Page 204 - The Social Animal

186 The Social Animal

Smoking is a difficult habit to break; only 9 percent of the smokers had
been able to quit. To justify continuing the activity, smokers tended to
debunk the report.They were more likely to deny the evidence: 40 per-
cent of the heavy smokers said a link had not been proven to exist.
They were also more apt to employ rationalizations: Over twice as
many smokers as nonsmokers agreed that there are many hazards in
life and that both smokers and nonsmokers get cancer.
Smokers who are painfully aware of the health hazards associ-
ated with smoking may reduce dissonance in yet another way—by
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minimizing the extent of their habit. One study found that of 155
smokers who smoked between one and two packs of cigarettes a day,
60 percent considered themselves moderate smokers; the remaining
40 percent considered themselves heavy smokers. How can we ex-
plain these different self-perceptions? Not surprisingly, those who la-
beled themselves as moderates were more aware of the pathological
long-term effects of smoking than were those who labeled them-
selves as heavy smokers. That is, these particular smokers apparently
reduced dissonance by convincing themselves that smoking one or
two packs a day isn’t really all that much. Moderate and heavy are,
after all, subjective terms.
Imagine a teenage girl who has not yet begun to smoke. After
reading the Surgeon General’s report, is she apt to believe it? Like
most of the nonsmokers in the survey, she should. The evidence is
objectively sound, the source is expert and trustworthy, and there is
no reason not to believe the report. And this is the crux of the mat-
ter. Earlier in this book, I made the point that people strive to be
right, and that values and beliefs become internalized when they ap-
pear to be correct. It is this striving to be right that motivates people
to pay close attention to what other people are doing and to heed the
advice of expert, trustworthy communicators. This is extremely ra-
tional behavior. There are forces, however, that can work against this
rational behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance does not pic-
ture people as rational beings; rather, it pictures them as rationaliz-
ing beings. According to the underlying assumptions of the theory,
we humans are motivated not so much to be right as to believe we
are right (and wise, and decent, and good).
Sometimes, our motivation to be right and our motivation to be-
lieve we are right work in the same direction.This is what is happen-
ing with the young woman who doesn’t smoke and therefore finds it