http://www.yogateacher.com/text/essays/spring2007.html
yogateacher.com
by Charles MacInerney

Many years ago, a university student seated next to an old man on the train, observed him shuffling rosary beads between his fingers, lips moving in prayer. “Sir, do you still believe in such outdated things?” asked the student. “Why yes, I do. Don’t you?” asked the man. Laughing, the student replied “I don’t believe in such silly things. Take my advice. Throw the rosary out through this window and learn what science has to say”.

“Ah yes, science. I have never felt I really understood science. Perhaps with help, someday I will.” the man said humbly with some tears in his eyes. A little embarrassed now, the student said “Please give me your address and I will send you some literature to help you on the matter.” Louis Pasteur, Director of the Institute of Scientific Research in Paris, presented the young man with a calling card from his coat pocket. On glancing at the card, the student, lowered his head in embarrassment and became silent. Un-attributed story told and retold about Pasteur, paraphrased.

Western psychology has a term called cognitive dissonance which refers to the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two seemingly contradictory thoughts at the same time. Most people attempt to reduce this tension by changing or rejecting one or the other thought in order to resolve the apparent conflict. For example, in the lead story above, the student attempts to resolve the perceived conflict between faith and science, by suggesting that Pasteur throw the rosary beads out the window and turn to science! Most people prefer to feel certain about things. They float through life following the path of least resistance, avoiding cognitive dissonance when ever possible.

It is the greatest scientists and philosophers that do not run from paradox, but instead learn to use it to achieve a deeper and more penetrating understanding of reality. Pasteur held close to science and his rosary. Krishnamurti advocated sitting quietly with your own confusion and fear in order to increase self-awareness. Niels Bohr, the famous physicist, had a horseshoe over his desk. When asked if he really believed that a horse shoe brought luck, Professor Bohr replied, “I am given to understand that it does, whether you believe in it or not.”

One the most popularized aspects of Zen meditation is the koan… the paradoxical question that has no answer. The koan is a tool that the monks use to create cognitive dissonance in the mind. Rather than attempting to resolve the conflict, students are trained to embrace cognitive dissonance through steady focus on paradox, increasing the internal tension of the mind until they resolve the paradox by breaking through to a new level of awareness beyond thought.

Einstein was approached by one of his students who pointed out, “The questions on this year’s exam are the same as last year’s!” “True,” Einstein said, “but this year all answers are different.”

http://www.couplescompany.com/features/Politics/CogDiss.htm
couplescompany.com
by Laura dawn Lewis

Emotional blackmail (Demand, Resistance, Pressure Threats, Compliance and Repetition) is not used exclusively in personal relationships.  It is used any time one group or person wants to force its agenda, opinion or will on another.  You’ve probably witnessed it on the job and currently you can study the effects simply by turning on the news.

Each of these tactics has been used extensively by the media and the government in the United States since September 11, 2001 to push the agenda and create agreement within the US population and worldwide.  Commentators like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are masters with this tactic and provide nightly opportunities to study it in action. Former President Bill Clinton knew well how to use emotional blackmail to his advantage.  It is a persuasive tool.  The purpose of emotional blackmail is to control, redirect and ultimately create a state of cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is the state of confusion that occurs when facts become twisted into half-truths, colliding with common sense and suddenly you are convinced 2+2 = 5. Your instincts tell you something isn’t right; yet the information you are fed and exposed to counteracts your instincts causing you to doubt yourself. Some refer to this as Orwellian speak, the act of taking antonyms and presenting them as synonyms: War is Peace, Consent is Patriotism, Disagreement is Anti-American or Rights are Weaknesses. These are some of the Orwellian messages Americans are currently sifting through.

Cognitive dissonance also occurs in the pairing of unrelated facts to create correlation.  The best of example of this is President Bush’s speech in which he mentioned Iraq and the September 11th attacks in the same sentence. The close proximity of the mentions is designed to create a correlation in peoples’ minds even when the reality is different. By insinuating, people subconsciously take the idea and turn it to a possibility.  Through repetition, the correlation becomes fact based upon misinformation.  In time, the reality is forgotten and the revision becomes the truth.  According to an ABC Poll only 19% of Americans know Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 nor were any of the hijackers Iraqi. That means over 75% of Americans have bought into the confusion and taken it as fact.

This is the power of cognitive dissonance: to revise history, change facts and make fiction truth and the truth treason. Both history and current politics include a wealth of examples.  Because of the emotions involved, the Middle East presents the perfect case study in the use of public relations to create cognitive dissonance through emotional blackmail on multiple cultures, populations and countries.

Example: 80% of Americans believe the Christian and Muslim Palestinians attacked Israel and this why the Occupied Territories are a problem.  The opposite is true, as documented by the 1967 six day war, and more than 80 UN sanctions against Israel (compared to Iraq’s less than 20) and numerous news stories published around the world. But the misinformation, through the omission of corrections becomes fact. Stories are routinely run in the US with one headline then corrected internationally a few days later. The correction, if it runs in the US and in most cases it doesn’t, it is buried in the back pages with a small headline.

One example occurred on November 19, 2002, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (IMFA) re-manufactured a story about a Palestinian suicide bombing on a military target. Twelve Israeli soldiers and paramilitary fighting men were killed. No civilians were killed.

The facts given in the US called the raid a “Massacre of innocent (Israeli) civilians”.  Internationally the story was corrected to state that this was in fact a military attack with no civilian casualties.  In the US, through omission of critical facts the American public continues to believe this was yet another attack on innocents. This form of propaganda is emotional blackmail.  It uses a combination of guilt and fear to generate anger and manipulate a population toward compliance.  It is also very shrewd public relations, which is brilliantly planned and executed.

All stories pertaining to Israeli military activity and the Occupied Territories go through two censors, their military and IMFA before they are allowed to be reported on.  This insures that only news favorable to the agenda is printed, broadcast and distributed in the United States.  Internationally additional footage is smuggled out of the country and reported on elsewhere.  In the US, we rarely see uncensored stories.

Case in Point: Wednesday April 16th, 2003 ABC World News Tonight reported that a major International methamphetamine drug bust had been accomplished.  In custody included members from three nations, the United States, Canada and a Middle East country.  The Middle East country was never named on by ABC, why?  Within five minutes of perusing the international press, the country behind the cloak was revealed. This country is in fact one of the largest producers and exporters of methamphetamine in the world. Its specialization is  ecstasy.  The US press never misses a chance to slam Middle Eastern countries of Arabic or Muslim decent.

Why is the US media shielding this country?  Is it because the country not named is Israel?  Its drug problem is well-known internationally, yet in the US it is given saintly status and not even mentioned.  Is the American public so infantile that we cannot be given the straight facts?  Can we not separate the criminal behavior of a few from the rest of a society?  Is our own press and APAIC so afraid that if Americans realize Israelis are humans with flaws and faults like the rest of the world, no better and no worse, we will suddenly turn our backs?  Few American’s will turn their backs on flaws.  Most will turn their backs on liars.

For myself, ABC News lost much of its credibility after this story.  It was like having a trusted friend show you how shallow he or she really is by discovering rather than having your best interests in mind, he/she’s been manipulating you all along.  Of course there are more examples.

Take the suicide bombings. In reality the majority of the suicide bombings have occurred in locations frequented by military personnel and have targeted military personnel.  Rather than use troop transports, the Israeli government uses public transportation, mixing civilians with military to dissuade attacks on military troops. This is why so many buses are attacked. These facts are kept at bay in the US through public ridicule of opposing positions and the vilification of dissention.  Reporters are afraid to write the real story lest they become the target.  Even when direct evidence exists proving the story wrong, the corrections often do not run.

How can misinformation happen in a country with a free press? How, is a classic illustration of emotional blackmail at work. This scenario happens with politicians, public figures and others, but is most common in the news media.  Here’s how it works.

A reporter writes a story, which unearths the truth or exposes a cover-up.  If this story fits the agenda, he is labeled a hero.  If this story exposes information that is unflattering to the agenda, he is labeled anti-patriotic, fanatical or anti-American. If the information reflects poorly on Israeli policy or shows the conditions of occupation, false flag operations or cover-ups, he is branded anti-Semitic and anti-Israel and no longer considered part of the team. The reporter is reassigned and in many cases his career is ended.  He is terrorized into submission through emotional blackmail and professional reprisals. In most cases the labels are not justified.  Unfortunately for the reporter, truth doesn’t matter.  The labels are so emotionally charged that few will question them and most won’t defend the reporter for fear of the same consequences.

The threat of being branded as such and the personal loss of career is enough to ignore the tenants of Edward R Morrow and sacrifice the ethics code of the Associated Press by and following the party line. This is how a country with a free press perpetuates misinformation and goes from being the voice of the people and purveyor of truth to the mouthpiece of political agendas here and abroad.

Fear rules. The truth is the first casualty and the following articles omit the information contrary to the agenda.  Soon this dry cleaned version becomes the accepted truth, minus the facts that reveal the full story.  It’s in these omissions the information critical to a sound decision exists.  Through ignorance, stories create complacency.  Through complacency, acceptance and by way of false information, omissions and actual lies policy and public opinion are nurtured.

Emotional blackmail plays upon the emotions we are most motivated by: Fear, Guilt, Curiosity and Humor. Threats, name-calling, vilification and public humiliation are often used to squash opposition.  Repetition of the objectives continues louder to drown out resistance until through unrelenting repetition; compliance becomes the path of least resistance in ending the assault.  The result is similar to Chinese water torture.  A single drop of water dropping on the forehead over and over and over again until this simple occurrence causes near insanity. Emotional blackmail’s repetition of tactics and messages works the same way to produce the desired state of compliance. It is in this state of compliance manifested within cognitive dissonance that people are most vulnerable to manipulation and suggestion.

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/sorry-new-york-times-cognitive-dissonance-exists-15842.html
scienceblog.com
by coglanglab

Earlier this week, New York Times columnist John Tierney reported a potential flaw in a classic psychology experiment. It turns out that the experimental finding — cognitive dissonance — is safe and sound (see below). But first, here are the basic claims:

Cognitive dissonance generally refers to changing your beliefs and desires to match what you do. That is, rather than working hard for something you like, you may believe you like something because you worked so hard for it.

Laboratory experiments (of which there have been hundreds if not thousands) tend to be of the following flavor (quoted from the Tierney blog post). Have someone rate several different objects (such as different colored M&Ms) in terms of how much they like them. From that set of objects, choose three (say, red, blue and green) that the person likes equally well. Then let the person choose between two of them (the red and blue M&M).

Presumably (and this will be the catch) the person chooses randomly, since she likes both equally. Say she chooses the red M&M. Then let her choose between red and green. You would predict that she would choose randomly, since she likes the two colors equally, but she nearly invariably will be the red M&M. This is taken as evidence that her originally random choice of the red M&M actually changed her preferences to where she now likes red better than either blue or green.

The basic problem with this experiment, according to M. Keith Chen of Yale and as reported by Tierney, is that we don’t really know that the person didn’t originally prefer red. She may have rated them similarly, but she chose red over blue. The math works out such that if she in fact already preferred red over blue, she probably also actually preferred red over green.

Tierney calls this a “fatal flaw” in cognitive dissonance research, and asks “choice rationalization has been considered one of the most well-established theories in social psychology. Does it need to be reconsidered?”

Short answer: No.

First, it is important to point out that Chen has shown that if the original preferences were measured incorrectly, then this type of experiment might suggest cognitive dissonance even where there is none. He does not show that the original measurements were in error.

However, even if that were true, that would not mean that cognitive dissonance does not exist. This is a classic problem in logic. Chen’s argument is of the following form: If Socrates is a woman, then he is mortal. Socrates is not a woman. Therefore, he is not mortal.

In any case, cognitive dissonance has been shown in studies that do not fall under Chen’s criticisms. Louisa Egan and collaborators solved this problem by having their subjects choose between items they couldn’t see. Since the subjects knew nothing about the items, they couldn’t possibly have a pre-existing preference. Even so, they showed the classic pattern of results.

By all appearances in the Tierney article, Chen is unaware of this study (which, to be fair, is not yet published). “I wouldn’t be completely surprised if [cognitive dissonance] exists, but I’ve never seen in measured correctly.” This is hard to believe, since Chen not only works in the same university as Egan, he is a close collaborator of Laurie Santos (Egan’s graduate advisor). It’s not clear why he would neglect to mention this study, particularly since having this critique of cognitive dissonance research aired in the New York Times is embarrassing to Egan and Santos at a time when Egan is on the job market.

Thus, it’s puzzling that Chen claims that no existing study unambiguously shows cognitive dissonance. He might, however, be able to make the weaker claim that it is possible that some studies that have been claimed to show cognitive dissonance in fact to not. That is a reasonable claim and worth testing. In fact, Chen reports that he is testing it now. It is worth keeping in mind that for the time being, Chen has only an untested hypothesis. It’s an intriguing and potentially valuable hypothesis, but there isn’t any evidence yet that it is correct.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=233
sciencebasedmedicine.org
by Steven Novella

Humans have the very odd ability to hold contradictory, even mutually exclusive, ideas in their brains at the same time. There are two basic processes at work to make this possible. The first is compartmentalization – the ideas are simply kept separate. They are trains on different tracks that never cross. We can switch from to the other, but they never crash into each other.

When contradictory ideas do come into conflict this causes what psychologists call “cognitive dissonance.” We then typically will relieve cognitive dissonance, which is an unpleasant state, through the second process – rationalization. We happily make up reasons why the two conflicting ideas actually don’t conflict at all. People are generally good at rationalization. It is a supreme intellectual irony that greater intelligence often leads to a greater ability to rationalize with both complexity and subtlety, and therefore a greater capacity to maintain contradictory beliefs.

In fact the demarcation between science and pseudoscience is often determined by the difference between sound scientific reasoning and sophisticated rationalization.

While cognitive dissonance refers to a process that takes place within a single mind, it is a good metaphor for the contradictory impulses of groups of people, like cultures or institutions. I could not help but to invoke this metaphor when reading two editorials published in the same day in the New York Times.

The first article is by Gina Kolata (I wonder if her parents really liked tropical drinks), and is titled: Searching for Clarity: A Primer on Medical Studies. This is an excellent article – I would have been happy to have such an article be published in SBM, in fact.

Kolata begins with the story of beta carotene and cancer; of how the basic science, the animal studies, and the population-based data all looked as if beta carotene would significantly decrease cancer risk. Then came the large, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials that showed not only does beta carotene not protect against cancer it may increase risk a little. She uses this as a jumping off point to talk about the different types of clinical evidence, and why it is important to control for variables.

The focus of her article gets it just right – all the fuss is about trying to figure out what actually works, as reliably as possible. Basic science tells us about possible mechanisms of action. Animal studies give us confidence that a treatment is safe and promising enough to invest in human research. Population-based studies can be helpful, but they are preliminary because it is impossible to foresee all possible confounding factors. For example, perhaps people who take beta carotene supplements, or eat more fruits and vegetables, take care of themselves better in general.

RCTs (randomized controlled trials) are the gold standard because they keep all variables beetween compared groups the same except for the one variable – the treatment – that is being studied.

I was pleasantly surprised when Kolata then went a step beyond just laying out the advantages of RCTs. For the first time in a mainstream outlet that I have personally seen, she relates the importance of prior probability. She even talks about Bayes Theorem – analyzing a claim based upon prior probability and the new data. This is specifically what we advocate as science-based medicine and distinguishes SBM from evidenced-based medicine (EBM), which does not consider prior probability.

In this section she primarily quotes Dr. Steven Goodman from Johns Hopkins:

But if one clinical trial tests something that is plausible, with a lot of supporting evidence to back it up, and another tests something implausible, the trial testing a plausible hypothesis is more credible even if the two studies are similar in size, design and results. The guiding principle, Dr. Goodman says, is that “things that have a good reason to be true and that have good supporting evidence are likely to be true.”

It gets better. Dr. Goodman often uses studies purporting to show the efficacy of prayer to demonstrate the need to consider prior probability. She relates:

The reason for the skepticism, Dr. Goodman says, is not that the students are enemies of religion. It is that there is no plausible scientific explanation of why prayer should have that effect. When no such explanation or evidence exists, the bar is higher. It takes more clinical trial evidence to make a result credible.

That is exactly correct – prior probability should be used to know where to set the bar for evidence.  To ignore that is to pretend, at the beginning of each study, that we know absolutely nothing (which is very different from understanding that we don’t know everything).

Quoting the former director of the National Cancer Institute, she concludes:

“The major message,” Dr. Klausner said, “is that no matter how compelling and exciting a hypothesis is, we don’t know whether it works without clinical trials.”

As far as this article went, I have nothing but praise.  But while reading the article I could not help feeling that there was an enormous elephant in the room – and Kolata completely ignored the elephant. I don’t know if she was aware of the elephant or not. In other words, was the elephant in a different room or compartment of her mind, or was she rationalizing away the elephant. I suspect it was compartmentalized away.

That elephant is complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Imagine applying Dr. Goodman’s and Dr. Klausner’s philosophy to anything considered CAM. I find it very intriguing that Kolata did not consider it pertinent to even bring it up.

What this drives home is a point I have tried to make for years – CAM is about creating a separate world with its own rules, rules designed to be easy; to give CAM modalities a free pass, because they cannot pass the rigorous rules of science. Kolata wrote her article in the world of mainstream scientific medicine. She described, without apology or even the need for excessive justification, what constitutes good standards of science in medicine. And yet it is completely at odds with the philosophy espoused by CAM proponents – who want to function in a separate specially-created compartment where there is, in effect, no standard.

Almost as if to make my point for me, the very same day William Broad published a separate article in the New York Time titled: Applying Science to Alternative Medicine. Despite the title, the article is actually an apology for CAM’s lack of science, and a repetition of the tired promises for better science to come. He writes:

But while sweeping claims are made for these treatments, the scientific evidence for them often lags far behind: studies and clinical trials, when they exist at all, can be shoddy in design and too small to yield reliable insights.

This is not an unreasonable statement, but I noted that the “lag behind” comment suggests that the problem is with the evidence, not the treatments. The evidence is “lagging” but hopefully (with enough support) will catch up to the treatments. It subtly presupposes that CAM treatments work. Perhaps the evidence is not lagging, but correctly showing us that many of these treatment are worthless, despite the anecdotal evidence, which is misleading.

After correctly describing that the majority of studies used to promote CAM are small or poorly designed, Broad writes:

Critics of alternative medicine have seized on that weakness. R. Barker Bausell, a senior research methodologist at the University of Maryland and the author of “Snake Oil Science” (Oxford, 2007), says small studies often have a built-in conflict of interest: they need to show positive results to win grants for larger investigations.

That’s a nice quote from Bausell, but notice that he characterizes CAM critics as seizing on the weakness of CAM clinical trials. Rather, scientists are critical of CAM because of these weaknesses.

But the primary focus of the article was to claim that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is raising the standard of scientific evidence within CAM. To make this point Broad quotes a few proponents and cherry picks a few examples, without really examining the bigger issues of quality or the net effect of the NCCAM on the quality of science within CAM. Forget any notion of prior probability.

He notes, for example, that there is an ongoing study of gingko biloba in Alzheimer’s disease. I agree that the best, and perhaps only worthwhile, studies to come out of the NCCAM relate to herbs. This is because herbs are plausible treatments – they are pharmacological agents. In my opinion, this just highlights the confusion generated by the very notion of CAM – what is it, exactly.

He then relates a 2004 study of acupuncture for knee osteoarthritis, claiming it as a success for a CAM modality.  We can quibble about the study itself – the effect sizes were actually quite small and the 25% drop out rate in the acupuncture and sham acupuncture groups could wipe out the statistical significance.

More telling, however, is that even though he quotes Dr. Berman who conducted the study for the article, neither he nor Dr. Berman mention the later meta-analysis in which Dr. Berman and the other study authors concluded:

Sham-controlled trials show clinically irrelevant short-term benefits of acupuncture for treating knee osteoarthritis. Waiting list-controlled trials suggest clinically relevant benefits, some of which may be due to placebo or expectation effects.

So maybe acupuncture does not have any specific effects for knee osteoarthritis after all. Perhaps it is just another beta carotine episode where promising early research does not pan out. But the reader never hears about this from Broad, nor any discussion of the huge plausibility problem with acupuncture and most of CAM.

Broad ends with this:

“In tight funding times, that’s going to get worse,” said Dr. Khalsa of Harvard, who is doing a clinical trial on whether yoga can fight insomnia. “It’s a big problem. These grants are still very hard to get and the emphasis is still on conventional medicine, on the magic pill or procedure that’s going to take away all these diseases.”

In the end he claims the problem is an unjustified focus on “the magic pill or procedure.” That’s quite a straw man. Perhaps the grants are hard to come by because there are researchers like Dr. Goodman who understand the proper role of plausibility and prior probability in deciding where limited research dollars should be spent.

I have to wonder if either Kolata or Broad knew of the other’s article prior to publication, or what they would think of the other’s article. But more importantly, what about the health editors who published both articles. Were they compartmentalizing or rationalizing?

Or is it just accepted these days that we live with two worlds simultaneously – the world of mainstream medicine where the rules of rigorous science and logic apply, and the alternative world of CAM where the rules are whatever you need them to be?

http://www.nolanchart.com/article5094.html
nolanchart.com
by Christopher Billings

Being a non-religious skeptic with Libertarian views, I have had an interesting lifetime exploring cognitive dissonance in America. Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of uncomfortable tension which comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time.

Since childhood I have questioned many so-called American ideals and analyzed the reality of these ideals. It started in grade school with the Vietnam War. Being born in 1966, I started school in the heat of the Vietnam War. Many think that children don’t have an understanding of war, but I tell you from experience that I knew all too well what war was about. When my parents watched the evening news, I knew exactly what was going on. When the death toll was reported, it saddened me greatly.

In addition to this reality, we were still in the cold war and desperate drills cowering under desks were a regular occurrence. Even at that age, I knew it was futile to cower under a desk if a nuke was deployed. But all students were supposed to be comforted that all of this warfare was proper and justified, and this idea was propagated by the daily pledge of allegiance. From day one, I interpreted this as propaganda and manipulation from the government. I may not have seen through their veil, had it not been for the “under god” part. But as an active, young fossil collector, with a working geological knowledge of the Earth’s history, I knew it was propaganda. Not that I understood that word, but I understood the concept. They wanted me to believe that it was OK to sacrifice my life for the supposed good of the country, when I turn 18. They wanted me to agree with whatever they said needed to be done, no matter how many people die. It was and is totally ludicrous. But this is what citizens have been trained to think, by governmental indoctrination.

Fast forward to my graduating high school and being harassed by military recruiters, again and again. They have told lies and false promises and unfortunately, it’s getting even worse. But the reason for this is obvious…the government wants to keep the war machine going…but most people don’t like to die or have their children die in warfare. Thus some of the best salespeople in the country work as recruiters, slamming people into military conflicts. I really have to question their morality, or do they just have a bad case of cognitive dissonance? I mean many of the young people they recruit, will die for just “another” damn war. The only explanation I have is that recruiters must know that war means possible death but they either deny (or accept) this (cognitive dissonance) or are so hardened that they don’t care.

This brings me back to religion, and the belief that there is a life beyond this life. Of course, this is one of the worst forms of cognitive dissonance because it forces people to make irrational decisions based on a supposed almighty. The U.S. government has subtly exploited religion and converted it’s underlying importance into nationalism. This is an age old practice of exploiting religious beliefs and it has been the driving force behind most every war that has taken place in the history of mankind. The goals are achieved by adding ‘In god we trust” to currency, ‘Under God” to the pledge of allegiance, by forcing children to recite the pledge of allegiance, by politicians incorporating religion into their speeches and ideals. This is a clear and present danger to the separation of church and state, which was deservedly so important to our founding fathers.

It makes me wonder how our government can support NASA and the USGS (scientific organizations with a working knowledge of the age of the solar system) while throwing religion at the masses. I guess that would be governmental cognitive dissonance.

The result, is a country of people who for the most part, embrace cognitive dissonance. They get their news from the biased mainstream news. They have been indoctrinated to believe that whatever the ruling elite wants, the ruling elite should get. They believe that the government always knows best and are for some crazy reason, even happy to sacrifice their own life, or the life’s of their children. Deep in their hearts, they know that warfare is the most extreme form of violence, and in most cases could be avoided, but their cognitive dissonance allows them to throw out rational thoughts and continue to believe in a falsehood. This is often true even if religion is not a factor.

The good news is that many people are waking up and realizing that they live in a created matrix, which is not supposed to exist, as it currently does. Our founding fathers envisioned this potential problem and the Constitution attempted to minimize these problems. But centuries of eroding their words and pushing new legislation (usually not in the citizen’s best interest) has created the current state of affairs, where the Constitution is on the verge of becoming extinct and socialism is now the norm. The latest ploy is the ridiculous bailout we are currently faced with.

I am not a warring person and I don’t want the U.S. to be a warring nation. I remember a conversation I had with my mother when I was a young boy. As much as she hated war, she explained that war was good for the economy and people had good jobs. This made little sense to me, because nobody pays you to go to war, the money has to come from somewhere. I now realize that war is very bad for the economy. This money can only come from one of two places, it’s either borrowed with interest from another country, or it’s created out of thin air…both of which will ultimately cause inflation, de-valuing of the currency and excessive national debt.

For War to exist, it must be systematically sold to the masses, and the public must view it through rose colored glasses.  Einstein figured this all out long ago:

“War seems to me to be a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press”

http://ezinearticles.com/?Cognitive-Dissonance-and-Public-Commitment&id=293095
ezinearticles.com
By Kurt Mortensen

Public commitments and dissonance go hand in hand. Even when we feel an action is not right, we still go through with it if we have publicly committed to such a course of action.

The more public our stand, the more reluctant we are to change it. A now famous experiment conducted in 1955 by Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard demonstrates this principle. A group of students were divided into three groups. Each group viewed some lines and had to estimate their length. The students in the first group had to privately write down estimates, sign their names to it, and hand it in. The second group of students also had to privately write down their estimates on a Magic Writing Pad. They could lift the plastic cover on their notepad and their figures would instantaneously disappear. The third group of students did not write down their estimates but just kept them privately in their minds. Not surprisingly, even when new information was presented contradicting their estimates, the students who had written down their estimates, signed their names to them, and handed them in remained the most committed to their choices, while those who had never committed anything to writing were the most readily swayed to change their responses

Procedures, customs, and traditions are often specifically established for the purposes of creating psychological commitment. Consider fraternity initiations, military boot camps, political rallies, protest marches, and demonstrations. When we make our vows, beliefs, statements, or endeavors public, we feel bound to them. We can back out on commitments and claims we’ve made public, but we will pay a psychological and emotional price. What’s more, the more public we made those commitments, the greater the emotional price tag will be.

A pair of researchers, Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills, claimed that “persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.” Additional research confirmed their assertion when coeds who were required to endure pain rather than embarrassment to get into a group desired membership more than their counterparts. In one particular case, the more pain one young woman endured as part of her initiation, the more she later tried to convince herself that “her new group and its activities were interesting, intelligent, and desirable.

Another study of 54 tribal cultures found that those with the most dramatic initiation rituals also have the most unity and commitment, and these groups oppose any attempts to undermine or destroy these customs, which render so much strength to their tribe and their culture.

Understanding the psychology of commitment through publicity can be used to bring about good societal changes. Many organizations exist to help individuals conquer bad habits, patterns, or abuses. For example, weight-loss centers commonly encourage clients to share their goals with as many friends, relatives, and neighbors as they can, understanding that this public commitment and pressure often works when other methods don’t.

An experiment conducted by Pallak used an interviewer who offered free energy-saving hints to natural gas users. Those residents who agreed to try to conserve energy would have their names publicized in newspaper articles as public-spirited, fuel-conserving citizens. The effect was immediate. One month later, when the utility companies checked their meters, the homeowners in the publication sample had each saved an average of 422 cubic feet of natural gas, a decrease of 12.2 percent. The chance to have their names in the paper had motivated these residents to put forth substantial conservation efforts for a period of one month.

Even during the months when their names weren’t in the paper, the families continued to conserve gas. When a letter went out stating that their names would no longer be printed in the paper, the families did not return to their previous wasteful energy usage, as was expected; rather, they continued to conserve energy.

Kurt Mortensen’s trademark is Magnetic Persuasion; rather than convincing others, he teaches that you should attract them, just like a magnet attracts metal filings. He teaches that sales have changed and the consumer has become exponentially more skeptical and cynical within the last five years. Most persuaders are using only 2 or 3 persuasion techniques when there are actually 120 available! His message and program has helped thousands and will help you achieve unprecedented success in both your business and personal life.

http://www.thedoctorweighsin.com/journal/2007/6/14/the-cognitive-dissonance-of-conflicted-care.html
thedoctorweighsin.com
Brian Klepper, PhD

A few days ago the New York Times ran yet another article exploring the deep financial conflicts in oncology drug prescribing. This one described two facts.

First, even though Medicare has limited the profits of oncologists who prescribe drugs, Medicare’s total cancer care expenditures keep rising because oncologists have found new treatments and procedures to bill for.

Second, the rules guiding Medicare reimbursement for cancer and drug rebates are complex, compromising the financial abilities of some oncologists – particularly those in smaller practices – to administer drugs to their patients. As a result, those patients often must receive the drugs in more costly and possibly less-friendly hospital settings.

Over the last year, the Times has been on this topic like white on rice. Last month it ran an article on conflicts in anemia drugs, which demonstrated just how much money was available to doctors who prescribe them. A just-fired practice administrator of a six-oncologist group in the Pacific Northwest presented the Times with papers from Amgen. They showed that, over the past year, physicians in that practice had written $9 million in prescriptions for the two anemia drugs Aranesp and Epogen. Amgen returned the favor with $2.7 million in “rebates.” These numbers work out to $1.5 million/physician in prescriptions, with returns of $450,000 (30%) per physician and profits of $300,000 (20%). The Times also ran a chart showing that dosing levels in the US, where rebates that encourage more prescriptions are standard practice, are as much as three times higher than in other countries where the rebates aren’t permitted. (Whether outcomes are better here is not clear.) These drugs were only two of many that oncologists prescribe, and there are rebates associated with many of those others as well. Of course, oncologists also make money, though far less, for actually being doctors.

I distributed the anemia drug rebate article to my network, which includes a number of cancer professionals. One response, from a nationally known oncologist, said, “If I don’t have the rebates, my income will go down!”

I first became interested in oncology drug practices about a year ago when the Times reported on a study that had been published in Health Affairs showing that oncologists prescribing behaviors were influenced away from best practice and toward the incentives provided by their rebate arrangements. The study had been conducted by highly credible health services researchers using a large sample of Medicare claims data from 1995-1998.

While the study’s findings were interesting, they were hardly news. After all, financial conflicts permeate every area of health care. Far more interesting was the righteously indignant response from the Community Oncology Alliance, a professional group that represents private practice oncologists. In the opening sentence of a remarkable email distribution to its membership, Steve Coplan, the administrator of the West Clinic in Memphis, called the report “incredibly outrageous and unsubstantiated” and “an unbelievable rehash.” Sentence two referred to “incomprehensible statements by government bureaucrats, so-called oncology advocates, well-paid consultants, non-practicing physicians, payers and specialty pharmacies.” In other words, only community oncologists can understand or question the deep complexities inherent in the practice of cancer care. Everyone else is infused with malevolent intent.

Many oncologists will tell you that rebates cover the costs of drug administration and are necessary because 1) Medicare doesn’t pay for office administration and 2) Office administration costs far less than it would in a hospital setting. In effect, the drug companies convinced Congress to let them pay for these services, though the compensation is far more than Medicare would ever pay. This gave them significant influence over the practice patterns of the nation’s community oncologists.

Medicare could correct this situation by outlawing drug rebates to oncologists (and other physicians), while paying doctors a reasonable rate to administer the drug. Medicare and commercial plans could offset the additional cost by reducing reimbursement to the drug companies by about 20 percent, or the amount of the doctors’ rebates.

The recent exposure in the Times, the Wall Street Journal and other major papers has shone a bright light on the uncleanliness of these practices, and many oncologists have complained to me that they’re feeling picked on. I’m sure the drug companies aren’t crazy about it either. The typical oncologist now makes about twice as much from drug rebates as from practice. Of course, they’re not happy at the prospect of losing any of that income. We can be certain there’s a great deal of maneuvering going on behind the scenes by pharma and the oncology lobby as Medicare reassesses its approach.

It’s a fascinating problem. Oncologists (correctly) see themselves as righteous practitioners, caring for very sick and sometimes terminal patients and families in the most distressed periods of their lives. It appears very difficult for them to confront the fact that the way the money works maybe isn’t so healthy. They argue that they’re simply following the incentives that have been set up for them, without acknowledging that their complicity compromises patient care, their own position, and the stability of the larger health system.

I have an article in the journal Community Oncology this month that calls on oncologists to look squarely at this problem, understand the damage it’s doing to their credibility and reputation, and work with the various payers to remedy it. The rebuttal article, by the prominent and dedicated Linda Bosserman MD, raises all kinds of peripheral questions involved in drug rebates that were, to me, obfuscatory and beside the point. And there lies the rub. Ultimately, she argues for the same things I do – for changes to the reimbursement mechanisms that keep clinical decision-making detached from financial consideration. But it is difficult for her to directly confront the financial conflict inherent in the current system.

As Dr. Michaeli has argued in this blog before, a new transparency is uncovering excesses in every health care sector. People outside the industry are shocked by what they see as egregious behaviors, and hopefully their recognition will eventually have a cleansing impact on how health care is supplied, delivered and financed in this country.
We know that half or more of health care cost is wasted, inappropriate or unnecessary, largely the result of the behaviors discussed here. Until financially conflicted health care is addressed in oncology and elsewhere, we don’t have the remotest chance of re-establishing stability and sustainability to American health care.

http://www.rastafarispeaks.com/community/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17
rastafarispeaks.com
By Ayanna

“…humans have a deep abiding need in their psyche to be consistent in our attitudes and behaviors; we want to feel in agreement and unified in thought and action. Inner harmony sounds good to everyone, and so it was Festinger’s view that when we feel a disharmony, or dissonance, within ourselves, between two factors, we strive to decrease this tension by either changing our original thought, giving strength to the opposing thought, or letting go of the behavior. All three techniques are in the name of decreasing dissonance because it is threatening to experience such a large crack in our rationale that dissonance often creates” (colorado.edu)

While I agree with the conditions that cause people to experience this phenomenon, I must say I do not think they have got it absolutely right. Festinger insists that in order to minimize or erase the tension created by cognitive dissonance, humans either change or modify their original thoughts to accommodate the new information or abandon the old ideas completely.

I think Festinger has greatly underestimated the human WILL to blindness. In my observation, most people try to invalidate the informant or the information itself in order to keep their ’sanity’ intact. Another paper speaks of ‘mode 2′ thinkers (www.propaganda101.com), those who respond to logical arguments with emotional ones. They use emotional thinking and arguments to attempt to counter and invalidate the conflicting truth. They play on their own existing fears and those of others to attempt to get them to come over to their side; the fewer people who accept the new information, the easier it is to invalidate.

Another flaw in the theory (as far as I have read thus far) is that it appears to theorize in a vacuum without taking into account the sociological and economic conditions that may cause reactions to cognitive dissonance to differ. I think a level of comfort and privilege assists in the rejection of conflicting information. Not only are privileged ones used to having their opinions, ideas, ideologies be the standard and the unchallenged, but they sometimes may have more to lose psychologically and materially by accepting conflicting ideas that challenge the status quo from which they benefit.

When one is comfortable, one is more willing to discredit the incoming information, because it is the source of dissonance. Privileged ones do not like to accommodate, to accept their own wrongs or to let go of ideologies that held them high. The U.S is a classic example of this. More Americans believe their President because they have more to lose by accepting that not only is he a liar, but that their way of life is a lie. They have more to lose psychologically (as far as they see it) by realizing that their great society was built and continues to be fed by racism and exploitative capitalism. Even further than simply accepting the lies of one man, it is near impossible for them to accept the lies of a national ideology that has held them superior. Other whites are often not too far from this regardless of their nationality.

Those who have little to lose materially, are used to being the oppressed, those who exist in a perpetual state of discomfort find it easier to accept information that disproves or discredits the existing ideologies as it is these ideologies that have oppressed them anyway. Often, those in a state of discomfort move faster to truths. They react with an urgency that only the oppressed can feel and move much more quickly towards action. Those who have much to lose in matter, more often than not, will fight and kick and scream against it. It is the ultimate irony to me that most people while they claim to want freedom, if given a choice, with inevitably choose slavery.

It is no wonder that some of the most revolutionary thinkers, the most critical insightful journalists have come, especially in this age of expanding media capacity, from the Third World. When you are quite aware of constantly being lied to and by whom, the truth is far easier to see.

It would then appear that people are crazier than we may have previously imagined them to be. Our privileged elite, the ones that run the countries, make the decisions and create and uphold the ideologies are walking, talking lunatics. They are running from the voices in their heads, existing is a perpetual, near schizophrenic state of cognitive dissonance, wailing and screaming in so many ways at the pain. But the will to blindness is so strong that most will refuse to let go and walk in light.

In opposition are the masses; the poor, the dispossessed, the discriminated against, the searching, the hungry, the victimized. They too however are no less fractured and psychologically splintered and subject to many of the false ideas that society propagates. Also even in this group of the less materially advantaged are those who want to fit in with the elite, who will ignore the noise in their heads to belong, to be accepted, to benefit materially and socially from an order that has denied them. We often see this behavior in blacks who have risen in the system or benefited materially. They too want the comfortable ideology and often forget the urgency of those with whom they may have once shared experiences.

The trick is that these very conditions can help to form a person whom once empowered, once given a sliver of light and truth, will walk strait toward it, no looking back, shedding a skin of lies and deception, a skin that never fit comfortably anyway, and embrace truth. And even among the privileged are those who can’t shut out the noise, for which the psychological tension is too much to bear, who will make the effort to improve, to grow and to shed the skin of lies and illusions. In all walks of life are people of integrity and courage, people who are not just victims of time and history and circumstance but are its initiators.

Imagine a new world order where the once possessed are now the dispossessed. Where the more you have materially the harder it is to perceive and act on divine, life giving truths; where the order is inverted and the victims of history are now its divine keepers; where the direct path to heaven lies not in privilege, but in the ability to abandon the cushy comfort of lies and false ideologies, and trust in the light that is the source of all…

http://www.eyemagazine.com/critique.php?cid=366
eyemagazine.com
By Rick Poynor

In an age of ubiquitous publicity, it can be hard to experience a cultural event without preconceptions. When we see an exhibition or film, or pick up a novel, we usually have at least some idea of what we are about to encounter, gleaned from reviews, previews, interviews and promotional copy. This careful preliminary sampling makes perfect sense when our time and money are at stake. It does, of course, rule out the possibility of being caught unawares by a message and having to find your bearings without external aids.

Sometimes, though, advertising and design can be the source of cognitive dissonance precisely because they are not the main event. This happened to me recently at a showing of Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, about the Dutch resistance in the Second World War. Waiting for the film to start, the audience was suddenly confronted on screen by the statement: ‘Globalisation can only work where tastes can be globalised, where we’re ready to accept less difference, less variety.’ These words were accompanied by an insistently rhythmic metallic hiss, creating an oppressive feeling of urgency and tension.

My immediate assumption was that the language of the anti-globalisation protesters had been co-opted to sell jeans or trainers and that the punchline would soon make this clear. As the ‘commercial’ continued, this seemed unlikely. It was surprisingly wordy: a miniature essay broken down into screen-sized captions, which jittered anxiously above gritty backgrounds surrounded by darkness. Each phrase presses closer and closer before a new one replaces it. The slogans, which cast black shadows, look like warning signs hanging on a vertical bar, as though the words are being crucified, and the mood is heavy and menacing – almost apocalyptic. The claustrophobic intensity suggests invasion and colonisation.

Part of the way through, a deeper note sounds, full of foreboding, and the sentences give way to a series of points: ‘Security is not liberty. Wealth is not freedom. Control is not strength.’ Confirmation that this is no ordinary ad comes at the end where it says: ‘Martin Firrell, public artist for Curzon Cinemas’. Curzon runs five art-house cinemas in the London area, and Firrell, an artist based in the city, is renowned for text pieces like this. Even for those who don’t know his projects, the moment of stimulating perplexity has passed.

Firrell operates in an area of public art made prominent in the 1980s by Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer – Holzer’s sharp-edged ‘truisms’, for instance, have been displayed on public signs everywhere from Times Square to Piccadilly Circus. But neither artist holds any copyright on the use of slogans to communicate in public spaces. The device is basic to all forms of advertising and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be turned to any use a communicator can think up and find an outlet for. Firrell has a background in advertising and he used to be a brand consultant with the Martin Firrell and William Maugham Partnership.

Whether the Curzon project is effective communication in this setting is open to question. For anyone with concerns about these issues, it offers useful encouragement; it is good to know that others feel the same way, and support from an ‘official’ source carries some weight. If there really were audience members who had never previously thought about globalisation, terrorism and the need for difference to maintain a healthy society, then a portentous announcement lasting just a couple of minutes can only take them so far.

While the combined effect of words, visuals and soundtrack is powerful, the language on its own lacks resonance. Firrell observes that ‘Shopping is not happiness’. This is certainly direct, except that Kruger got there long ago with the more suggestive and memorable ‘I shop therefore I am’. Firrell says that ‘our ideas of beauty – our tastes – are created by commerce’. Holzer already has it covered with the elegant formulation: ‘Money creates taste’. Many will support Firrell’s aims, but his lines are too obvious and declarative to embed themselves deeply in your head: telling you what to think, rather than allowing an element of ambiguity and letting you mull it over, as in Kruger’s ‘Your manias become science’ or Holzer’s ‘Protect me from what I want’ – phrases that condense whole worlds of thought.

The key question is whether this kind of public art ‘subvertisement’ (to use Adbusters’ term) can ever reach a mainstream audience. These initiatives will need to break out of the metropolitan art house and culture sector and play nationwide in the multiplexes that most people visit.

http://stanford.wellsphere.com/hiv-aids-article/cognitive-dissonance-theory-hiv-aids-prevention/37271
wellsphere.com
by Dr. David Wessner

Beyond the obvious physical symptoms associated with AIDS, there are many psychological and social implications surrounding this debilitating disease that we don’t often consider. Mass media efforts and expensive awareness campaigns have done a good job at spreading information to the general public, however, these programs have not been highly successful in reducing risky sexual behavior. Talking about sexuality and proper protection is a topic very uncomfortable to many people, even in today’s world, and this is the reason why many people fail to practice safe sex despite the vast knowledge about how this disease is transmitted. Additionally, a perplexing phenomenon exists among individuals outwardly preaching safe sex, but in reality, not using protection in their own sex lives. This type of insensible behavior is particularly prevalent among sexually active college students, who are aware of the risks and severity of AIDS, but proportionately, very few of them actually use condoms. Recently, several social psychologists have examined this hypocrisy by researching the effects of cognitive dissonance theory on safer sex practices.

Cognitive dissonance theory has been an integral component of social psychology for nearly 50 years, and according to this theory, dissonance arises when a person possesses two contradictory beliefs, or when a person’s attitude conflicts with an action that they chose to perform. This clash between attitude and behavior results in feelings of discomfort, and subsequently the conflicted individual strives to change either their beliefs or behavior to reduce this tension. Hypocrisy is considered a special type of cognitive dissonance, produced when a person decides to promote a behavior that in actuality, they do not practice. Several experiments have been conducted in an attempt to apply this theory to AIDS prevention.

Elliot Aronson was the major contributor to this field of research, and his original study (1991) placed young college students in the role of a HIV prevention educator, who is asked to advocate condom-use to others, but hypocritically does not use condoms in their own sex life. Half the students were asked to compile a list of their past failures to use condoms, when they had deemed it to be too awkward or impossible to do so. Each subject was then asked to compose a speech about the dangers of AIDS and the importance of using condoms for every sexual encounter. The students were quite willing to take on this role, believing it was a good idea to encourage sexually active people to use protection. Then, some of the students recited their speech in front of a video camera, after being informed that this tape would be played in a high-school sex-education class. This produced a high level of dissonance in the subjects. They were now preaching condom-use to others, but hypocritically had failed to practice this at earlier points in their lives. In order to remove this dissonance, the subjects would have to change their attitude to bring it in line with the position they were advocating. Essentially, they’d have to start practicing what they preached. Sure enough, Aronson’s results supported this hypothesis, and after the conclusion of the experiment, the students were far more likely to purchase condoms, which were available on a display table outside the experimental room. Several months later, Aronson followed up with these same students, and they reported that they were regularly using condoms and practicing safer sex.

Many further studies have been conducted, all producing results quite similar to Aronson’s findings. The results of these experiments could have a profound impact on the future of AIDS education and risk reduction efforts, forcing people out of a state of denial and into safer sex practices. Although almost everybody today would agree that AIDS is a huge danger and using condoms is important, the reality is very few of these people actually use condoms themselves. Aronson suggests that the solution to this problem is relatively simple. Society attempts to insulate themselves from a state of dissonance through denial, so in order to cut through this denial, we must directly confront people with their own hypocrisy. Whether it’s through personal and direct surveys or questionnaires, we need to make people realize their past failures and strive to regularly practice safer sex. People need to realize that AIDS is not just a problem for other people, but they themselves are at risk as well. Overall, cognitive dissonance seems to have a strong impact on human behavior, and we can hope to use such theories to encourage safer sex and address the growing social problem that is AIDS.