Page 206 - The Social Animal

188 The Social Animal

a complete failure. This course of action would soften the blow to his
or her self-esteem for having failed while still holding out the possi-
bility of achieving success in future efforts to quit smoking altogether.
Let’s stay with the topic of cigarette smoking for a moment and
consider an extreme example: Suppose you are one of the top execu-
tives of a major cigarette company—and therefore in a situation of
maximum commitment to the idea of cigarette smoking.Your job con-
sists of producing, advertising, and selling cigarettes to millions of peo-
ple. If it is true that cigarette smoking causes cancer, then, in a sense,
you are partially responsible for the illness and death of a great many
people. This would produce a painful degree of dissonance: Your cog-
nition “I am a decent, kind human being” would be dissonant with
your cognition “I am contributing to the early death of a great many
people.” To reduce this dissonance, you must try to convince yourself
that cigarette smoking is not harmful; this would involve a refutation
of the mountain of evidence suggesting a causal link between cigarettes
and cancer. Moreover, to convince yourself further that you are a good,
moral person, you might go so far as to demonstrate how much you
disbelieve the evidence by smoking a great deal yourself. If your need
is great enough, you might even succeed in convincing yourself that
cigarettes are good for people. Thus, to see yourself as wise, good, and
right, you take action that is stupid and detrimental to your health.
This analysis is so fantastic that it’s almost beyond belief—al-
most. In 1994, Congress conducted hearings on the dangers of
smoking. At these hearings, the top executives of most of the major
tobacco companies admitted they were smokers and actually argued
that cigarettes are no more harmful or addictive than playing video
games or eating Twinkies! In a subsequent hearing in 1997, James J.
Morgan, president and chief executive officer of the leading U.S. cig-
arette maker, said that cigarettes are not pharmacologically addictive.
“Look, I like gummy bears and I eat gummy bears. And I don’t like
it when I don’t eat gummy bears,” Morgan said. “But I’m certainly
8
not addicted to them.” This kind of public denial is nothing new, of
course. More than a quarter of a century ago, the following news item
was released by the Washington Post’s News Service.

Jack Landry pulls what must be his 30th Marlboro of the day
out of one of the two packs on his desk, lights a match to it and
tells how he doesn’t believe all those reports about smoking and
cancer and emphysema. He has just begun to market yet an-