Cognitive dissonance has been described by Tunbridge and Ashworth (1996) who (cited Sears et. al., 1985:50) as “A state of psychic tension caused by the simultaneous holding of mutually inconsistent attitudes or the existence of a lack of consonance between attitudes and behavior.”
Myers (1987) characterized cognitive dissonance as “Feelings of tension that arise when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions.”
Tension is felt by the individual in this situation as a result of the cognitive dissonance because the two thoughts or cognitions are psychologically inconsistent.
This state of imbalance results in frustration and sometimes anger. (http://www.mediate.com/articles/stuart.cfm)
Many whites (Democrats and Republicans) are, no doubt, suffering more cognitive dissonance than blacks in that they know they should vote for Obama but can’t find it in themselves to do so because of their racism. Thus these people will be more inclined to be “irrational.”
So as the “desperation-scare tactics” campaign of McCain-Palin continues to conjure up these fears and anxieties the probability of mass irrationality among whites (Democrats and Republicans) increases exponentially.
Timothy Moore, a professor at York University’s Psychology department, writing on such irrationality explains that, ” Sometimes perceptual illusions or faulty reasoning can have more pernicious consequences. For example, in 1986 a Philadelphia jury awarded a woman more than $900,000 in damages because she claimed her psychic powers had been damaged during a CAT scan conducted at Temple University Medical School (New York Times, March 29, 1986).
Her complaint was supported by the “expert” testimony of a doctor. Unfounded fears are not unusual, but when they are accorded further esteem by a credulous judge or jury we risk surrender to the irrational. What the courts take seriously is believed to be serious by the common citizen.”
Consequently, the devilish and the desperate in this campaign will be resorting to these most despicable tactics because the stakes are that high. With parades of pundits of apparent authority spewing “the necessary lies”, they will continue to conjure “nightmare political scenarios” punctuated with liberal doses of racist overtones and undertones to get these irrational people to vote against their own real interest.
The reason being that they will, in so doing, have adopted a mental strategy that “makes their deeds fair-seeming” and you know who’s the master at that.
“Plainly put, when one receives conflicting data, one has to do something with it–to reduce the internal mental/emotional conflict. Also, folks will use defense mechanisms: rationalization, blaming, projecting, denying, etc. to alleviate the cognitive dissonance (CD)–these mechanism can become troublesome in mediation….because CD is blocked. In addition, “selective perception” kicks in, which is folks selectively tuning out any information that conflicts with their personal core beliefs or attitudes. Thus, selective perception filters out information that could cause cognitive dissonance.” (G. Klien Wichita, Kansas)
The result will be that they won’t have any conscience in the process or a thought that their position is irrational or unreasonable.
Remember, Hiroshima, Internment camps, The Syphilis experiments, Nazi Germany when otherwise “normal” good people did under authority what was totally irrational? Let’s do all that we can to not have to add November 4, 2008 to that list.
