Perception is a strange thing. We can’t always see what is “right before our eyes,” and because perception is fraught with deletion, distortion, and unwarranted generalization, what we “see” may not be what is actually “there.” Self-perception may be among the most distorted of our perceptions. The classic question, “Does this dress make me look fat,” is a variation of the question asked by the Queen in Snow White: “Mirror, mirror on the wall / Who in the land is fairest of all?” The Queen doesn’t like it when the mirror proclaims Snow White the fairest in the land. The mirror had essentially said she looked fat….
Cognitive dissonance, a term popularized by Leon Festinger in When Prophecy Fails (1956), basically says that when a people’s beliefs conflict, they will engage in a number of psychological strategies to minimize or eliminate the dissonance. Some might change one belief or the other, while others will find ways of justifying, blaming, or denying the dissonance. Cognitive dissonance presupposes that individuals will be astute enough to know when their beliefs are in contradictory. We are all (all? Yes, all) biased to think of our choices as correct, and either reject or ignore contrary evidence. When the mirror tells the Queen that Snow White is the fairest in the land, she is compelled to eliminate Snow White to support her belief that she is the fairest. Eliminating Snow White is simply her way of reducing her cognitive dissonance.
One of Richard Bandler’s sayings that has stuck with me is, “If they can’t see it, they can’t see it.” While this saying may seem a tautology, it underscores a truth about perception. Governor (Mississippi) Haley Barbour has again made the news for his inability to remember racial strife in Mississippi during the 1960s. (For my previous mention of Gov. Barbour, see “Understanding, Rapport, and a Better 2011,” 1 January 2011.) Although the natural inclination is to think that Gov. Barbour is being disingenuous or perhaps even prevaricating, it is also possible that he can’t see it now because he couldn’t see it then. If he can’t see it, he can’t see it….
One of the ways to reduce cognitive dissonance is, of course, simply not to see it. In the States, many of those most insistent on their right to carry guns (even to church in some cases) also proclaim themselves to be Christians. If you do a quick Google search for “Christians and Guns” you’ll get about 300,000 hits, most of which focus on ways Christians reduce their cognitive dissonance about their need to defend themselves while believing in the Prince of Peace. Interestingly enough, they draw most of their philosophical support from the Old Testament rather than from the words of Jesus. “Prosperity churches,” which tend to be Evangelical Christian, promote the belief that God provides material prosperity for those He favors. This isn’t, however, exactly the image of Jesus presented in the Bible. Jesus is quoted as having said, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” He also said, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:23-24).
Interestingly enough, searching for “Prosperity Gospel” on Google also produces about 300,000 hits. The results do not, however, provide the same kind of strategies for reducing cognitive dissonance. Rather, the results produce a bunch of articles in favor of getting rich by donating to the church and another bunch saying that getting rich wasn’t what Jesus had in mind for His followers. This may be another case of “if they can’t see it, they can’t see it.” We should probably all be asking ourselves, what can’t we see that we really need to see, not only for our own sake, but also for the sake of others and the world in general. This may be especially true for matters of public policy, where perspectives and choices influence behavior on a large scale. The current (end of January 2011) unrest in Tunisia and Egypt is basically a result of the inability of those in the “ruling class” to see the degree to which the masses had become increasingly unhappy with the status quo.
Being able to see what used to be out of your perceptual frame requires not only the awareness that you may not be seeing the whole picture, but also the willingness to look. The saying, “He who knows only one religion knows none,” is based on a passage from John Stuart Mill’s essay, “On Liberty”:
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
A corollary for this theorem would be that if you are relying on just one source for information about a topic, whether that source is FOX News, MSNBC, Comedy Central (“The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”), the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal, you are getting a limited perspective. While relying on just one source for most of your information may help you avoid some cognitive dissonance, it also fosters the belief that your mirror is telling you the whole truth. You probably should be asking others, “Does this mirror make me look fat.”
