Page 211 - The Social Animal

Self-Justification 193

If people were purely rational, we would expect them to remember
the plausible arguments best and the implausible arguments least;
why in the world would people want to keep implausible arguments
in their heads? Accordingly, the rational person would rehearse and
remember all the arguments that made sense and would slough off
all the ridiculous arguments. What does the theory of cognitive dis-
sonance predict? It is comforting to have all the wise people on your
side and all the fools on the other side: A silly argument in favor of
one’s own position arouses dissonance because it raises doubts about
the wisdom of that position or the intelligence of the people who
agree with it. Likewise, a plausible argument on the other side of the
issue also arouses dissonance because it raises the possibility that the
other side is right. Because these arguments arouse dissonance, one
tries not to think about them; that is, one might not learn them very
well, or one might simply forget about them. This is exactly what
Jones and Kohler found. Their participants did not remember in a
rational-functional manner. They tended to remember the plausible
arguments agreeing with their own position and the implausible ar-
guments agreeing with the opposing position.
In a conceptually similar experiment, Charles Lord, Lee Ross, and
14
Mark Lepper showed that we do not process information in an un-
biased manner. Rather, we distort it in a way that fits our preconceived
notions. These investigators selected several Stanford University stu-
dents who opposed capital punishment and several who favored it.
They showed the students two research articles that discussed whether
the death penalty tends to deter violent crimes. One study confirmed
and the other study disconfirmed the existing beliefs of the students.
If these students were perfectly rational, they might conclude that the
issue is a complex one, and accordingly, the two groups of students
might move closer to each other in their beliefs about capital punish-
ment. On the other hand, dissonance theory predicts that they would
distort the two articles, clasping the confirming article to their bosoms
and hailing it as clearly supportive of their belief while finding
methodological or conceptual flaws in the disconfirming article and
refusing to be influenced by it. This is precisely what happened. In-
deed, rather than coming closer in their beliefs after being exposed to
this two-sided presentation,the two groups of students disagreed more
sharply than they did beforehand. This process probably accounts for
the fact that, on issues like politics and religion, people who are deeply