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The Formation of Belief 305

The formulations by Duhem, Lakatos, Quine and rokeach are variations
on a theme: Core beliefs are seldom affected by contradictory information
because they are embedded within a system of beliefs of varying centrality and
importance, and it is always possible to adjust a belief system in such a way
that the new information is accommodated through peripheral changes. To
complete this account of resistance, we need to specify the cognitive mecha-
nisms that produce the peripheral changes. Thanks to the efforts of social psy-
chologists, we know what those mechanisms are.

Dissonance reduction
What kinds of cognitive processes absorb contradictory information with min-
imal change? This question was studied by the cognitive consistency school of
social psychologists in the 1955–1970 period. in a formulation by L. Festinger
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that has traveled outside academia and become a common phrase, a cognitive
conflict sets up a state of mental tension called cognitive dissonance. Because
dissonance is mildly unpleasant, it triggers mechanisms that aim to eliminate
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the conflict or at least reduce its intensity. Festinger and other researchers
in the cognitive consistency tradition identified multiple candidates for such
mechanisms.
When cognitive psychologists and educators turned their attention to the
effects of misconceptions on science learning in the 1980s, they re-discovered
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the problem of how people deal with conflicting information. Unfortunately,
they did not reach back to the prior body of research within social psychology,
but started over, drawing inspiration instead from the history and philoso-
phy of science. The lists of processes for dealing with contradictory informa-
tion compiled by Lindley Darden on the basis of the history of science and
by William F. Brewer and Clark A. Chinn on the basis of psychological con-
siderations read like updated versions of the corresponding lists of mecha-
nisms compiled three decades earlier by robert P. Abelson and by Herbert C.
Kelman and reuben M. Baron. This convergence among cognitive research-
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ers and social psychologists inspires confidence in the psychological reality of
the proposed mechanisms.
The idea of central interest for present purposes is that a cognitive conflict
can be resolved by adding beliefs to a belief system rather than by deleting
or revising existing beliefs. in formal terms, when faced with an internally
consistent belief base {B} and information to the effect that true (P), where
{B} and true (P) are dissonant, the mind tends to respond by creating a new
belief B′ such that the conjunction of {B} and B′ is consistent with true (P).