205. What is cognitive dissonance?

In response to a recent column I wrote about Rob Portman’s change of perspective on gay marriage, a reader wrote to me and noted that it was a case of “cognitive dissonance.” As these things sometimes work out, I was thinking about that psychological conflict when I saw a tweet from someone who noted that a greyhound rescue group was raising money by having a “meat raffle.”  He termed it as “cognitive dissonance defined.”

I’ve often used the word “disconnected” to describe the situation in which competing ideologies are not consistently considered. However, I realized that this isn’t completely correct. Disconnected applies in the sense that there is a lack of connection between two ideologies or when there is a failure in the understanding of one or both ideologies. But when there is understanding of the competing ideologies, and yet there is an inconsistency between beliefs and actions, the proper term is “cognitive dissonance.”

Cognitive dissonance is really about conflict and the anxiety that results when “simultaneously holding contradictory or incompatible beliefs.”  This, of course, is manifested in the inconsistency in one’s beliefs and actions—such as Portman suddenly supporting gay marriage.

The difference between cognitive dissonance and being disconnected is subtle, and not mutually exclusive. Being disconnected may be a result of a lack of understanding, and therefore, without the recognized conflict necessary for cognitive dissonance.

When such a conflict arises, and it is not necessarily unusual to have competing cognitions, how is it resolved?

As referenced in Wikipedia, “The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements.”

In a famous Aesop tale “The Fox and the Grapes” a fox comes across some grapes he wants to eat but cannot reach them. To resolve the conflict, of wanting the grapes, but finding them unattainable, the fox rationalizes that the grapes are probably sour or bad and does not want them. He reduced his internal conflict by criticizing it and altering the existing cognition.

Like the tweeter I mentioned, I recall a similar experience with cognitive dissonance and an animal rescue group. The group was organizing a golf outing in which the dinner included steak. I wrote the director about the conflicting ideologies—how could they be killing one animal to save another? I asked if it really would be too much to ask that supporters of the animal rescue group give up their steak for one day.

The director of that group used a different sort of justification and noted that we live in “a largely rural, agricultural-based county” and that this was “a pragmatic decision.”  He tried to turn the cognition into sour grapes—the end justifies the means?

The resolution of cognitive dissonance is basically an exercise in reconciling conflict. And disconnect is a practical, although sometimes dishonest, approach.

This approach is highlighted by Jonathan Saffron Foer, author of Eating Animals, and blogger Mark Hawthorne in the debate over eating meat.

Foer notes that “disconnect” is easier than facing the cognitive conflict created in the desire to eat meat. “We have such a resistance to being hypocrites that we would rather be fully ignorant and fully forgetful all the time,” he wrote.

Likewise, Hawthorne explains, “One theory of cognitive dissonance holds that it is not the result of people experiencing dissonance between opposing cognitions; instead, it surfaces when people view their actions as conflicting with their self-image. For the meat-eater, this means not wanting to see themselves as contributing to animal abuse; they would rather not hear the truth than think they are selfish and cruel.”

For many, cognitive dissonance is about getting through the moment. It is the rationalization and justification that finishes the sentence, “I know it’s wrong, but . . . “

Life is full of competing values and difficult decisions. The value of cognitive dissonance is not in exposing hypocrisy, rather it is about learning something about ourselves—our beliefs and values—and considering and realizing some sense of consistency.

204. Fans and the power to forgive

Tiger Woods is the best golfer on the planet again, and Nike is marketing Woods around the slogan that “winning takes care of everything.”

Among the “everything” that winning takes care of is, seemingly, the forgiveness of his fans. Woods was not only the best golfer before his admitted “transgressions,” he was also the most popular. Television ratings when he was in contention to win a golf tournament were significantly better than when he was not.

With Woods winning again, his fans seem to have returned. In an informal Today News poll of about 4000 votes, 65 percent said that fans should give him a second chance.

A second chance?

The concept is interesting, particularly since Woods had never really seemed appreciative of his fans to begin with—it was always about him. When he spoke of his transgressions, he said he felt “entitled.”  And, he has not really asked for a second chance.

Brad Kane of guardian.co.uk, wrote, “In Tiger's exact case, he hasn't really asked for the public to forgive him for all the sordid headlines generated by his good old-fashioned sex scandal. He's not really the warm and fuzzy, easily emotional type. But the public has given him a pass, anyway.”

The question is who am I to give Woods a second chance? He didn’t cheat on me, he didn’t ruin my marriage or destroy my family. That fact often seems to get lost in fans’ inflated view of themselves and the value we place on our favorite player or favorite team on winning.

This column isn’t really about Woods, it is about all the athletes and entertainers, the fans that become emotionally involved with them, and the ability of fans to give them a second chance.

This is about people like football player Michael Vick, cyclist Lance Armstrong and singer Chris Brown.  As the television show Glee asked in regards to Brown, “Can we separate the art and the artist?”

Each has their circumstance, but for me it is simple—I am supporting the quarterback who didn’t murder dogs, the cyclist who didn’t cheat to win, and the singer who didn’t beat his girlfriend.

I am not a big golf fan to begin with, and Woods’ success or lack of it is a matter of indifference to me, but if I were to support, or root, for a golfer, it would be one who didn’t feel “entitled” to cheat on his wife—or even a whining multi-millionaire like Phil Mickelson. There are a lot of golfers, assumingly, who are really good guys, who just don’t win enough—and that’s all that many fans seem to care about.

Fans need to realize that it is okay to root for guys who finish in second place.

It is a weird relationship and interesting that fans feel like they are a part of the athletes and entertainers—with their self-fabricated intimate connection and the power to grant forgiveness.  Perhaps we need to consider boundaries.

Many athletes and entertainers have been worshipped since a young age—when their talent first surfaced.  And while most athletes, and probably all entertainers, desire to be liked—what they want most is to be relevant. We forget that the fans pay their salaries—they owe the fans, not vise-versa.  They love the atmosphere and the excitement (and the financial rewards) of their profession—and few really care if their fans are you or me—or from Cleveland, Toronto or Miami.

Sadly, winning does seem to take care of everything, just ask LeBron James. After “The Decision” he was one of the most despised athletes in sports—until he won a championship. Now even Cleveland would welcome him back.

203. 40,000 hotdogs at an Indians Game

Twitter continues to be relevant, maybe more than Facebook, as we are mired in an environment of trending topics and hashtags. It is used in different ways, and as I have written on a prior occasion, I use it to follow a variety of interests—mostly newspapers, cable news sources, sport teams and social organizations. I like the timely quick bits of information, which I can follow up as I wish. When our house caught on fire in 2011, I took to Twitter and a local newspaper feed to get information on what had happened.

But Twitter information is selective, I follow that which interest me—such liberal news sources, lots of animal rescue and welfare groups, and vegetarian/vegan advocates.

One danger in my selectiveness, or anyone’s selectiveness, is perspective. Whether it is Twitter or the friends we choose, or the news channels we watch, we tend to gravitate to those who believe as we do. For advocates, it provides motivations and celebration; for the ideological, it reassures one’s philosophies.

Thus, as a follower of animal welfare and vegetarian organizations, I read about, on a daily basis, everything going on in that community. I am appalled at the military use of animals in their training exercises, university animal testing and the news that a greyhound was electrocuted. At the same time, I celebrate when a school goes vegetarian, a research lab is shut down, or news about the latest health benefit of following a plant-based diet. Every day, I have an emotional response to this information—often several of them (Chipotle is testing tofu!). It becomes a relationship.

While this information is extremely important to me, it’s easy to lose social perspective. Being active in a social movement, and engaging with others who share the same values, it’s easy to overestimate its relevance among others. And this is often noted when I read an article from a “neutral” news source, in which the comments, often harshly, criticize those who believe in animal welfare and vegetarianism. It’s easy to forget that vegetarians are only three percent of the population. Because I notice each vegetarian and am exposed to the issues on a daily basis, it seems like a lot more to me. In reality most people don’t care.

It’s the same with news organizations and talk radio, in which it selects issues to raise passions and reassure perspectives. Turn on a liberal radio show recently and you will be outraged at the five year-old boy that killed his sister and the gun company that markets to toddlers. Turn on a conservative radio show and you will hear how liberals want to take away your guns. In the same way, viewers and listeners overestimate perspective—it reassures how reasonable their beliefs are and how outrageous and extreme other perspectives are. It has, in part, created the polarization of this country.

I thought of this distortion the other day at the Indians game. My wife and I attended on “Dollar Dog Day.” As I preface, I begrudge the fact that this promotion did not exist when I ate meat—thankfully, I suppose, because I might have averaged a hot dog per inning. But more than I imagined, the promotion was very popular, as the concession lines were very long. My wife and I sat in amusement as hot dogs were consumed in considerable quantity. However, we were reassured when a young girl in front of us turned down a hot dog from a friend, “I am vegetarian,” she said.

We had a personal moment of celebration, and my wife said, “See, it’s catching on.” And while I think she is correct, because I do think there is a positive movement toward a plant-based diet—our perspective might be biased.

The unfortunate truth was that, according to the scoreboard count, they had sold over 36,000 hot dogs by about the seventh inning. Figuring that number easily topped 40,000 by game’s end, and calculating that there were about 20,000 fans, it averaged out to about two hot dogs per fan (and at least a few had more than two, since me, my wife and girl in front of us did not have any). We saw a couple of teens go through a near half dozen all by themselves.

The point, I suppose, is that despite our exposure to vegetarianism, and the importance it plays in our lives, and because we have a lot of vegetarian friends, it is still a movement that only represents three percent of the population. It’s popularity is exaggerated, in our minds, by our exposure, reassurance and advocacy with vegetarian organizations, news and events.

By selecting who we follow on Twitter, newspapers we read and news organizations we watch, we find our comfort zone with our beliefs and acceptance. Most people only care about what they care about—and there are enough issues, interest and causes to go around.  But it is easy to exaggerate our perspective and the importance of the things that matter to us based on the company we keep and the information we select.

40,000 hot dogs is a lot of hot dogs.

202. Accurate forecast? Sometimes

The changing weather can be both an endeavoring and depressing characteristic of Northeast Ohio. It can be 65 degrees and sunny one day, then snowing the next. Last year, March brought summer temperatures; this year, heading into May, it seems like we are still waiting for spring.

As I have gotten older, the weather seems to matter more to me. When I was young, and as a kid who loved baseball, I remember going to my room and crying when our little league games were rained out. On the flip side, like most kids, I loved snow days-a day home from school to sled or play football. But that was basically the extent that I cared about the weather.

There was no Internet or smart phones, for 24 hour radar updates and projections, or a cable channel dedicated to weather forecasting-there was a local news segment and the newspaper. I don't recall paying much attention to the weather forecasts, I watched the news for the sports segment, and I treated each day individually.

Today I pay more attention to the weather forecasts, and am surprised how depressed a few gloomy days in a row can make me. I even pay attention to sunrise and sunset times-and how long the days are.
With age and technology, I now regularly check the weather and the local radar-and like many people I speak with- I am amazed at how poorly the weather seems to be forecasted. We can locate the Higgs boson particle, but cannot figure out when it is going to rain? Locally, weather forecasts seem compromised as competing stations each try to out sensualize the other-with many extreme weather forecasts seeming to fall short.

I wanted to learn more about the weather and recently began watching a Teaching Company class on the subject. Coincidentally, I also began reading Nate Silver's book on predictions entitled, The signal and the noise: Why so many predictions fail-but some don't. In the book, I was pleasantly surprised to see a chapter on weather prediction.

Silver's book briefly describes the history of weather forecasts-the challenges, successes, and the difference between the government weather center (The National Weather Service), for-profit weather centers like the Weather Channel and local television forecasts.

Weather predictions are, of course, based on statistical models-in which very slight fluctuations, due to exponential functions, can have a distinct impact. Thus, when you see a weather forecast that has a 20 percent chance of rain, what it means is that when a similar forecast is made, based on the current weather module-it should rain two days out of ten. This is called "calibration" and its accuracy is easily tested.

The National Weather Service forecasts are well calibrated; however, the Weather Channel admits to "fudging a little under certain conditions." The reason, Silver surmised, "People notice one type of mistake-the failure to predict rain-more than another kind, false alarms. If it rains when it isn't supposed to, they curse the weatherman for ruining their picnic, whereas an unexpectedly sunny day is taken as a serendipitous bonus. "

Silver described this as a "wet bias" and it is worse in regards in to local forecasts, "The TV meteorologists weren't placing much emphasis on accuracy." In one study of a Kansas City meteorologist, when he predicted a 100 percent chance of rain, it failed to rain one-third of the time.

"The attitudes seems to be that this is all in good fun-who cares if there is a little wet bias, especially if it makes for great television," Silver concluded.

In making weather temperature forecasts, there are a couple of factors that must be considered as baseline statistics-that is predictions that will be tested against. There is "persistence," which is the basic "assumption that the weather today will be the same tomorrow (and the next day) as it was today," and there is "climatology," which is the "long-term historical average of conditions on a particular date in a particular area."

What Silver discovered was that commercial forecasts beat persistence and climatology up until nine days out. After day nine, climatology was actually better at making predictions than commercial forecasts-thus, the last couple days of those ten day forecast (or greater) ought to be ignored. I've noticed recently, that many local forecasts stop at about eight days, apparently aware of the meaninglessness of forecasts beyond that point.

Silver's book makes the convincing argument to weather forecasting as an overall success (despite the fudging and wet bias). He believes we have improved significantly over time-and particularly in comparison to other types of forecasting, like earthquakes and economic factors.

It's important to realize that forecasts are statistical projections, not certainty. That it rains on a day when there is only a 20 percent chance of rain is actually quite normal, actually expected, two out of ten times. It is easy to dismiss the accuracy of the forecast on many of those other eight days-days we probably fail to offer credit to the weather forecasters.

Seems I still have something to learn about weather forecasting. Maybe the forecasters are not a bad as I thought. Or maybe Northeast Ohio is really unpredictable.