Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 65 posts

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#31

Post by jules »

amasad wrote: post #5

Tolerating some amount of cognitive dissonance is one of the best things that I was able to develop in myself recently. In coding for example, I used to suffer mental anguish over seeing inconsistencies in codebases I'm working on and have an OCD-like drive to fix them. Learning to live with those consistencies freed me up to work on what actually matters. Furthermore the unforgiving drive for consistency is a reason…

The ability to deal with uncertainty is not the same as cognitive dissonance. There is no cognitive dissonance involved in accepting that mutually contradictory propositions P and Q could be true, you just don't know yet which is. Cognitive dissonance is when you believe that both P and Q are true at the same time. Humans have a tendency to jump to conclusions because they don't like not knowing something, and any answer is better than no answer. It's precisely those people who can't deal with uncertainty who must deal with the most cognitive dissonance when the conclusion they jumped to turned out to be wrong, particularly when they've turned that conclusion into dogma.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#33

Post by xyzzy123 »

ItWasAllWrong wrote: post #26

Sadly enough, cognitive dissonance is also one of the coping mechanisms that keeps people captured in a cult. I've been raised in a high control religion/cult. I've been out now for a while, but I was in for 24 years. The cognitive dissonance was very high at times, and I'm not the only one [1]. Looking back at it, I almost can't believe it took soo long to realize consciously what was happening to me. It's a weird t…

I feel for you, and in many ways the hardest part is that everyone involved is so reasonable and loving if you don't contradict certain beliefs.

All the best.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#34

Post by amasad »

jules wrote: post #31
amasad wrote: post #5

Tolerating some amount of cognitive dissonance is one of the best things that I was able to develop in myself recently. In coding for example, I used to suffer mental anguish over seeing inconsistencies in codebases I'm working on and have an OCD-like drive to fix them. Learning to live with those consistencies freed me up to work on what actually matters. Furthermore the unforgiving drive for consistency is a reason…

The ability to deal with uncertainty is not the same as cognitive dissonance. There is no cognitive dissonance involved in accepting that mutually contradictory propositions P and Q could be true, you just don't know yet which is. Cognitive dissonance is when you believe that both P and Q are true at the same time. Humans have a tendency to jump to conclusions because they don't like not knowing something, and any an…

Everyone must jump to a conclusion at some point -- you can't possibly collect all the evidence in the world. I think it is also a case of cognitive dissonance in believing that you can believe otherwise.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#35

Post by pessimizer »

amasad wrote: post #34
jules wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to deal with uncertainty is not the same as cognitive dissonance. There is no cognitive dissonance involved in accepting that mutually contradictory propositions P and Q could be true, you just don't know yet which is. Cognitive dissonance is when you believe that both P and Q are true at the same time. Humans have a tendency to jump to conclusions because they don't like not knowing something, and any an…

Everyone must jump to a conclusion at some point -- you can't possibly collect all the evidence in the world. I think it is also a case of cognitive dissonance in believing that you can believe otherwise.

You never have to decide that something is absolutely true regardless of any new evidence.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#36

Post by deciplex »

dancompton wrote: post #28
deciplex wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are presented with evidence that requires a Bayesian update, and you are smart enough to figure this out, yet you still do not perform the Bayesian update (or you calculate it incorrectly according to your whims as opposed to the evidence), then I would say you are cognitively dissonant in proportion to the change in probability mass you should have recalculated but did not. Good enough?

So the problem is detecting when that update should be performed, right?

You keep replying to me with one-sentence posts that say little and have no point. If you have something to say or a point you're trying to make, I'd prefer you just do that rather than trying socratic-method everyone to enlightenment.

To (try to) answer your question, to the best of my ability based on limited information what your question even is: no, it is not about detecting when that update should be performed. Remember that we are talking about brain states, i.e. the-world-as-you-think-it-is, as it is represented in your mind, and perhaps if you want to push it, as you are consciously aware of it. If you hold conflicting beliefs but you are truly ignorant of the fact, then you can't really be said to have cognitive dissonance. In Bayes terms, I guess this is analogous to having priors, but not being aware of how to evaluate them based on evidence, and maybe even that you should do so in the first place. Cognitive dissonance, on the other hand, would be having priors, knowing how (and when) to update them, doing the update, and then ignoring the results. Alternatively, it would be performing faulty updates and being at least partially aware of the error in doing so.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#37

Post by bonobo3000 »

pessimizer wrote: post #35
amasad wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone must jump to a conclusion at some point -- you can't possibly collect all the evidence in the world. I think it is also a case of cognitive dissonance in believing that you can believe otherwise.

You never have to decide that something is absolutely true regardless of any new evidence.

If you are only thinking about it, yes. If you want to take a decision based on the thought process, you have to pick a side at one point, knowing that it might not be the right side.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#38

Post by pessimizer »

bonobo3000 wrote: post #37
pessimizer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never have to decide that something is absolutely true regardless of any new evidence.

If you are only thinking about it, yes. If you want to take a decision based on the thought process, you have to pick a side at one point, knowing that it might not be the right side.

Only if you think your decisions purely based on fact, rather than thinking of your decisions as based on the best facts you have at the time.

Cognitive dissonance is believing that two contradictory theories are most likely true based on the evidence you have. Since the evidence of the truth of one is also evidence for the untruth of the other, it means that when evaluating the evidence for one, you discount a different set of evidence than you do when evaluating the evidence for the other.

This is never rational, and never something that you have to do. It's usually done to avoid conclusions that would force you (according to your own ethics) to give up something that you have, or not take something that you want.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#39

Post by chongli »

wmt wrote: post #2

Does someone really believe that cognitive dissonance is a bad thing, as the article suggests at the end? I've just always imagined that feeling bad for poor decisions is how you learn not to do poor decisions.

It's a bad thing when you instead choose to pretend you made the right decision and go on to continue lying to yourself.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#40

Post by js8 »

ccvannorman wrote: post #17

A strikingly shallow and pointless article. TL:DR; We did some trivial, questionable, narrow tests, and turns out cognitive dissonance is what you thought it was and can be thought of as OK / survival instinct.

I wonder why you dismissed it as shallow - I thought the opposite. I found it very interesting that they can actually identify areas in the brain that are probably responsible for the cognitive dissonance.
Post reply on HN