Criticism of Mormonism/Cognitive dissonance

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Criticism

Critics of the Church are fond of portarying all members as either naive, ill-informed dupes or cynical exploiters. Unfortunately for the critics, most fair-minded people realize that—just as in any religion—there are many intelligent, well-informed people who become or remain members of the Church. To get around this, critics appeal to the psychological concept of 'cognitive dissonance' to try to 'explain away' the witness of intelligent, articulate members.

Source(s) of the Criticism

  • Bob McCue, “Notes for Van Hale’s Radio Show”; e-mail posting (5 September 2004), copy in author's possession.
  • Bob McCue, “Van Hale’s ‘Mormon Miscellaneous’ Radio Talk Show,” Version 3, 20 Sept 2004, 11.

Response

What is cognitive dissonance?

The seminal work on cognitive dissonance theory was written in 1957 by Leon Festinger.

"Cognitive dissonance" explains behavior by pointing out that all people have various beliefs, thoughts, or ideas, called "cognitions." From time to time, these cognitions will come into conflict—for example, someone might believe that their child is honest and law-abiding. However, they might learn one day that their child has been charged with shoplifting. There are now two cognitions in tension:

  • cognition #1: "my child is honest"
  • cognition #2: "my child has been arrested for shoplifting"

These cognitions create conflict, or "dissonance." This is a psychologically unpleasant experience, and according to the theory, people seek to minimize or resolve dissonance. This can be done in a number of ways:

  • the former cognition is rejected: "I guess my child isn't as honest as I thought he was."
  • the new cognition can be rejected: "My child wasn't arrested. There must be a mistake."
  • a new cognition can eventually be formed which reconciles the two cognitions in conflict: "My child put something in his shopping cart, and forgot to pay for it on leaving the store. Thus, he was not trying to be dishonest, but it is understandable why he was arrested. It was a misunderstanding."

The important point is that all people experience cognitive dissonance whenever they encounter something that does not match what they have thought or believed previously. People may choose appropriate means of reconciling their dissonance (e.g. accepting new truths, adopting new perspectives, rejecting or modifying previous beliefs) or less appropriate ones (e.g. denying new truths, clinging to false ideas). The presence of cognitive dissonance alone says nothing about the quality or truth of someone's beliefs.

How do the critics misuse it?

Critics like to pretend that talking about 'cognitive dissonance' is very scientific, and objective. However, they usually ignore one of the most important principles of a scientific explanation: falsifiability.

The criterion of falsifiability … says that statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable, observations.[1]

The hallmark of pseudoscience is its inability to be falsified. That is why neither religion or any other philosophical system can ever be called science, or tested by science. “God made it all out of nothing in seven days, and faked the evidence,” says the young earth creationist. “Any Mormon who doesn’t interpret the evidence as I do must be suffering cognitive dissonance,” says the critic.

How could a faithful Mormon's behavior or attitude toward the evidence prove that he or she is not subject to the critics' "cognitive dissonance"?

Michael Shermer, an agnostic and writer for Skeptic magazine specifically dismissed the idea that "cognitive dissonance" could generally explain religious believers:

It would be a long stretch to classify [millions of white, middle class American Christians] as oppressed, disenfranchised, or marginalized…[millions of apocalyptically-inclined] Americans are anything but in a state of learned helplessness or cognitive dissonance. Indeed, some recent polls and studies indicate that religious people, on average, may be both physically and psychologically happier and healthier than non-believers.[2]

There is nothing which the critic could not shoe-horn into his theory—cognitive dissonance is thus little but a handy club to beat anyone who does not share his interpretation. “Of course you see it differently,“ the critic can kindly—but oh-so-condescendingly assure his Mormon friend. “You’re still in the grip of cognitive dissonance.”

In short, cognitive dissonance, serves the critic merely as a convenient “just-so” story—“How the Mormon Got His Delusions" but it explains nothing.

Is turn about fair play?

This is not to say that cognitive dissonance cannot play a role in religious belief. It might play a role in some Mormons' refusal to accept an uncomfortable truth. It could also play a role, for example, in the critics' experiences, in which their expectations and beliefs did not meet their perceptions of reality. Each critic is the only one able to make that assessment.

But, lacking access to others’ reasoning and spiritual experiences, a critic cannot objectively judge the influence (if any) of cognitive dissonance in others’ decisions. He can worry about the dissonant beams in his own eye; others’ motes are out of the reach of his self-justifying inquiry.

Many critics seem unwilling to recognize that men and women of good will and sound intelligence might honestly disagree on the interpretation of evidence, even if considered with all the objectivity they can muster. This is, for example, why some people will buy stock at a price at which other people are eager to sell. (But perhaps the entire economy is merely an exercise in cognitive dissonance?)

LDS critics often have a naïve, super-simplified view of the historian’s work whereby anyone who disbelieves a religious account is somehow automatically more free from bias than a believer. This ignores the fact, of course, that unbelievers may feel at least as great a stake in disproving uncomfortable and uncompromising religious claims as believers might in supporting them. It is therefore no surprise that critics label interpretations with which they does not agree as examples of “cognitive dissonance” in action, while the critics' positions are, of course, merely the product of dispassionate analysis.

One critic fond of this theory tells us:

The most important part of this analysis, by far, is to recognize that the forces we are about to discuss [cognitive dissonance] operate mostly at the subconscious level. To the extent we drag them into the conscious realm, they largely stop operating.[3]

“Subconscious” forces which are used to explain behavior, especially by the outside observer, are a classic unfalsifiable hypothesis. This is not to say that we do not all have brain processes of which we are not aware, biases which we do not appreciate, and the like—of course we do. There is a thorny problem, however, in making XXXXX’s leap. How can we know that a “cause” which has been supposedly dragged from subconscious to awareness is the genuine article?

Why isn’t our “discovered” reason simply a rationalization, which is driven in turn by an even deeper “subconscious force,” and so on down forever? Since we are—by definition—unaware of unconscious processes, how can we know with any confidence that the concepts we are now considering look anything like the unconscious ones? Put another way, how can you say that A and B are the same thing if no one can get a look at A?

And, if this is difficult in ourselves, how much harder is it in another person, to whose mind and experience we have no direct access? Despite these major hurdles, XXXXX seems to presume that he can reliably determine what his own—or others’—unconscious processes are and “drag them into the conscious realm.” Freud would have been envious.

XXXXX then makes the equally strange assertion that these effects “largely stop operating” if we are but aware of them. Even if we, by the greatest fortune, have indeed identified a proper “subconscious force,” his belief is extraordinarily optimistic. Anyone who has spent any time in counseling or mental health work knows that awareness of a problem rarely provides a direct line to altered thinking or behavior. If it did, therapy would be a mere information dump to the patient.

The message that booms through the above evidence to me is that the denial inducing nature of cognitive dissonance makes it difficult to self-diagnose.[4]

But, if we assume XXXXX is right, then he cannot complain that we have now got our evaluation of him all wrong. After all, he could well remain unaware of the pernicious influence of his own cognitive dissonance, leading to his current anti-Mormon stance.

The basis of his theory should put us on notice that whatever we may say about XXXXX’s analysis—the lynch-pin (“most important part…by far”) of which is an unfalsifiable and unverifiable claim about subconscious motives—it is not rational and not scientific. But, his theory allows him to fit the evidence to his biases, and “diagnose” flaws in others despite their objections.

Conclusion

"Cognitive dissonance theory," when applied in the critics' idiosyncratic way to explain away the witness and convictions of others, is hardly scientific. The critics' efforts fail on many grounds:

  • immunity to falsification
  • malleability to explain any data
  • claims regarding hidden, unverifiable, “subconscious” motivations as explanations
  • arrogantly assuming that the interpreter knows more about the person and his/her experiences than the person him/herself, even if the subject disagrees with the analysis

Endnotes

  1. [5]Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1963), 33.
  2. [note] Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (New York: WH Freeman and Company, 1999),211–212.
  3. [6]Bob McCue, “Notes for Van Hale’s Radio Show”; e-mail posting (5 September 2004), copy in author's possession.
  4. [7]Bob McCue, “Notes for Van Hale’s Radio Show”; e-mail posting (5 September 2004), copy in author's possession.

Further reading

FAIR wiki articles

  • Links to related articles in the wiki

FAIR web site

External links

Printed material

  • Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957). ISBN 0804701318
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