• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
    • Don't take offence

    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

    You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box

Craft Chat Favourite Cognitive Dissonances

Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.
Joined
Feb 21, 2024
Location
Kota Kinabalu, Sabah
LitBits
35
Malaysia
Based on recent discussions on cognitive dissonance, I went looking at things I liked that could possibly be considered cognitively dissonant.

To begin with, may I present this video

It has
-> ice skaters
-> skating to a 60s folk rock song
-> performed by a heavy metal band

(It helps that everyone involved is extraordinarily talented, including the Youtuber who gave the video this arthouse look.)

Has anyone got any other examples they like?
 
Back when I used to cover crime, I'd speak to a lot of inmates, so, to me, the most interesting incidence of it is that convicts don't merely say they aren't guilty, they believe it. they have adapted their memories to indicate that they are wrongly imprisoned. The psychologists I talked to about this insisted congintive dissonance in this case was a survival technique, that the human mind could not accept that it would have taken part in actions resulting in such a horrible setting, so the mind erases the truth and replaces it with a version of events that makes the convict appear and feel to be a victim of injustice.
 
Back when I used to cover crime, I'd speak to a lot of inmates, so, to me, the most interesting incidence of it is that convicts don't merely say they aren't guilty, they believe it. they have adapted their memories to indicate that they are wrongly imprisoned. The psychologists I talked to about this insisted congintive dissonance in this case was a survival technique, that the human mind could not accept that it would have taken part in actions resulting in such a horrible setting, so the mind erases the truth and replaces it with a version of events that makes the convict appear and feel to be a victim of injustice.
I would say that also applies to toddlers, remembering my sticky eldest covered in meringue insisting he had no idea what happened to the lemon pie I had baked for the landlord so he would give us our deposit back after crayon scribbles that mysteriously appeared on a wall.
 
HOLY Gods of all things unearthily beautiful. That is a HELL of an art house. Seeing 1000 times or more early morning practices in foggy dawns so that they can do that without screaming in pain. God bless im.



Americans love Mexican food.


 
Last edited:
Hi Matt
Interesting observation in reference to inmates. Cognitive dissonance is social concern that affects members of many societies. There is a close correlation with cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias and social identity. Individuals aspire to be apart of a specific social or political group and will only acknowledge information that supports their narrative or beliefs. The behavioral trait of believing in one's lie is reinforced when it is constantly repeated. Then the transition occurs when a falsely created memory results in the individual actually believing the false narrative that he or she created.
 
Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.
I'm always amazed at the widespread belief of the "need for protein" when every single food-form already has protein and considering the fact protein is broken down in your stomach, so it never enters your bloodstream.
Eating protein to develop muscle is like people eating brain to be smarter, or eating eyeballs to see better.
Even if they acknowledge that proteins get broken down to amino acids, next they'll argue that humans don't have the gene to manufacture "essential" amino acids, and completely disregard that our gut is full of the bacteria that DO manufacture those.
 
Cognitive dissonance occurs in anorexia nervosa when they know they should eat the food but just can't. It also occurs when they look in the mirror and see their belief-version of themselves. I knew a rhythmic gymnast turned dancer with anorexia. The struggles she had - the fight of logic versus emotional necessity - were traumatic for those who knew her and even more so for herself.
P.S. She learnt to manage her anorexia. She became "fine", but an anorexic never completely loses discomfort around food. I don't know if, even now, the person she sees in the mirror is the actual mirror-image of herself.
 
Thank you for those fascinating examples of cognitive dissonance, really thought-provoking!

I was thinking about the comments by @AgentPete on the lab project from @Sedayne, so more from marketing than psychology. Specifically, something completely incongruous that makes us go 'huh' and thereby grabs our attention. It got me thinking about engaging things and whether they use this cog. diss.

Here's another one: Murderbot Diaries by Martha Stewart.
-> big, burly, security robot-person with laser weapons in his arms
-> who likes to binge trashy soap operas to cope with anxiety
 
Thank you for those fascinating examples of cognitive dissonance, really thought-provoking!

I was thinking about the comments by @AgentPete on the lab project from @Sedayne, so more from marketing than psychology. Specifically, something completely incongruous that makes us go 'huh' and thereby grabs our attention. It got me thinking about engaging things and whether they use this cog. diss.

Here's another one: Murderbot Diaries by Martha Stewart.
-> big, burly, security robot-person with laser weapons in his arms
-> who likes to binge trashy soap operas to cope with anxiety

Yes, in that other thread, we were talking about how contradictory elements can give a strong hook to a story or a pitch.

(In psychology, cognitive dissonance is where someone holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time or your behaviour doesn't reflect your stated values. And this is the definition I knew before.
It's the astrophysicist who believes in God. It's the unpublished writer who spends £30 to enter her novel for a competition she knows she'll never win but believing she might, even though she knows she won't. It's not as straightforward as lying to oneself or anybody else. It's holding those contrasting beliefs fully and simultaneously.
This is endlessly fascinating as the examples in this thread show, but it's not the intention of the thread, of course.)

In terms of marketing, and of interest to those of us trying to pitch to agents, publishers and readers, it's the contradictory elements that illicit a strong sense of intrigue.

And Pete's explanation from the other thread:

Further, since the paradox can’t actually be resolved, the usual human response is to ignore or deny, then move on. So from the marketer’s point of view, you have just a few seconds, or maybe hundred of milliseconds, to consolidate and develop that fleeting attention into sustained interest. Call it a “Golden Second(copyright PCox All Rights Reserved :) )

My example of a pitch for a novel I've no intention of writing: It's Harry Potter meets Fifty Shades...
 
Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.
Yes, in that other thread, we were talking about how contradictory elements can give a strong hook to a story or a pitch.

(In psychology, cognitive dissonance is where someone holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time or your behaviour doesn't reflect your stated values. And this is the definition I knew before.
It's the astrophysicist who believes in God. It's the unpublished writer who spends £30 to enter her novel for a competition she knows she'll never win but believing she might, even though she knows she won't. It's not as straightforward as lying to oneself or anybody else. It's holding those contrasting beliefs fully and simultaneously.
This is endlessly fascinating as the examples in this thread show, but it's not the intention of the thread, of course.)

In terms of marketing, and of interest to those of us trying to pitch to agents, publishers and readers, it's the contradictory elements that illicit a strong sense of intrigue.

And Pete's explanation from the other thread:



My example of a pitch for a novel I've no intention of writing: It's Harry Potter meets Fifty Shades...
Fan fiction. It's a "hot" topic with many thinking it was Harry and Ron who should have ended up together.

It's the person who goes without necessaries to buy a lottery ticket. It's those anticipatory moments when in a sense you've won thata matters. And the participation in a group ritual. "one of us will win and by extension so have I. We believe, therefore we are."
 
Last edited:
I would say Elmore Leonard employs this well, tho the quirky characters do get a bit wearing after a while. The psychopath that adores puppys being an example in the recent film Accouuntant 2. And he's the hero.

It begins to feel paint by numbers and formulaic. AI.
Better to find a natural example that we all kind of recognise as being real. Like Mrs Marple who gets patronised by police because she's an old lady, but is actually one sharp cookie.
 
It begins to feel paint by numbers and formulaic. AI.
Yeah. Can do.

Thing about cog diss as a tool is that it actually has to work. Just throwing two utterly disparate concepts together into your story blender doesn’t guarantee any cog diss impact at all. There has to be some weird, spooky-at-a-distance sort of entanglement between them…
 
Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.
I thought of another example, but, (like my previous example), outside of the context of storylines, but *is* related to semantics and the use of language.

In cellular biology, there is a term "copy number variation." At my last count, I tallied about 9 different phenomenon that use this term, and each mean something very unique, and can be detected using a specific technique. For example, when cancer cells proliferate, they are rapidly dividing. There is a technology to measure the amount of DNA in each cell. Right before the cell divides, its DNA is double what it was. So if you measure the amount of DNA in hundreds or thousands of cells, and analyze the results, you'll get two groups, one with a normal amount of DNA, and a second with double that amount, because the DNA has been copied, but the cell has not yet divided.

Then there is a second type of copy number variation. Cancer cells can lose their ability to repair their chromosomes. During normal cell division, the daughter cells end up with two of each of the chromosomes. But during cancer, a chromsome might break, or you might end up with three chromsomes in one cell, and only one in the other. These can be detected by looking at the cells under a microscope. Completely different technology than the "copy number" technology used to see if a cell is actively dividing.

As DNA technology has proliferated, so has the use of this term. But what happens is that researchers will analyze cells using a technology for one of these "copy numbers" or "CNVs", and then report their findings as if they've measured a completely different "CNV". Because the two have the same name (CNV), the scientists are completely oblivious that their work includes a semantical error.

Another example of the problem of semantics in science is the term "energy" which can be used to describe just about anything. In using xrays to determine the three dimensional structure of a protein, the output data is a list of the atoms of the molecule, with the coordinates of that atom (much like a 3D map). Some proteins will have an arm that has two possible conformations. Some proteins might have that branch sitting to the left, others to the right. Because of the technology used, which measures thousands of atoms and records the average location, the "signal" for these arms is weaker than for the atoms that have a constant location. To indicate this uncertainty in the output file, each atom is provided a numerical value to indicate how strong the signal is. The name of of this value is called a "temperature factor", with the idea that it's an appropriate term, since at high temperatures, molecules move around, meaning both the factor and "temperature" are a measure of a change of position. But what happens next, is you have PhD scientists who take these "temperature factors" literally, and they argue that different regions of the protein have different physical temperatures and thus different energies. And while it is true that energies differ everwhere... in the universe even, the argument they're using to equate the two is completely semantic. They'll even report "temperatures" (instead of "temperature FACTORS") above 100, and ignore the implication they're suggesting, that molecule is boiling or being fried. If you point this out, you are met with hostility.

Decades ago, as a student being confronted with all of this, I used to have nightmares about coming into highschool English class, and not being prepared for an exam, or not having prepared an assignment that was due. Looking back, I wonder if those dreams were trying to tell me the problems I was facing with the use of language.
 
Back
Top