Cognitive Dissonance

THE EXPLANATION

Before you open a new tab and check Google for Cognitive Dissonance, let me attempt and make as simple an explanation as possible. In a nutshell, cognitive dissonance is the state of holding contradicting ideologies, i.e., conflicting beliefs, or acting in ways that conflict with each other.

Here's a comic I made to perfectly illustrate what cognitive dissonance is (please excuse me for the badly drawn brain):

 The brain is a master manipulator. If you feel as if you're doing something you have no sufficient justification for, the brain will induce a compliance mechanism by stirring up a weird theory that makes you justify your behavior.

We've all been in that 'all-too-familiar' situation, haven't we? Lying in bed at night, shrouded in your own thoughts, when suddenly, BAM! An embarrassing memory pops up. Cognitive dissonance could be thought of to be a defense mechanism that your brain possesses. If you encounter situations for which you have genuine justification, the brain will trigger this defense mechanism, and just to keep you satisfied, conjure a theory.

To conclude this section, I'd like to put forth a brilliant definition of cognitive dissonance from Leon Festinger, the psychologist who penned this term:

People come to believe in and love the things they have to suffer for.

I personally find the above sentence to be one of the most powerful statements ever made. Doesn't this explain so many things? Why do you still stay with the person who obviously mistreats you? Why do you say you're an ideal person when you choose not to help that homeless man on the street? Why do people believe in God when it's apparent that no one has ever seen him/her?

THE APPLICATION

Coming back to the real talk of the topic - Songs. Do songs have the ability to manipulate the cognitive dissonance within you? Interesting question, eh? Let's start off with some examples (I have a verydifferent music taste, but I've tried to keep the musical numbers on this list as popular as possible), shall we?

1) Demons - Imagine Dragons

2) In Pieces - Linkin Park

3) Somebody that I used to know - Gotye

4) We don't talk anymore - Charlie Puth

5) Everybody Hurts - R.E.M.

6) Love the way you lie - Eminem

7) No Love - Eminem

8) The Reason - Hoobastank

9) The Bleeding - Five Finger Death Punch

10) Sound of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel

Hopefully, I've done an okayish job making the list items as commonly known as possible. Do you recognize a pattern in the list? They're trying to induce a certain type of compliance within you. It's no wonder that a song can suddenly change your mood, and one of the core reasons for that may very well be cognitive dissonance.

COMFORTABLY NUMB

In this section, I'll be justifying my theory on the obvious relationship between music and cognitive dissonance. (Or maybe, all of this just me trying to reduce my cognitive dissonance. Bazinga!)

Comfortably numb - that song that makes you, well, numb to any emotional pain you're experiencing. However, I have a theory - could Comfortably Numb actually be an algorithm for cognitive dissonance? How is it different from any other? Since I'm a person who over-analyzes everything, I'll be dissecting the song using comics, just to keep you all entertained as well.

Imagine the logical region of your brain to be a doctor (let's call him Dr. Dissonance). When you feel emotionally overwhelmed, the emotional region of your brain lights up. As soon as this happens, the logical region of your brain calls upon its defense mechanism - cognitive dissonance.

When it finds that you're overwhelmed, it starts the first stage of cognitive dissonance - information extraction.

 

So the emotional part of your brain bares it all and describes each and everything in excruciating detail - how that boy/girl broke your heart, how you slipped in front of your crush and made a fool out of yourself, etc. Maybe that's why you tend to remember sad/embarrassing moments so vividly.

Once that stage is done with, the second stage is acceptance. This is where the logical part of your brain injects you with reality, and says, well, read below:

 

The last stage is called rehabilitation. Since the emotional side of your brain needs a bit of time to cope with the injected reality, which is reacting to the weird theory you'd concocted, it undergoes some serious re-evaluation. To aid with the healing process, Dr. Dissonance uses cognitive dissonance to induce happy thoughts. After a while, the emotional side reboots itself, ready to face the fact that you had made a genuine mistake. And there you have it - you're on your two feet again!

 

That's all there is to it, then! What do you think? Does music induce cognitive dissonance?

Until next time!