I live in one of five condominium units built around a common courtyard. One morning, on opening my front door to retrieve my newspaper, there in the center of the courtyard just a few yards from where I stood, lay what appeared to be a human figure with outstretched arms. Momentarily alarmed, it quickly became clear that only the clothing of this figure was there, without any actual human presence. I began to laugh.
The day before, I, along with several of my neighbors, had attended a performance of End Days, at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati. The play offered a lighthearted glimpse into a family in which the mother was predicting the apocalypse, convinced the world would come to an end on a specific day in the near future, and that true believers would be beamed up to heaven and non-believers left behind. In the dark of night, my next-door neighbor, Jack Sherman, had performed this prank to which we all woke the following morning. What fun.
But later, in a more sober moment, a book I’d read some years ago came to mind. It told of the end days phenomenon, describing dramatic actions taken by members of groups of doomsday believers in preparation for the world ending on a specific future day.
As a way of gaining insight into those who accept current conspiracy theories, I am now re-reading “Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)” by psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. The subtitle is Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts.
Early in the text, the authors describe a 1957 study by social psychologist Leon Festinger.1 Along with two associates, he infiltrated a group of people who believed that the world would end on December 31. The group’s leader promised the faithful would be picked up by a flying saucer and elevated to safety at midnight on December 20. Many followers quit their jobs and gave away their homes and savings waiting for the end.
Did the true believers acknowledge their foolishness when the world did not come to an end on that fateful night? No. Their leader assured them that it was their faith that had won out over the forces of evil and saved the world from the mouth of death. Members of the group who had been skeptical went on about their lives. But for others, the true believers, their mood shifted from despair to exhilaration. Some called the press to report the miracle. Some went out on the streets trying to convert others.
Festinger called this drive for self-justification “cognitive dissonance.”
“Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds to cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent…producing mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish; people don’t rest easy until they find a way to reduce it… people strive to make sense out of contradictory ideas and lead lives that are, at least in their own minds, consistent and meaningful. So powerful is the need for consistency that when people are forced to look at disconfirming evidence, they will find a way to criticize, distort, or dismiss it, so that they can maintain or even strengthen their existing beliefs. This mental condition is called the “confirmation bias.””
Festinger’s findings were replicated by any number of additional credible experiments.
It would be the essence of hypocrisy for me to identify confirmation bias in others without questioning my own. One instance immediately came to mind.
As a supporter of President Bill Clinton, I was shocked by the revelation of his affair with Monica Lewinsky. This was front page news in 1998. Yet even though I had filed numerous lawsuits during the 1980s and 1990s on behalf of women who had experienced sexual harassment in the workplace, empathized with their stories, and found them worthy of legal redress, in this instance, without a second thought, my mental gymnastics (confirmation bias) allowed me to place the blame on the seductive young woman who took advantage of Clinton’s vulnerability and led him astray.
I railed against the perfidious relationship of Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, who colluded to secretly record Clinton’s phone calls. It was a set up! In my version of the facts, it was as if Clinton had no agency or responsibility at all. I held on to this bias even though twelve years earlier, the United States Supreme Court had ruled that sexual conduct between a subordinate and a supervisor could not be deemed voluntary due to the hierarchical relationship between the two positions in the workplace2 and I had frequently cited this ruling in legal briefs.
Confirmation bias — it is real and it is dangerous.
Larsen has retired as a senior mediator at the Center for Resolution of Disputes. She received the 2007 John P. Kiely Professionalism Award, the 2014 Themis Award and the 2020 Mediator of the Year Award from the CBA, and served as the CBA president in 1986-87. Her commentary can be viewed at bealarsen.com.
1 Leon Festinger (1957), A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press
2 Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (1986)