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From: ogasawar@noscvax.UUCP (Todd H. Ogasawara)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: cognitive dissonance on the net
Message-ID: <926@noscvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-May-85 22:13:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: noscvax.926
Posted: Thu May 16 22:13:52 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 22-May-85 07:54:31 EDT
References: <6775@ucbvax.ARPA> <731@gloria.UUCP>
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Lines: 33

> I missed the dawn of that discussion and should like to know what is
> going on.  Somebody has made the remarkable assertion that anxiety
> (in general?) is caused by "cognitive dissonance," which I presume
			      ********************
> is A.I.ese (Minskyese?) for learning that one of your beliefs is false.

Cognitive dissonance was a "big thing" in Social Psychology in the
1960's.  It was the pet theory of Leon Festinger.  The basic idea
is that almost any decision has positive and negative aspects to it.
For instance, if you purchase a new car, you might be happy because
it is a "nice shiny new car."  On the other hand, you might also
worry that you just spent a lot of $$$ to purchase the car.  These
two opposing "feelings" would, according to theory, cause dissonance
which must be resolved by the system.  The theory says that you
would vacillate between the two "feelings" until some equilibrium
is neared.

More related to the topic at hand.  If you are presented with
"facts" that are in opposition to your beliefs, then a dissonant
situation would occur.  There are several ways to try to predict
the resulting equilibrium (whether you stay with your current
belief and reject the facts, discard your beliefs and accept
the new facts, or shift in some direction - including believing
even more fervently in your current belief).

It was an interesting idea that never got very far after a couple
of years of research.

Todd Ogasawara, Computer Sciences Corp.
NOSC-Hawaii Laboratories

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