Cognitive Dissonance

[Mole]

Cognitive Dissonance and Positive Disintegration

Cognitive dissonance is the dissonance between ideas.

While positive disintegration is the disintegration of emotion.

An example of cognitive dissonance is between a belief in MBTI and knowing that MBTI is Invalid and Unreliable.

And an example of positive disintegration is between delight and fear. As it is not usually possible or desirable to feel delight and fear at the same time, it then becomes impossible to feel and we start to disintegrate.

And in the same way, as it is not usually possible or even desirable to entertain two contradictory ideas at the same time, we lose our ability to think.

So cognitive dissonance leads us to lose our ability to think; and positive disintegration leads us to lose our ability to feel.

Fortunately when we lose our ability to think and feel, we are cast back onto our deeper selves - and if we are prepared to work with our dissonance and disintegration, we will often discover a new thought or a new feeling.

Unfortunately dissonance and disintegration are painful and disorientating, so we are inclined to avoid them.

Pity.

For dissonance and disintegration are the University of Life. And when you experience them, you are experiencing the University Orientation Week - a hiatus to prepare you for the changes ahead.

So to experience dissonance or disintegration fully and fruitfully, you really need to take a week off - you are like a pupa in a chrysalis - and you will emerge as a butterfly.

 

[redacted]

Can you define MBTI please?

 

[Xander]

And in the same way, as it is not usually possible or even desirable to entertain two contradictory ideas at the same time, we lose our ability to think.

< Doing the impossible since 1977.



Impossible is nothing.

 

[Mole]

Can you define MBTI please?

Well, it's the well known Myers Briggs Type Indicator, copied from the book, "Personality Types", written by the NAZI collaborator, Carl Jung, who failed his analysis with Freud and became a New Age Guru.

Imagine if the NAZIS had won the war. Jung would have been their prize Aryan.

Jung would have finally achieved the power that he felt had been stolen from him by his father, and then stolen by Freud, his analyst, and then finally stolen by his suicidal Fuehrer.

Jung saw himself, and he was betrayed, by his father, Freud and finally and unforgivably by his Fuehrer. And so quite naturally Jung betrayed all his followers.

Jung was betrayed and was a betrayer. And he was unable to understand this in therapy.

And never being able to individuate from his father and feel his own power, he set himself up with the bogus power of a Guru.

And surely we all know now that Gurus are the problem, not the solution.

And now MBTI is a world wide problem.

 

[Mole]

< Doing the impossible since 1977.



Impossible is nothing.

Believe five impossible things before breakfast and have MBTI for lunch.

 

[Xander]

...Carl Jung, who failed his analysis with Freud...

I'd call that a qualification.

 

[LostInNerSpace]

This was indirectly related to dissonance, so I thought I'd throw it in here. Probably could be its own thread, but...

The Power of Political Misinformation

Interesting. Peoples likes and dislikes are emotional. The disinformation is just a convenient rationalization that lends weight and strengthens the negative emotion. This seems to show that the emotion is not dependent on the rationalization. The emotion remains when the rationalization is taken away.

 

[Mole]

I'd call that a qualification.

Because you are a humourous Romantic for whom analysis is anathema.

 

[Xander]

Because you are a humourous Romantic for whom analysis is anathema.

Me thinks you'd have one of those impossible circumstances in your head were you to look beyond the surface.

 

[Mole]

And never being able to individuate from his father and feel his own power, he set himself up with the bogus power of a Guru.

And this is exactly what attracts so many followers to Jung and MBTI.

Many have had their potency stolen by their own parents, so they seek the bogus power of a Guru - they become little gurus - they even use exactly the same words as their Guru - so after a while they all speak the same jargon.

And having their power, or sense of self, stolen by their own parents, they seek to steal the potency of others using the magic incantation of four magic letters.

And the way out is to feel the pain and suffering caused by your own parents, and then you will be less likely to foist the same pain and suffering on others, particularly your own children.

The alternative is to remain part of the cycle of abuse - all under the Fuehrer, Jung.

 

[ptgatsby]

I'm a little perturbed by that article. Sure I intuitively think it's got a point but the proofs they use just don't follow. The whole Koran flushing part, just because the percentage remains 10% elevated does not mean it's due to the misinformation, that's just not logical.

How do you interpret the gap, then?

Interesting. Peoples likes and dislikes are emotional. The disinformation is just a convenient rationalization that lends weight and strengthens the negative emotion. This seems to show that the emotion is not dependent on the rationalization. The emotion remains when the rationalization is taken away.

Indeed. I think the point I took away is that the evaluation of information is not rational. To actually seperate yourself, your feelings and evaluate with only the tangible information... We just don't do that. Even when we try, we don't.

I think of it as the conclusion being 'sticky' - very much like cognitive dissonance. Even if we remove the evidence, the conclusion wants to stick with us. Likewise, when opposing information is introduced, our defense mechanism strengthens the conclusion rather than re-evaluate.

 

[Xander]

How do you interpret the gap, then?

Well for starters how do you define the difference between those who are moved by the words fasly, as in they are still affected by it, and those who were prompted to re-evaluate their opinion and in that process changed their opinion and kept to the new decision? They are assuming that any change in opinion is due to the propoganda where as it's never that simple.

If I were advising someone on their public image and those circumstances arose then my advice would be to look for other factors which may be still pressing upon people. You can't remove the past, which is the point the article makes, but similarly you can't predict what influences people. A million and one things could occur to someone in the time between the first issue of the initial propoganda to the retraction and those factors just aren't accounted for.

As always there's lies, damn lies and statistics.

 

[ptgatsby]

Well for starters how do you define the difference between those who are moved by the words fasly, as in they are still affected by it, and those who were prompted to re-evaluate their opinion and in that process changed their opinion and kept to the new decision? They are assuming that any change in opinion is due to the propoganda where as it's never that simple.

I'm not sure I understand.

People reach a particular conclusion based on what they know. They are introduced new information, and are asked what they think. Some people become swayed by the new information. Then they are told that the information was actually false.

What is being shown is that the removal of evidence does not cause a shift back to the previous state - that disinformation causes a permanent shift in beliefs.

I don't see the difference between "moved by false information" and "prompted to re-evaluate their opinion". It comes down to the same thing - the 2nd being the rationalisation for the change. You could rewrite it to say "they were prompted to re-evaluate their opinion by introducing false information, but upon finding out the information was false, fewer people chose to re-evaluate down to their original conclusion."

 

[Xander]

I'm not sure I understand.

People reach a particular conclusion based on what they know. They are introduced new information, and are asked what they think. Some people become swayed by the new information. Then they are told that the information was actually false.

What is being shown is that the removal of evidence does not cause a shift back to the previous state - that disinformation causes a permanent shift in beliefs.

I don't see the difference between "moved by false information" and "prompted to re-evaluate their opinion". It comes down to the same thing - the 2nd being the rationalisation for the change. You could rewrite it to say "they were prompted to re-evaluate their opinion by introducing false information, but upon finding out the information was false, fewer people chose to re-evaluate down to their original conclusion."

Okay I obviously missed that the test was one where people were seperated off from all other stimulae. Still the factor remains that if someone thinks you are 51% a nice guy and 49% a complete arse then it ain't going to take much for them to believe that you are an arse and (in this cynical world we live in) it'll take more than you rescinding what was said or done to actually remove the shift.

Why not check the same idea but with positive propoganda and make sure to pick a good variety of people (also something not mentioned but presumed).

The tests are non scientific, the results sketchy at best. The conclusion? Declared a certainty through the medium of statistics. I'm afraid it'd take more than someone reading through a bunch of stats to convince me.

"88.2% of Statistics are made up on the spot" Vic Reeves.

 

[ptgatsby]

The tests are non scientific, the results sketchy at best. The conclusion? Declared a certainty through the medium of statistics. I'm afraid it'd take more than someone reading through a bunch of stats to convince me.

Just to be clear, this isn't from one study. Multiple studies were mentioned in the article - I haven't read them yet (some are not yet published), so I agree that some caution is required.

However, I wouldn't agree that they can be rejected yet - multiple studies have shown the same behaviour, tested in more than one way. It is highly suggestive, and unless each of them is fundamentally flawed, it likely indicates something of note.

 

[Xander]

Just to be clear, this isn't from one study. Multiple studies were mentioned in the article - I haven't read them yet (some are not yet published), so I agree that some caution is required.

However, I wouldn't agree that they can be rejected yet - multiple studies have shown the same behaviour, tested in more than one way. It is highly suggestive, and unless each of them is fundamentally flawed, it likely indicates something of note.

I already said that my intuitive understanding of the concept was that it does work that way but I was merely disagreeing with the whole 10% and the certainty put forward.

What you were reading was propoganda about propoganda.

 

[ptgatsby]

What you were reading was propoganda about propoganda.

I'm pretty sure that I was reading a newspaper article highlighting conclusions from a couple of papers. But, if you prefer the dry part of it more, you can conclude the validity from these two papers mentioned in the article, if you wish.

Bullock, J. G. , 2006-03-17 "The Enduring Importance of False Political Beliefs" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, Hyatt Regency Albuquerque, Albuquerque, New Mexico Online <APPLICATION/PDF>. 2008-09-13 from The Enduring Importance of False Political Beliefs

http://www.duke.edu/~bjn3/nyhan-reifler.pdf (PDF Warning)

 

[redacted]

Well, it's the well known Myers Briggs Type Indicator, copied from the book, "Personality Types", written by the NAZI collaborator, Carl Jung, who failed his analysis with Freud and became a New Age Guru.

blah blah blah...

You haven't defined anything, you just said who created it. Then you added some irrelevant information about the creators.

You are resolving your own cognitive dissonance, Victor. You detest Jung, so you don't want to believe that his theory has any merit, because if it did, you'd have to change your opinion of him. It's easier to just throw out every single thing he's ever done, and that's exactly what you're doing.

There are a few people on this forum that have actually thought out these theories for themselves and picked parts out that made sense to them. Using MBTI does not mean blindly following Jung (although, in the case of many people on this forum, it means blindly following Myers and Briggs).

I guess I could call my understanding of MBTI 'ETI', or Evan's Type Indicator.

 

[Mole]

You haven't defined anything, you just said who created it. Then you added some irrelevant information about the creators.

I think you would like me to justify MBTI a priori.

My father liked to argue like that and had a very old book called, "First Principles".

And for him empirical evidence fell outside his argument.

You couldn't quote history at him because he would always argue a priori from first principles.

A priori gives a certain seductive certainty.

And it was this certainty that fed his vanity.

And whatever you feed, grows.

 

[Totenkindly]

An example of cognitive dissonance is between a belief in MBTI and knowing that MBTI is Invalid and Unreliable.

You could also hold a qualified belief, I'm not sure why you are polarizing the extremes as if one cannot see general merit in the ideas.

(This is one horn you've leaned on ever since you've gotten here... rather amusing, considering you're posting on an MBTI site.)

In any case, the best example of living with cognitive dissonance in my own life that I can come up with is the fact that I believe in [a permutation of the Christian] God and yet I truly doubt God's existence. For years, I kept trying to reduce it to one or the other... but that just hamstrung me, and realized that I no longer can. So I actually hold both beliefs at once -- which results in basically my living the way I believe God would have me live without apology, without needing to know whether God is factually real.

(Reference Donaldson's "Thomas Covenant Chronicles" for a good example of living within the embrace of belief and doubt simultaneously.)

And an example of positive disintegration is between delight and fear. As it is not usually possible or desirable to feel delight and fear at the same time, it then becomes impossible to feel and we start to disintegrate.

Are you defining this as per the theory of Dabrowski, or have you formulated your own definition here?

and positive disintegration leads us to lose our ability to feel.

I usually just refer to this state as one of "bittersweetness" -- because I feel both at once, and since I define it as "one emotion," I have no need to toss either or both out. It hurts good and pleasures bad.

Are you saying most people can't/don't do this?

For dissonance and disintegration are the University of Life. And when you experience them, you are experiencing the University Orientation Week - a hiatus to prepare you for the changes ahead.

I think they're both essential as well, but not everyone has the same capacity for either or both as some others do. I'm not sure how to judge that without inflicting my own subjective standard of good upon it.