life on planet earth on Cognitive Dissonance

Dissonance theory predicts that we will eventually (and conveniently) forget good arguments made by opponents just as we forget silly arguments we made ourselves. . . . It’s motivated by our need to b...

We will often stop at nothing to avoid cognitive dissonance. We will twist logic, bend reason, conveniently forget facts, invent new stories, even destroy relationships—all in the name of preserving o...

As soon as we know that we are wrong, we aren’t wrong anymore, since to recognize a belief as false is to stop believing it. Thus we can only say “I was wrong.” Call it the Heisenberg Uncertainty Prin...

Karyn L. Freedman points out that one of the serious effects of trauma is “the shattered worldview.” After a traumatic experience, the survivor experiences cognitive dissonance as a whole new set of b...

When we observe evil, sinful behavior from a distance, the inclination is simply to see people as acting with malicious intent. We assume they are “bad people.” But often the motivations that lead to ...

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

We rationalize to make life with ourselves possible in a morally challenging world. Often the motivation for rationalization, though, is quite different. In recent decades, psychologists have argued c...

“It’s not denial. I’m just selective about the reality I accept.

Evading self-acknowledgment of our faults enables us to avoid painful moral emotions: guilt and remorse for harming others; shame for betraying your own ideals; self-contempt for not meeting even our ...

We love to think that we're rational—that our take on the world is correct—and that if we were being dishonest with ourselves... we'd know. However, there's good reason to think that we...

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is pos...

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

In The Sickness unto Death , Kierkegaard describes a “moment” familiar to all of us. It is the “little tiny transition from having understood to doing.” Here’s what he says about it: …if a person d...

It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

Recently at church I asked our congregation, “How many of you battle with self-deception?” A few people in the crowd raised their hands. Then I asked, “How many of you know someone who is very self-de...

We are all hypocrites in transition. I am not who I want to be, but I am on the journey there, and thankfully I am not whom I used to be.

It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

I remember a young man coming to see me when he had just left school and begun work in London. He had given up going to church, he said, because he could not say the creed without feeling that he was ...

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost ...

At some point in childhood we all make the powerful discovery that we can manipulate the truth about ourselves.

We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone's lifestyle, you must fear them or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everyth...

Apathy is the acceptance of the unacceptable.

Dear Everybody, We have a serious problem: All of us think we’re good people. But Jesus says we’re not. Sincerely, Brant P. Hansen

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

Self-deception is a major part of what defeats spiritual formation in Christ. In self-deception the individual or group refuses to acknowledge factors in their life of which they are dimly conscious. ...

Reality is what doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.

There is not any thing, relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccountable, than this partiality to themselves. . . . Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own chara...

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Ironically, the insistence that doctrines do not matter is really a doctrine itself.