"Beijing Daily" Learning to Strengthen the Country: (Hao Xuguang) Avoiding "Cognitive Dissonance after Decision-making"

(Source: "Beijing Daily" Learning to Strengthen the Country 2020-02-12) 

Why are people good at finding rationalizations for past actions, but not good at engaging in actions that already have reasons? That is, people are very good at finding reasons for their actions, but not very good at doing things that they should do for a reason. This leads to the problem of “post-decisional cognitive dissonance.”

Decision-making is the process of choosing an option from two or more alternatives. Choosing one means giving up at least one or more. So psychologists believe that decision-making can cause cognitive dissonance. In other words, cognitive dissonance or the possibility of cognitive dissonance is caused by decisions that have already been made.

Since decision-making always causes cognitive dissonance, what do people do after making a decision? Psychologist Brehm conducted a classic experiment in 1956. In the experiment, female college students received a gift from 8 types of products (toaster, radio, stopwatch, etc.) after shopping. The experimenter had asked these female college students to rate and rank their preferences for these eight products in advance. He designed three scenarios: First, let female college students choose one of the two products they want most. Second, let them choose one of two products they want most and one they want least. Third, let them take the one they want most. Then, the experimenter mixed these 8 products with 40 other products and asked female college students to re-rate these products. It was found that in the secondary evaluation of products, they would give high evaluations to the ones they had chosen and low evaluations to the ones they had not chosen. If you choose one of the two most wanted goods, the degree of dissonance is the highest; if you choose one of the two most wanted and not particularly wanted goods, the degree of dissonance is low; if you just take the most wanted product, there is no dissonance.

After voting for a candidate, do voters become more confident that this candidate will win the election? Oded Frankl and Anthony Dube published the results of their research in 1976. They surveyed voters who had just voted and those who were about to vote. In one experiment, they surveyed voters in a Canadian provincial election. In another experiment, voters in Canadian federal elections were surveyed. Experimental results show that compared to voters who did not vote, voters who voted were more likely to believe that the candidate they voted for was the best candidate and was most likely to win the final election.

Why is this? Because if you do it, you will believe it. This is an important reason to avoid cognitive dissonance and maintain consistency.

It can be seen from this that if a person makes a decision between two preferred options, he will often resolve the dissonance by highly affirming his own option and devaluing the option he gave up.

How to overcome your own bad decision-making habits? How to solve the problem of cognitive dissonance after your own decision-making? In terms of guiding ideology, you should not always look for rationalizations for past behaviors. You should train yourself to engage in behaviors that you already have reasons to do. You must change from being good at finding reasons for your actions to being good at doing things that you have reasons to do.

To solve the problem of cognitive dissonance after one's own decision-making, we need to find methods from the influencing factors of cognitive dissonance in psychology and their changing patterns. First, rational decision-making. Do enough homework before making a decision, conduct a comprehensive evaluation of various alternatives in strict accordance with the requirements of rational decision-making, summarize experience, and operate with caution. Each option is evaluated by comparing it to the decision criteria. The basis for evaluating the quality of a program is the goals to be achieved. When evaluating the quality of decision-making options, consistent, continuous, and common standards must be used. When evaluating, in order to avoid making mistakes yourself, you should set yourself up as a devil's advocate and constantly point out the shortcomings of the proposed options from all angles in order to evaluate the alternatives rationally and objectively. Second, dare to admit your mistakes. Although a decision is made after rational and careful thinking, during and after implementation, it is still possible to find that the decision has side effects, or that there are interfering factors that affect the smooth implementation of the decision, or that the original decision is wrong. At this time, stop decisively, do not stick to eliminating cognitive dissonance, and always look for evidence that supports the decision that has been chosen to prove that the original decision is right. If you make a mistake, be brave enough to admit it. Only by having the courage to admit mistakes and continuously sum up experiences and mistakes can we continuously improve our decision-making level. 

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