More than 50 years ago, University of Minnesota social psychologist Leon Festinger and two colleagues wrote these words in the opening to “When Prophecy Fails,” their groundbreaking case study on cognitive dissonance:
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks.
But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.
No flood. No flying saucer.
“When Prophecy Fails” tells the story of a UFO cult led by a suburban Chicago housewife, Dorothy Martin (called “Marian Keech” by Festinger). Martin had persuaded a group of people that a flood would destroy the world on Dec. 21, 1954. She also prophesized that her followers had nothing to worry about. Friendly aliens would arrive just before the flood with a flying saucer and rescue them.
Martin and her followers gathered together on the doomed night. (Festinger was there as well; he had infiltrated the group.) Some had given up their jobs and all their possessions. The deadline came. The deadline passed. No flood. No flying saucer.
But amazingly (well, perhaps not so amazingly if you understand the theory of cognitive dissonance), Martin’s cult did not fall apart. In fact, it grew.
Members were convinced that it was their own beliefs and actions — their gathering together — that had spared Earth from a catastrophe.
The ‘birthers’ cult
Cognitive dissonance was certainly in glaring evidence Wednesday after President Obama released his Hawaiian birth certificate.
As an Atlantic wire headline put it: “The Birthers Have Spoken: They Still Don’t Think Obama’s Legit.”
In fact, if you read or listen to what birthers are saying, they are now even more convinced in the rightness (and righteousness) of their beliefs:
It’s the same psychological phenomenon Festinger and his colleagues witnessed more than five decades ago.
What this means, of course, is that those of us in the, um, fact-based world are going to have to give up on the idea that birthers will be persuaded by non-refutable evidence — a message MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell finally understood last night.
I guess all we can hope for is maybe this time the flying saucer will arrive and take the true believers away.
Umm! the flying saucer believers have an article this week here on Minnpost! My interest is very realistic “UFO’s” that morph into airplanes when they get close (I live near MSP).
As to the “birther” thing I used to work in the archiving of government documents into electronic files. At the very least their procedures are sloppy. It’s been a few years but as I recall no modification or “fixing up” of scanned document was allowed before electronic archiving I think we used a “.tiff” file and if a document was bad you added a larger higher resolution .tiff” file.
It looks like Obama original document was scanned and processed with a photoshop programs that had an OCR scan oprn to scan the text for the “short form” and the original scan via photoshop was saved and perhaps used here. (when was the long form scan made?). It’s probably matching but it gives the opportunity for tampering. The “long form” is yawner. Why did Obama fight it’s release for almost three years?
Lefties play the same game. I extensively studied the Symbionese Liberation Army. Among far-left baby boomers it was an article of faith the “Everyone knows that Patty Hearst arranged her own kidnapping”. Even the surviving kidnappers Bill and Emily Montague-Harris concede that this is not true but that does not deter lefties. Massive evidence that the Rosenberg’s leaked US nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union but their of spring are still celebrities to the far-left.
For a bit of fun cite the claim that J Edgar Hoover (add cross-dresser for zing) was frustrated after the Hearst kidnapping that “Symbia” could not be found on any published map. (I found it! It is in the Greek state of Thrace, also home to Sparticus) http://Symbia.org
Tempting story but J Edgar Hoover died on May 2, 1972, the SLA declared war on the USA in August 1973, assassinated Marcus A Foster in October 1973 and kidnapped Patricia Hearst in early February 1974. http://SLAdocuments.com
The “birther” phenomenon notwithstanding, the most obvious case of cognitive dissonance was when a man without one day’s experience in having led anything, having not one day in a private sector job, and not one day in a military uniform, was elected by 52% of the people to lead the nation, fix its broken economy, and be its commander-in-chief.
Given his disasterous failures in foreign policy (Libya being only the latest), the national debt and deficit, unemployment at 9% and $4.00 gasoline, we’re finding out that perhaps we should be vetting our candidates a little better, including since he has such a paper-thin resume, having a look at his college transcripts which he’s protected from view.
This is an old story that keeps playing out. Some of David Koresh’s followers still believe he is divine and will soon return. There’s a christian cult driving around the country in RV’s right now proclaiming that the rapture and 2nd coming will occur this May – many have sold all their property and given up their jobs to “spread the word”. Will they be dissuaded when we’re all still here in June? Probably not, they’ll just move the date back.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this sort of thing primarily an American phenomenon? I don’t recall hearing about these sorts of things in other parts of the world. Americans are an odd breed. Many (mostly on the right) are anti-science, despite that most of the advancement this country has seen is due to science, including all the techno-gadgets people can’t live without these days. It’s both disheartening and fascinating at the same time.
Not one day in a Private Sector job? Demonstrably untrue Dennis. He taught at a PRIVATE University and worked for a law firm for over 10 years.
Not one day of leading anything? Demonstrably untrue Dennis. He was the DIRECTOR of the Developing Communities Project-also in the private sector.
Who cares if he had a day in a military uniform? Not part of the job requirement.
Your clinging to those fallacies and the others in your post are a fine example of exactly what this article is talking about.
@#1 – “The “long form” is yawner. Why did Obama fight it’s release for almost three years?”
Did you read the article? “As an Atlantic wire headline put it: “The Birthers Have Spoken: They Still Don’t Think Obama’s Legit.””
He ignored them as long as he did because you can’t win with these yahoos. If you give them what they want, they just raise the bar. The whole birther thing is not about facts. It’s about racism and hatred for a black president with a middle-eastern sounding name. Obama, being a reasonable and intelligent man, was obviously hoping that once the long-form document that has no legal standing was released, the issue would go away. It won’t, because the birthers are neither reasonable nor intelligent. He should have continued to ignore them.
Regarding the tired old qualifications-to-be-president diatribe, it’s interesting, isn’t it, that the folks saying Obama is unqualified could never have supported their favorite Republican president – Abraham Lincoln. Professionally, he was a self-taught lawyer who never went to law school. His political career prior to the presidency included several terms in state legislatures, a single term in the U.S. House, and a failed bid for a Senate seat. Militarily, he served briefly in a state militia, but never saw combat (hey, doesn’t that sound like Dubya?). Interesting too, that at this point in his presidency, Lincoln was as reviled by most as Obama is now by the right. Yet, despite a very thin resume, he somehow managed to muddle through the worst 4 years of our nation’s history as Commander in Chief.
Of course, we all know that the problems facing us now are all Obama’s fault, right? I mean, it’s not like he inherited a crashed economy, an imploding financial system that very nearly sent the entire world into a depression an order of magnitude worse than the 30’s, a free-falling housing market and two failed wars. If that were the case, maybe we’d cut him some slack, give him credit for at least stopping the economic carnage – but no, he caused all that merely by taking the oath of office. Everything was just hunky-dory under Dubya. Yup – that’s what Rush says, isn’t it?
What was this article about again? Oh yeah, cognitive dissonance: “A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.”
I get it now – Mr. Tester’s post was intended to prove the point. Well done, sir, well done.
Gregory and Dennis, you guys are hilarious. If I hadn’t seen your work elsewhere, I would have thought Susan made up those comments to demonstrate the kind of cognitive dissonance she is talking about. You guys are at least being sarcastic, right? Well, in case not:
“Why did Obama fight it’s release for almost three years?”
He didn’t fight anything, and he certainly didn’t spend millions of dollars fighting it as some have falsely claimed. Years ago he produced an official copy of the birth certificate Hawaii gives out. To any rational person that would have been the end of the story. That actual certificate has been examined by independent sources who confirmed that there was no photoshopping or any of the other things you suggest could have happened. The Hawaiian officials, including the Republican governor, confirmed that the document is correct, and matched the long form record that was just released. If that wasn’t enough, there are newspaper records that document his birth in Hawaii. You would have to be really, really, really, really stupid to think that there is an issue after all that.
I guess Obama finally got tired of it, and made a special request to have the long form document released. As to why he didn’t to it earlier, I think the response to the release of the long form today addresses that – it still isn’t enough and nothing ever will be. These people are so stupid and so delusional, that the facts don’t matter anyway. And now we start with
As with some of your other stuff, the Patty Hearst thing is just weird. Are you confusing “lefties” with “some guy you know”? Maybe the same guy who talks about sorting metal cans? Or are you really old and you had these conversations decades ago? Because I can honestly say I have never heard any “lefties” or anyone else discuss Patty Hearst.
And Dennis, do you make any effort at all to be truthful? When you say things that are objectively and provably false, are you just ignorant about the facts, or just outright lying? Is getting to the truth even important to you?
I have to say that I love the transcript bit, which is going to be the new birth certificate, I guess. What do you think is going to be in it? Bad grades? Good grades? Wierd classes? If he had taken more economics classes when he was 19, would gas prices by lower? It would be funny, if it wasn’t driven by racism and people’s inability to deal with the fact that a black man is our president.
Dan, During the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in the early 1980’s the people with the “I believe Anita Hill” bumper stickers when asked about Patricia Hearst they declared that “everyone knows she arranged her own kidnapping. This was a decade after the Hearst kidnapping so the memories were fresh.
Same when “Linda Lovelace” was brought here by McKinnon and Dworkin to promote the “Minneapolis Ordinance”. The same people who believed “Lovelace” (and her persistent claim of being threatened with a “M-16 Semi-automatic machine gun” tended to doubt Hearst.)
The Hearst controversy was reignited again a decade ago when a Symbionese Liberation Army was arrested here in the Twin Cities.
47% of Republicans told the New York Times last week that they thought Mr Obama was born outside the United States may not have held this as a factual belief, but may simply be giving the most anti-Obama response available to the question.
Dan! “The race card?” Oh please! Checking my AIM.COM AOL-Huffington there was a story on how the show “Pawn Stars” is the highest rated show on cable TV according to AOL-Huff.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/top-15-cable-programs-in-nielsens-weekly-ranking-for-april-11-17/2011/04/21/AFeuxhIE_story.html
1. “Pawn Stars” (Monday, 10:30 p.m.), History, 4.54 million homes, 6.44 million viewers.
2. “Pawn Stars” (Monday, 10 p.m.), History, 4.31 million homes, 6.13 million viewers.
I try to catch the show watching virtually all the episodes. They deal a lot with documents and the differences between a fake and genuine is a matter of small details. I worked with official document archiving before I retired so “Pawn Stars” is interesting to me. Again, Hawaii was probably just “sloppy” probably trying to combine one scan file for OCR scan for the short form ASCII emulation (which contains kerning) and the archived file for the “long form”.
Not necessarily Obama birth certificate but if you were to bid online on a rare document and a scan like the Obama “long form” was provided, would you bid?
Not to say it is wrong but it does not meet electronic document standards for verification.
“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”
Jonathan Swift