Show Me Your Facts

I have a personal admission. I love to argue on the internet, I love to google, and provide evidence, I kind of want people to prove me wrong. My brain loves puzzles, I make puzzles of things that arent puzzles. I have been known to try to get people to just openly admit what they are alluding to or draw the lines to the meme that was shared, and the implications of that belief system.

Recently I have toned it down, I have stepped back and just asked for more facts. Interestingly this approach has garnered me more anger and insults than ever. Along with less direct admissions. Mostly because I use articles, that will never be opened. The interactions have become formulaic in many ways. Someone posts something inaccurate, I either already know, or google its accuracy. Usually I present a question, or an explanation within my purview. The response is usually something that indicates that I am dismissing bad actors, or brainwashed, followed by diminishing me as a child, ending in asking for my sources, which I provide, and then they refuse to read the article, or provide their own sources, sometimes I am called a bitch, or a Karen, whiney, leftist. They say I have TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) even though the majority of these interactions are not explicitly about Trump. I continue to ask for sources, explain my point of view, try to humanize myself and others. The response is to circle, move the goal post, and insult, and never, never, use the .

I know in the broad sense that what this demonstrates is cognitive dissonance. What I am not sure of is how those mechanism works and how I should respond. For a long while I was in it, like I said, I like a good argument. Eventually I avoided them, I really tried, I tried ignoring the inaccuracies, I tried blocking, or unfriending people. I always fell back in because it feels like giving up, on them, on progress and that feels like a betrayal. So, I hang in there, with people who do not really like me all that much and do not think I am that smart, or worth hearing. I hang in there, because it feels necessary and I have the patience and the time most days. I know plenty of people that cant handle the negativity, or get easily wounded, I however have never seen myself as a likable person, it rarely feels like I am losing something.

I am not a psychologist. I learned about cognitive dissonance in the context of learning, in education courses, and in the context of business and marketing. Overall the ideas all overlap. In education cognitive dissonance is a necessary part of learning.

What is cognitive dissonance?

Cognitive dissonance references the feeling when we have two competing ideas. Our brains like consistency we like facts, so when two or more ideas come together, and cannot co-exist as facts it makes us uncomfortable. We are forced to either accept the new information or reject it. While we do this we feel distressed. .

How do people respond to cognitive dissonance?

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling, the instinct is to resolve it in whatever way possible. So, people tend to be reactive when met with dissonance. We can face and accept or reject the competing idea based on facts, or we can refuse to resolve the dissonance at all. The latter is the likely reason that people on social media refuse to read an article, or respond by calling the other person a snowflake, but do not dig into the evidence to provide validation for their own ideas.

How to Respond to People Who are Struggling with Dissonance?

Apparently, the best thing to do when faced with a person experiencing cognitive dissonance is to continue to provide them with facts, and not to be too embroiled in the emotional attacks. The only way out without replacing the old idea with the new one or finding new facts that realign the beliefs is to devalue the belief system itself. Its not that important, the most telling example of this currently is the continued loyalty to Trump despite his not living up to the values of his supporters. When he lies, their values change so that the lie is less important, or the thing he was lieing about loses value.

There is another component that is important. There is something called the sunk cost effect in which the more people have invested in something the less likely they are to abandon whatever it is, whether it s a brand loyalty, religion, personal relationship, or political affiliation. We are in a position in which our country is participating in some horrific things, and people invested and lost relationships to commit to a belief system, to a person. Even if they want to reverse their belief system, they lost something to get Trump, and we may all be the worse for it, because despite all evidence to the contrary they are doubling down that he is doing a good enough job.

I want to be ragey and dismissive and cut people off. Instead I am trying to combat this fact-less existence by going all in on facts. In truth there is no such thing as fact-lessness, it wouldnt be such a struggle if there were, we could all live in our arbitrary truth, with our opinions arbitrarily applied . I am asking for them, I am offering them, and I am willing to be open to my own dissonance. I cannot do that without other people also sharing facts, maybe if we all share facts, we will have a deeper and more meaningful understanding of where we are.

Sources

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/cognitive-dissonance

https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326738#summary

read://https_www.indusnet.co.in/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indusnet.co.in%2F10-tips-to-handle-cognitive-dissonance-in-social-media%2F

https://www.rips-irsp.com/articles/10.5334/irsp.277/