there is no "discomfort", instead there is a violent outburst defending the undefendable. Closing eyes, denying the reality. Haven't you learned anything from the covid episode? If you keep pushing or the reality smacks the "believer" hard in the face there is a complete nervous break down, there is no logic, reasoning, correcting "the course, the irrational person is simply incapable of it. The limbic brain runs the show, the neo-cortex takes the back seat. That is why fear-mongering is such a successful stratgey - it works on 90% of the population.
Why do engineers (and pretty much everybody who needs hard logical assessment of relity for their survival) view psychology (even more so psychiatry) as a quack? Because most of ideas ae just BS, never tested against evidence. The observations directly contradict the theories.
Irrational people make zero effort to adjust their beliefs, instead they seek comfort in groups = echo chambers and would gladly get rid of people who challenge their beliefs.
I don't fundamentally disagree Igor; I just think that the "cognitive dissonance" lens is pretty badly used—somewhat fogged—maybe frosted. There is something to it, but not as much as people seem to think.
I find that a study of bias of various types is somewhat more informative, but as a former student in the discipline of psychology, I have come to regard that field as something far from ready for prime time. I have written drafts and drafts on that.
I probably produce 10 drafts on any topic for every 1 that makes it to the site. Also, given my age and cognitive decline, I often forget what I have published and what I have only done as a draft. That sucks.
I find a more useful way of looking at things to be my argument that we can only understand and argue from our existing understanding of the world, consisting of, at the least: memories, beliefs, biases, emotions, and understanding. Couple that with our incredibly diverse range of cognitive strengths and weaknesses—more like a mountain range than multiple intersecting bell curves—and you get the incredible diversity of opinion that is normal on all but the simplest of topics. Worldview trumps all—simplistically said, at least. Nietzsche was on to something with his glib remark that there were no facts, only interpretations (or was he just on something)?
Psychology has some good things that are useful/working (where do you think the psyop is coming from?) and a lot of noise. You can cherry pick what ineterests you or just take an idea/experiment and develop working theory by yourself.