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Post by Oli Micklewright on Apr 6, 2016 2:04:26 GMT
So I’ve decided to post my thread on one of the readings for this week entitled “Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance”. The article asks the question – what can happen to a person’s private opinion when they are forced to say something contrary to that opinion? The article outlines an experiment that has been designed with the intent to prove the one’s private opinion will move towards their position advocated in the speech. For example, Trump might haven been forced to say “my fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of body” – Trump’s personal opinion might be that other parts of his body are not long and beautiful but by saying something contrary to his position, this experiment suggests that he might start to believe the original position advocated in his speech.
The article uses the term “dissonance”. Dissonance refers to the incentives needed for a person to express something against his private belief. For example, the magnitude of dissonance would decrease if the person was told that he would receive money, respect or punishment etc... The person now has a greater incentive to speak against his private belief. Interestingly, the magnitude of dissonance can be reduced if the person changes his private belief to bring it into correspondence with what he has said.
The procedure: students were told to undergo a task that would be perceived as dull and boring by most people. By the end of the task the students were asked, with the incentive of 1 or 20 dollars, if they would tell the next student in the experiment that the task was not boring. At the end of the experiment the students were asked 4 questions to determine how interesting they found the original task. Some students were asked how interesting they found the task immediately after the task and the others were asked at the end of the experiment. The idea was to see if those who underwent the whole experiment thought the original task was more interesting having received the incentive of 1 or 20 dollars.
The result of the experiment was “if a person is induced to do or say something which is contrary to his private opinion, there will be a tendency for him to change his opinion so as to bring it into correspondence with what he has done or said.”
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Post by connorthompson on Apr 6, 2016 3:31:46 GMT
I think the research on cognitive dissonance and forced compliance can offer significant insight on not only society as a whole, but our individual actions and beliefs that affect our mental health and senses of self. I think it is easy to look at the evidence and say "yeah, people will change their inner beliefs to accommodate what they outwardly say." However, it's more important to look at the implications of this, especially when their inner beliefs are core to who they are as humans (pertaining to sex, race, ethnicity, etc.)
It's one thing to change a belief about something that has no relevance to you as a person. Yes, it is easier for a man to outwardly hate Jews and move his inner beliefs towards this notion if he himself is not jewish. The action, the belief, has no real relevance to his livelihood.
However, it's different when that belief pertains to the core of what gives that person their personality and livelihood. For example, say someone identifies as gay but is raised in a religious household where they are told it is a sin and inhuman. They have to repeat that it's a sin, that gay people are less than human. One would expect the person to not really believe this, for they are gay and would naturally support that as a fact of life. However, what the study shows us is that repeating these negatives views of gay people can influence their inner beliefs, which can have a detrimental effect on one's mental health. By saying "gay is inhuman," that person will begin to believe it and view himself as inhuman as well, creating a cycle of internalize violence.
Going forward with this research, it would be interesting to see a study on people who are forced to change their core beliefs out of a fear for their safety (ie people who are gay, black, immigrants). It might give valuable insight on mental illness as a result of cognitive dissonance (ie depression, bulimia, anxiety).
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Post by rebeccah on Apr 6, 2016 4:28:56 GMT
I think Connor brings up an interesting point. Could this idea translate to the real world and help better understand certain cases of mental illnesses? This dissonance definitely seems like a legitimate cause to me. If someone comes to believe that the inner core of who they are (ie being gay) is wrong, then they can certainly not be happy with themselves and may be affected by some mentally harmful illness. If this experiment can be used to study such cases, why can't this same idea be a part of some more beneficial treatment, such as a type of therapy in which the patient continually repeats that he is good, or enough, etc.? I just think it's something to think about and a possibly beneficial use of these findings.
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dalia
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Post by dalia on Apr 6, 2016 8:07:46 GMT
I agree, and definitely think this could translate to some applications on mental illness, especially if it is one that leans towards being more socially constructed than biological. For example, I think it would be interesting to look at a disease like anorexia and dissect the causes in terms of social construction and ideas pertaining to one's perception of themselves as function of ideas learned from society as we grow up. Such ideas about beauty, standards, and stereotypes can be a key cause of the disease as a person's view of themselves may contradict what is perpetuated by society. However, regarding the solution, I'm a bit skeptical: I'm not sure if it would be easy to do the reverse because once an idea is engrained in one's head over time, it might be hard to erase or unlearn. It might be the case like with the ABC and ABA paradigms for PTSD where its you can never really unlearn, but rather relearn in different contexts. for example, learn that it is ok to not look a certain way in a specific context like within family or school.
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dalia
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Post by dalia on Apr 6, 2016 8:40:06 GMT
On a different note, I just want to add a story which the results of the experiments made me recall. This is a folktale/story I heard as a child. Basically, it talks about two men that were traveling across the desert on a camel. Halfway on their path, they started running out of food and water and couldn't continue. Also, the camel got sick and exhausted and died, leaving the men stranded in the middle of the desert. They buried the camel but left some marks or indication of its position with the sand, and just sat there weeping over their bad luck. However, after a couple of days, some type of carriage or men traveling for business (usually trading goods like cloth, food etc...) passed by them. When they asked about who was buried, the two men lied and said that this was the grave of some famous prophet or king (obviously they made it up). I can't remember why exactly, but I believe it was to get money/food. anyway, the point point is, more and more people started passing by to see the grave of prophet or king x (whatever name they made up), and it became like a sacred-like place, and (i think) people would pay them to see it or place valuable items next to the grave (either way they got food/money). After a good amount of time passed by, and the area where this "grave" is had become well known, the two men got into some kind of argument one day. I think it was that one of the two men proposed something like digging up the grave or removing it or something like that, and then the other one told him, how can you say such a preposterous thing, the grave is sacred, its for king X. And then the other guy replied, what are you saying, this is the grave of our camel, we made this up! bringing his friend back to reality.
Basically, the main point of this story serves to show that if you say something, even a lie, frequently enough, and people believe it, then it kinda becomes true in your mind because you learn to accept it whether its true or not. I think the results of the experiment are basically a modern reiteration of this fact which is well-known since a long time ago, but backed up with scientific, empirical methods and data. This is because it essentially saying that if you say something contrary to your private opinion (like a lie), then you have a tendency to alter your opinion so that its in sync with what you say publicly. Therefore, repeating this public opinion and holding it for a longer time will cause your private opinions to move more and more towards this outwards opinion to the extent that you might even adopt this outwards opinion as a private one (which was the case in the story).
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Post by Oli Micklewright on Apr 7, 2016 22:55:11 GMT
Hey Connor!
Yes I think you have an interesting point and its also interesting to consider how this could affect a person who has not yet identified himself as or realised that he is gay. Through social pressures, such as a christian household you spoke of, one may behave in a way that suppresses their natural urges. By outwardly living a heterosexual life someone may never fully realise that their personal self is gay. An example of this could be when someone only realises that they are gay later in their life - and quite often this can lead to things like breakdowns of marriages.
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Post by Oli Micklewright on Apr 7, 2016 23:38:22 GMT
Hey Rebecca!
Definitely an interesting idea to think that forced compliance leading to change in a person's beliefs could actually be used to treat an individual's socially constructed disease (as mentioned by Dalia). However, I don't think that this alone could cure a socially constructed disease.
Take someone who has a socially constructed disease related to society's beauty standards and by society, as a whole, are perceived as unattractive. They could say that they are beautiful a 1000 times, and according to the study they might start to believe it, but if something happens to this person that contradicts their new personal belief (such as the person they are attracted to not liking them back or being told they are unattractive) then regression into the previous personal belief is likely. In my opinion, a better approach would be to teach the person that society's beauty standards are shallow and not realistic - that said, maybe you could even use forced compliance to teach a person this!
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Post by Alexandre Denuit on Apr 21, 2016 22:11:53 GMT
Very interesting Oliver. You truly are an inspiration to me, and I will do more research on the topic as you have piqued my curiosity.
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