How could you possibly vote for…?

Wikileaks just exposed the latest in the long line of emails proving how corrupt Hillary actually is….or another woman steps forward and accuses Trump of sexual assault. These events (or something very similar) are daily occurrences and yet the release of said information doesn’t have the intended effect. Supporters don’t back down. In fact, many of them dig their heels in deeper and back their candidate with even more vigor.

Leading to the question that invariably arises, “How could you possibly vote for ….?” But why? Why do people hold on and grow even more vocal in their support as their candidate is proven to be worse than anyone imagined? The term is cognitive dissonance, and before you go unfriending someone because they can’t see things your way, let me explain.

Cognitive dissonance is the need that people have for all of their beliefs and opinions to align with their behaviors/knowledge. When beliefs/opinions/behaviors/knowledge are not in alignment (dissonance), something must change. One of the most often used examples to explain this concept is smoking. Smokers often wrestle with the behavior (smoking) not being in alignment with knowledge (it isn’t good for them). So, what options do they have available?

Change the behavior – for smokers this would be quitting…hard to do and often not desirable even if it was possible.

Change the knowledge – Search for facts that support your behavior. Smokers will find studies that show less of a link between smoking and cancer than believed or the high rates of lung cancer in non-smokers. This lessens the dissonance and allows smoking to continue.

Change the value of the knowledge – By decreasing the importance of the negative knowledge, such as thinking that a shorter life doing what we want is better than a longer life depriving ourselves of the things we enjoy.

Note that other than changing the behavior, the steps to reduce dissonance don’t actually make things any better. They just reduce the inner struggle with an imbalance between what is known and what is believed.

The other piece of the puzzle is the depth of belief/behavior. Someone who smoked one cigarette is far more likely to choose option 1 and quit than a 20 year, pack a day smoker.

Another example often presented is the cult that believes the world will end on a given date. Prior to that magical day, you have varying depths of belief/behavior within this group. Some have embraced the idea completely and sold off their possessions and stand in front of the supermarket warning others that the world is about to end, so you might want to use those eggs and butter quickly. Others may buy in, but aren’t selling off all their things and may just come to the weekly meetings, have a danish and coffee, and return home.

When the world doesn’t end on the predicted day (shocking that none of these groups ever get it right), it is much easier for those who weren’t all in on the apocalypse to move on. They can write it off as a stupid mistake and get back to living life (though they will miss the weekly danish and coffee). But those who drank the Kool-aid (so to speak), have to find some way to put the dissonance in balance. Often, they will find a way to convince themselves that they weren’t wrong. Perhaps believing that, due to their actions, they saved the world from ending and they weren’t actually wrong about any of it. This tips the scales back to something resembling level (though how level your scales are when you sell all your crap and proselytize the end of the world to passers-by at the local Walmart is a question for which I don’t think we have an answer).

We see examples of this in every day life. Religious beliefs, politics, sports…you name it. If there can be an opinion/behavior, there are also aligned examples of cognitive dissonance.

So let’s talk about this election. You are an outspoken supporter of person X, you loaded all of your worldly possessions into a wagon and you have hitched your wagon to that political train. You have spent energy and effort imploring everyone to believe that this is by far the best train and everyone should jump on it with you. At first, the wagon train has a few bumps, but nothing too frightening. These are explained away and soft peddled to the group as nothing to worry about.

But, eventually, the train starts to head off the path, bounce like a plane in a thunderstorm, and head directly towards a ravine. It builds up speed and the ride gets worse and worse. What does the person who tried to convince everyone that this train was going to be fantastic do in this scenario?

Well, they can change behavior by admitting they were wrong which, like quitting smoking, is very hard to do.

Or…they can dig in their heels and use the second and third methods of self-balance. They can tell people that the other trains (there are more than two candidates) are an even worse ride and so they should just stay here on this one. They will convince themselves (and try with others) that the bumpy ride is the result of the other train’s people trying to knock this one off course because those people all now know this is certainly the best train. Or, they will continue to attempt to assure everyone that the ride isn’t so bad, or that this uncomfortable part will pass and it will get better. They will expel even more effort to right the imbalance. They are determined to get things back to level between what they believe and knowledge to the contrary.

However, those that didn’t hitch their wagons, but chose to ride the train instead, they can jump off. It might be painful, but they will come to a state of balance far more easily. The transition is even easier for those who rode alongside the train on a horse…

This is why so many of these online discussions go downhill so quickly. When you present evidence contrary to someone’s belief, and they can’t respond with anything other than, “You must be the world’s biggest moron! I hope you die in a grease fire on Christmas morning in front of your children!”, that isn’t because they truly hope you die in a grease fire. It is because you have pushed their internal conflict to a place where they have to right it immediately, and by any means necessary…and to call you stupid, (the more emphatically, the better) helps to restore a sense of balance. They can then convince themselves that they know more than you about this subject, and therefore, are right to stay the course.

We are also going to have to realize that this isn’t only a pre-election behavior. This will be with us for years to come. Take a look at all the people who still jump to the defense of past presidents that they supported (or support their current stance). They will come to the defense of the elected, or they will spend all their time condemning them, depending upon which side wins.  They have to try to get that internal balance back.

This brings up the questions, “Why is this election so much different? Why am I bombarded with so many more people filled with rage and hate?” This may surprise you, but I think I have an explanation.

Twitter in  Oct 2008 – 3 million unique visitors

Twitter in Oct 2012 – 30 million unique visitors… I think you see the trend here…

Oct 2016, approximately 150 million unique visitors.

That doesn’t take into account the number of tweets and such, from 300,000 tweets per day in 2008 to 500,000,000 per day in 2016. Facebook users? 100 million, 1 billion, 2 billion in those same periods. Add in Instagram and blogs and such…and you have billions of people with the ability to share and say whatever they want. We have instant access to information (sadly, much of it seems to be tenuously clinging to factual status) which is then shared across the globe with whatever spin the poster/tweeter hopes to add.

Twitter has become a news source. Somehow, 140 characters from some random person is taken at face value with no validation or verification necessary. Once it is tweeted and used in a news article, that news article makes the rounds and, because of the automatic acceptance of news outlets (as long as they are the news outlets that tell the side of the stories we agree with, which is why republicans watch Fox and Democrats like CNN, it helps the balance) as truthful, this tweet becomes fact until someone can dig in and prove/disprove. By that time, it is too late. Accusations make page one, retractions get buried in the middle of a page with no highlighted links.

So, now you have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who have loudly and publicly hitched their wagons to a candidate’s train…and cognitive dissonance at varying degrees takes the reins from there.

So, don’t be so quick to unfriend or dislike those that cling tighter to their candidate when things come out that are horrifying. They aren’t bad people…they probably don’t support sexual assault or high level corruption (if they do, then unfriending is an appropriate response). They probably don’t actually think you are a moron. They are just caught in a very human pattern to which all of us, at some point, have succumbed. They need to restore balance and harmony to keep the dissonance from driving them crazy.