on board with Thought #1 and are not just fooling yourself).
This change in the first cognition results in consonance, or an agreement between the two. That’s a good thing. Of course, the reverse could also apply. In this case, you decide that eating the cake is out of the question so here’s what happens: Thought #1: I’m on a diet to lose twenty pounds. Thought #2: I’m not going near that piece of cake. Result: The two cognitions agree with one another. Consonance.
Will there be absolute peace of mind? Come on, you’ve just shunned a piece of Carvel ice cream cake for crying out loud, but at least you can sleep tonight knowing you did the logical thing. After all, if you’re going to diet, staying faithful to that diet only makes sense.
Don’t lose your train of thought because Festinger isn’t finished with us yet. He actually observed an additional factor playing in human nature. There are some people who refuse to change either of their cognitions. They’re going to eat the ice cream cake while they attempt to maintain the illusion of the diet. This presents a different kind of problem. Either these individuals walk around with stress knowing their cognitions are inconsistent with one another, or they find a new way to alleviate that stress. Not surprisingly, most will choose to eliminate stress. According to Festinger, this is accomplished by adding cognitions (I call it piling on justifications) to the original set.3 What will happen is this: the justifications will form a coalition with one of the original cognitions, thus overwhelming the opposing cognition. Let’s have a look. Thought #1: I’m on a diet to lose twenty pounds. Thought #2: I’m about to make this piece of ice cream cake mine. Result: Stress and Cognitive Dissonance. And here are the additional cognitions (justifications) brought in as allies to Cognition #2:
-I’ll just eat half a piece.
-I’ll do an extra ten minutes on the Stair Master tonight.
-I’m entitled to slip once. Everyone cheats a little.
-Maybe I only need to lose fifteen pounds instead of twenty.
-I’ll skip lunch tomorrow.
-I may be overweight, but at least I’m not fat like that guy over there.
New Result: Thought #1 is shouted down and out-voted. I now feel much better about myself, and I’m ready to eat that cake. A benign tumor has taken shape and encapsulated. There is probably little to worry about here.
2. Back to Amanda and Bryce—Cancer Takes an Ugly Turn
When we last saw Amanda, she was bouncing out of my classroom with a smile on her face. Given her predicament with Bryce and his flagrant infidelity, how was this possible? Very possible, Leon Festinger would say. Amanda was simply applying the basic tenets of Cognitive Dissonance.
Let’s step back in time with Amanda as she first learns of her boyfriend’s philandering. Her intense feelings for this boy are now being challenged by these new circumstances. The two warring factions arrive at the dinner party simultaneously; however, there’s only room for one. If something doesn’t give, there’s going to be bloodshed. And that’s precisely what was happening to Amanda. Thought #1: Bryce is my boyfriend and I love him. Thought #2: He’s cheating on me by sleeping with other girls.
I’ve been recounting this very story to my Global Studies and Honors Philosophy classes for the past several years. Each semester, the reactions are basically the same: the girls are disgusted and infuriated with Bryce, while the boys either have a mild reaction of disapproval or don’t care at all. Time and again, the girls tell me Amanda should have dumped Bryce on the spot and not looked back. How could he do this to her? Who the hell did he think he was by treating her this way? I smile and respond by saying that, if Amanda had dumped Bryce, this would have certainly taken care of Cognition #1, wouldn’t it? The two cognitions would now be consonant, and Amanda would be eliminating a large source of stress from her life. They don’t argue with me on that score. But Amanda didn’t dump Bryce and that’s really my point. She did not change Cognition #1. In fact, as far as I know, she continued to date and sleep with him. All the while, the stress brought on by his infidelity had to be building up inside of her. My guess is that the tension became unbearable, and that explains her visit to my classroom that day. I would conservatively estimate that, by the time Amanda came to see me that afternoon, two things were eating away at her insides. First, she had to know that her relationship with Bryce was a sham. She loved him (or so she claimed) but did he love her? He undoubtedly loved the sex, but his commitment to her was certainly suspect. Second, Amanda had to be thinking about the possibility of STD’s, particularly HIV. Remember, she was still having sexual intercourse with Bryce even after she knew he was sleeping around. That fact alone would cause most anyone to experience stress. Or at least it should.
At this point, I look at my class and ask them to recall Amanda’s solution to her predicament. The hands go up. She added justifications, they say. Right. Amanda piled additional cognitions so high and deep that, by the time she was finished, she felt much better about her relationship with Bryce. This piling on of justifications explains the smile on her face as she left my classroom that afternoon. Remember her justifications? She had a great time in The Keys recently. Amanda felt that Bryce was a loving boyfriend when the two of them were alone. She said she loved him, and claimed the sex with Bryce was so good. And, of course, the crowning jewel in her tiara full of justifications—he may have been sleeping around, but at least he was sleeping with nice girls.
By the time Amanda reached the end of the final justification, she had convinced herself that everything was okay. Love would conquer all, the sex was too good to pass up and Bryce’s other love interests had be disease-free. The STD angle was sheer speculation on her part, of course. I chided her by asking when she had actually tested these girls for the full spectrum of social diseases, but Amanda responded by rolling her eyes. At any rate, with all of these new cognitions working their magic, I tell my class, why wouldn’t Amanda stay with Bryce? The girls in my class don’t like to hear this, but I tell them they’re just going to have to be okay with Amanda’s decision.
I’m now ready to leave Cognitive Dissonance and move on to another topic. But my students have one more question for me. What is it, I ask? Whatever happened to Amanda and Bryce? Did they continue to date through junior year? What about senior year and beyond? God, don’t tell us she married that loser, they say. I smile. “Okay. I’ll tell you. As it turned out, Amanda dumped Bryce about three weeks later.”
They nod approvingly.
“Amanda got smart. She caught the cancer early enough and doused it with chemo. And that probably saved her a whole lot of heart ache in the end.”
3. Granddaddy Bird: Dead of Lung Cancer One Year after His Diagnosis
In some respects, the early Eighties were a tough time for me. I lost all of my grandparents by the end of my freshman year of college. I never asked why. I’m really not one to question those things. All I can say is this: if you still have grandparents, treasure them. They won’t be around forever. My maternal grandfather, Virgil H. Bird, was the second to go. I was in the sixth grade.
While lung cancer took my grandfather’s life, it was the cancer of justifications that started it all. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1913, he migrated to Florida with his parents and siblings when he was ten. His father (my mother tells me I used to call him great daddy- an ancient, towering man with wrinkled and leathery skin) actually built the house in which they lived. It was torn down in
