Page 212 - The Social Animal

194 The Social Animal

committed will almost never come to see things our way, no matter
how powerful and balanced our arguments are.
Those of us who have worked extensively with the theory of cog-
nitive dissonance do not deny that humans are capable of rational be-
havior. The theory merely suggests that a good deal of our behavior
is not rational—although, from inside, it may seem very sensible in-
deed. If you ask the hypnotized young man why he wore a raincoat
on a sunny day, he’ll come up with an answer he feels is sensible; if
you ask the vice president of Philip Morris why he smokes, he’ll give
you a reason that makes sense to him—he’ll tell you how good it is
for everyone’s health; if you ask Jones and Kohler’s participants why
they remembered one particular set of arguments rather than others,
they’ll insist that the arguments they remembered were a fair and
representative sample of those they read. Similarly, the students in
the experiment on capital punishment will insist that the evidence
against their position is flawed. It is important to note that the world
is not divided into rational people on the one side and dissonance re-
ducers on the other. People are not all the same, and some people are
able to tolerate dissonance better than others, but we are all capable
of rational behavior and we are all capable of dissonance-reducing
behavior, depending on the circumstances. Occasionally, the same
person can manifest both behaviors in rapid succession.
The rationality and irrationality of human behavior will be illus-
trated over and over again during the next several pages as we dis-
cuss some of the wide ramifications of our need for self-justification.
These ramifications run virtually the entire gamut of human behav-
ior, but for the sake of conserving time and space, I will sample only
a few of these. Let us begin with the decision-making process, a
process that shows humans at their most rational and their most ir-
rational in quick succession.

Dissonance as a Consequence of

Making a Decision

Suppose you are about to make a decision—about the purchase of a
new car, for example. This involves a significant amount of money,
so it is, by definition, an important decision. After looking around,
you are torn between getting a sports utility vehicle and purchasing