Cognitive Dissonance

---

To start, I should discuss my exact reasons for going over these psychological concepts. I am a senior at Southern Utah University, and one of our senior requirements is to complete a program called EDGE (Education Designed to Give Experience). For my project, I decided to write a fantasy novel using an idea I’d had for a few years. My project portfolio can be viewed here. Because I wanted to tie my major in with my project, I decided to use concepts from psychology to enrich my story. Although cognitive dissonance isn’t something any of my professors have gone over in as great a depth as I would have liked, this concept made it onto my list.

According to the Merriam Webster online dictionary, cognitive dissonance is defined as “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.” This essentially means that humanity in general possesses an innate psychological desire for cognitive harmony. When our beliefs clash with new environments, information, ideas, etc, this can lead to a stumble within the balance our minds have created to help us cope with and make sense of the world and our experiences. A good example of this encompasses the learning of new information. A few years ago, it was brought to the surface that a certain company which produces hygiene products most known for their use for babies and toddlers had been incorporating into their formula a preservative called Quaternium-15. Associated with the release of formaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical, this preservative was deemed to be a problem ingredient for the aforementioned company. A friend of mine posted a link to this story on her social media page which ignited an argument among her friends and family. An older woman commented in so many words that her mother had used the products on her when she was a child and that all these years later she was just fine. Her logic and further comments strongly implied that all the negative attention the story was getting was due to flawed political views as well as an overly obsessive and highly snobbish attitude on health.

Initially, I sat back and figuratively shook my head at such stances. In my mind, cancer isn’t something that magically happens with a single application of “cancer-causing” chemicals, or even a series of them. Cancer is something that takes time to develop, and may not show up until many years after the harmful behavior was started. (Take sunbathing/tanning beds and skin cancer for example.) And even if there is a chance nothing bad will happen, why take the risk? And why deny so strongly that the risk exists in the first place, especially when there is science to back up that the risk does exist, no matter its level of significance. Looking back on this social media thread, I realized that cognitive dissonance may have played a large part in this woman’s stance on the matter. She had first-hand experience with the product and was still healthy as far as she knew. She was also able to talk about people she knew who had used the product more recently and before the ingredient changes who were perfectly healthy. It didn’t make sense to her to think about this product as a potential health hazard when her experiences dictated otherwise. She was simply trying to maintain the balance of harmony between her beliefs about the product and the new information about these products she had just read.

Now that I have explained to the best of my ability and within the current limits of my knowledge the concept of cognitive dissonance, I want to talk about its role in my book. As I do plan on working to get my book published, and I have a number of people who have been looking forward to reading it, I do feel I have an obligation to announce SPOILER ALERTS!!! So, if you have a desire to read my book and want to find things out as you go, do not go any further in this blog post! …………………

Yesterday, I was having a case of writer’s block with the chapter I was working on, so I decided to jump ahead in the story with an idea that was more developed. In this scene, my main character is exploring a city on a continent that he’s only heard watered-down stories of from his own people. The customs, traditions, and overall culture of the people on this continent are things he is completely unfamiliar with. As he’s walking along admiring the new sites with curiosity, he enters a religious temple and sees that some sort of open ceremony involving baptism is going on. It is revealed within the narration that the “baptisees” are all in fact, dead. Although he is watching certain things happen (or not happen) that clearly indicate this is the case, he struggles to come to the truth of it. After all, all he has to draw upon in regards to what’s happening are his own experiences and beliefs, which do not match up with what he is witnessing. For a while, he tries to maintain the harmony between these two things, until this new experience becomes more and more solidified. At this point, he experiences cognitive dissonance. His current beliefs about how baptism works are in direct opposition with the events of the ceremony.