Freedom According to the Bill of Rights
In his article about the Bill of Rights for Salon’s Documents of Freedom spotlight, Roger K. Newman relates the moment when the literary character Huckleberry Finn decides to tear up a letter to Jim’s slave owner, Miss Watson, despite knowing that he would be going against society’s thinking and most likely God. The insight in this retelling is the concept that Huckleberry Finn was able to come to this decision on his own, uninfluenced by the pressure of society or religion.
Newman writes:
Huckleberry Finn, so far as we know, had not read the First Amendment. Here he was in anguish because he was harboring the runaway slave Jim. Knowing that he was breaking society's rules and sure that God disapproved, he wrote Jim's owner, Miss Watson, to turn him in. But he recalled their adventures on the river and Jim's kindness then, and he could not bring himself to mail the letter. He tore it up, certain that he would be damned forever: "All right, then," Huck said to himself, "I'll go to hell."
The passage is more than wonderful literature. Only when Huck let his mind travel did he discover what he really thought about equality. The First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of expression, allows that free flight, that necessary journey of self-discovery. In the words of one of its staunchest champions, Justice Hugo L. Black, that amendment -- along with the nine others that make up the Bill of Rights -- protects, or attempts to protect, "individual liberty by barring government from acting in a particular area or from acting except under certain prescribed procedures." Its framers had seen numerous examples of human depravity, abuses of governmental power by colonial authorities, that led them to build indestructible walls limiting government.
On Sheep and Cognitive Dissonance
On July 10th, Salon.com published a thoughtful analysis of the American public and its seeming forgiveness of the President for lying. A Nation of Scared Sheep, written by Louise Witt, seems to me to have been written a bit prematurely. Scandals such as this seem to take awhile to seep into the national consciousness. As I'm writing this on today, twelve days since it appeared, polls taken over the weekend did show that Bush's ratings have slid too low for their comfort, as manifest in the news release on Tuesday from the Republican National Committee and also the White HOuse (who urged the GOP to step up its vocal reinforcement of the good things occurring in Iraq and their trust in Bush.)
Despite this, Witt states that we are giving Bush "a pass on his misleading and trumped-up evidence" because it is simply human nature. "We're hard-wired to forgive some lies-- and liars-- more than others.
"People don't focus as much on the sin as on the sinner," says Robert P. Lawry, a professor of law and the director of the Center for Professional Ethics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in Cleveland. "Bush's popularity explains the shrugging of the shoulders. An awful lot of people seem to have a visceral, negative reaction to Martha Stewart; they don't like her. They like Bush, so they forgive him. It has nothing to do with the lie. Going to war is much more problematic a lie than one that nets you a small gain, relatively speaking, in the stock market. People are not paying attention to the implications and importance of the lie."
Witt's second reason why we are letting Bush go is because "Humans are more or less genetically programmed to accept falsehoods that comfort them during periods of extreme stress. Call it the fear factor: Being able to rally around a strong leader -- and the flag -- is reassuring to many Americans."
"An audience is softened up to believe information when they feel threatened or when they are aroused by anger or fear," says Carolyn Keating, a professor of psychology at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. "Two things happen when we are under threat: We focus on peripheral, superficial clues and we don't follow complex logic -- only what we feel."
[For example,] In mid-June, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that almost a third of the respondents didn't expect the United States to find WMD in Iraq. However, a poll in September 2002 showed that a large majority of Americans supported the Iraq war because they believed administration contentions that Saddam's regime had biological or chemical weapons, was developing nuclear weapons, and had harbored terrorists. At the time, Americans thought the war was justified because of Saddam's threatening weapon arsenal.
Witt's third reason is "[t]he tactic of creating a menace to rally the populace around a cause..."
When Gustave Gilbert, a psychologist who interviewed the Nuremberg prisoners, talked to Hermann Goering, the former leader of the Third Reich's Luftwaffe, Goering volunteered that it was relatively easy to persuade a populace to go to war. As quoted in Gilbert's book "Nuremberg Diary," Goering said: "It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship."
Gilbert disagreed with Goering's analysis. "There is one difference," he answered. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars." But Goering held his ground: "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Witt's fourth reason is that "Homo sapiens are built to obstinately hold on to their beliefs, even in the face of conflicting evidence."
"If we supported the war initially, then we are invested in that decision," Raybeck says. "If you encounter information showing that the reasons for the war were not well founded, or were exaggerated, you have two choices: the war was indeed worthwhile, or we were took. We either acted wisely or were damned fools." And few, understandably, want to think of themselves as fools.
As the world becomes more complex and frightening, cognitive dissonance becomes even more prevalent, Raybeck says. People filter out more and more information in order to hold on to their beliefs. "Dissonance theory appears part of general human psychology," he says, "but cultures, such as our own, that place a premium on individuality, are particularly subject to its influence."
This trend in the United States toward less thoughtful and less objective reasoning will be hard to reverse -- with ominous consequences for our democracy. Human behavior reinforces habits. Once people adjust their behavior to accommodate subtle deception or blatant lying from their leaders, it will be difficult for them to become more discerning or skeptical in the future, Raybeck says. It's similar to when someone's finger hurts when he bends it. If he avoids moving his finger, eventually the muscle will atrophy and he may lose all movement. Just as the body makes adjustments, so does the mind. Which may also explain why Americans didn't seem to care that the Bush administration lied, or at the very least egregiously distorted the truth, when it declared that the new $350 billion tax cuts would benefit all.
Sullivan, author of "The Concise Book of Lying," believes the media may play a large role in determining which lies Americans care about and which ones they don't. Perhaps, she surmises, we're more concerned with Stewart's coverup because that is the story presented to us day after day in newspapers, magazines and TV shows. Conversely, she says, we may not be as concerned about Bush's prevarication, because the media hasn't played it up. "I find that alarming," Sullivan says. "If you package something right, you can get away with anything ... If this administration has figured that out, then they can do anything. That strikes me as sinister."
Michael Wolff, in his column in the June 30 issue of New York magazine, theorizes that the media may even have aided the administration in its packaging of the war.
Witt closes her arguement asking these questions about American democracy: "Did the Bush administration intentionally use our evolutionary weakness against us? Did it use orange alerts, duct tape and scary tales of WMDs to create an atmosphere in which Americans would be so frightened and feel so vulnerable that they would believe almost anything they were told and ignore all conflicting evidence?"
In attempting to better understand congnitive dissonance, I searched the web and found a chapter from from A First Look at Communication Theory by Em Griffin, 1997, McGraw-Hill.
In Em Griffin’s book about communication, Griffin analyzed Leon Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance by studying people’s behavior during an annual seminar she offered for twenty years. The seminar, held on a remote island, allowed her to analyze group dynamics.
Griffin mentioned that her goals for the course were that "[everyone participating] openly [embrace] the humanistic values that Carl Rogers advanced-congruence, empathic understanding, and unconditional positive regard. I encouraged students to enact these values through appropriate self-disclosure, sensitive listening, and positive feedback that would enhance self-esteem. I also tried to facilitate an honest discussion of the conflict that inevitably comes up when living in close quarters."
Her findings and arguements are listed below.
Hypothesis 1: Selective Exposure Prevents Dissonance
Festinger claimed that people avoid information that is likely to increase dissonance. Not only do we tend to select reading material and television programs that are consistent with our existing beliefs, we usually choose to be with people who are like us. By taking care to ‘‘stick with our own kind," we can maintain the relative comfort of the status quo. Like-minded people buffer us from ideas that could cause discomfort. In that sense, the process of making friends is an example of selecting our own propaganda.
Hypothesis 2: Postdecision Dissonance Creates A Need for Reassurance
According to Festinger, close-call decisions can generate huge amounts of internal tension after the decision has been made. Three conditions heighten postdecision dissonance: (1) the more important the issue, (2) the longer an individual delays in choosing between two equally attractive options, and (3) the greater the difficulty involved in reversing the decision once it’s been made, then the more the person will agonize over whether he or she has made the right choice. Sometimes referred to as ‘‘morning-after" doubts, the misgivings or second thoughts that plague us after a tough choice motivate us to seek reassuring information and social support for our decision.
Hypothesis 3: Minimal Justification for Action Induces a Shift in Attitude
Persuasion researchers have long distinguished between public compliance and private acceptance. But before cognitive dissonance theory came along, it seemed natural to think of inner attitude and outward behavior as the beginning and end of a cause-and-effect sequence. For example, suppose I want students at the island to study more and water-ski less. Conventional wisdom suggests that I must convince them that the reading assignments are filled with valuable insights that apply to their lives. Then they’ll study and value the material.
Saving Face: The Rationalizing Animal
University of California social psychologist Elliot Aronson was attracted to cognitive dissonance theory because of Leon Festinger’s startling minimal justification prediction. He quickly determined that the theory in its original form had some ‘‘conceptual fuzziness." It failed to state the conditions under which a person would definitely experience dissonance....
According to Aronson, the amount of dissonance a person can experience is directly proportional to the effort he or she has invested in the behavior. Since Marine boot camp is tougher than basic training in the regular Army, Aronson would expect a recruit to feel greater tension if he violated the norms of the Marine Corps. The harder it is to get into a group, the more an initiate values membership. Rarely does a football player brag that his coach schedules light workouts.
Personal Responsibility for Bad Outcomes
As a predictor of dissonance, Aronson’s fear of looking foolish proved better than Festinger’s logical inconsistency. But it remained for University of Texas researcher Robert Wicklund and his colleague from the University of Kansas, Jack Brehm, to establish the definitive conditions under which counterattitudinal advocacy leads to change in conviction. They determined that personal responsibility for undesirable consequences is the ultimate cause of dissonance. Wicklund and Brehm also showed that this sense of accountability comes only when we foresee problems looming on the horizon yet choose to keep going in the same direction.
Conclussion:
Despite detractors, dissonance theory in its present form has made a significant contribution to the field of attitude change. Its implications for the persuader are clear. High-pressure tactics may get immediate compliance, but they won’t gain long-term commitment. The hard sell is out; the soft sell is in.
People who want to stimulate a permanent change in attitude might consider developing an ongoing, warm relationship with the folks they want to influence. That way they can bypass selective exposure screens and be there to offer reassurance when post-decision dissonance kicks in. The agent of change who understands cognitive dissonance will offer incentives to induce others to act in new ways, but not so many or so great that others regard the offer as one they can’t refuse. The wise advocate will take pains to insure that people who respond favorably have a good understanding of the future implications of their decision. Then, if things turn sour, the new convert won’t.
(The quotes above taken from Chapter 16 from the Third Edition of A First Look at Communication Theory by Em Griffin, 1997, McGraw-Hill, Inc.)
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