Why We Don't
Hear One Another
In Conflicts
An upcoming post discusses a situation in an important relationship in my own life as an example of forgiveness when it gets messy. Before heading there, I would like to revisit the concept of cognitive dissonance because of the major role that it plays in conflicts. I believe that both the offended person and the offender within complicated matters of offense and forgiveness will experience it at many times along the way during the overall process. Understanding the phenomenon can help us manage our own actions and thoughts as well as help us to understand our offenders compassionately.
What is Cognitive Dissonance?
Cognitive dissonance describes the
stress and discomfort experienced when a person is faced with ideas,
values, behaviors, or emotions that compete with the ones they
already hold or when these elements within a delivered message
conflict with one another. Things just don't add up and make sense.
In Scripture, we see the irony of how Judas betrays Jesus by
betraying him to the Roman soldiers with the loving expression of a
kiss, a very dissonant act. The behavior and expression itself
contradicts everything else about the context of the situation, and
that inconsistency creates a tremendous level of mental and/or
emotional stress and confusion. When it occurs in our daily lives,
that stress pressures a person to adapt rather quickly by momentarily
adapting their own behaviors, emotions, or beliefs. Though it feels
uncomfortable, this experience of dissonance is just one of those
very human responses that is neither good nor bad, and it can herald
periods of personal change. The experience ttells us about that the
challenge that a situation poses for us. In that sense, cognitive
dissonance is a function of discernment which we can harness through
understanding and self awareness.
As a Covert Tactic of Change or
Manipulation
Within the context of manipulation,
authority figures, groups, and even salesmen can use cognitive
dissonance as a means of accomplishing a desired goal. As discussed
at length in
this series of posts, manipulators can use subtle dissonance
hooks to get us to follow through with a behavior or accept an idea
that we would have otherwise rejected. For example, a car salesmen
appeals to your emotions, offers you thoughts, reasons, and
information about why a car purchase would be a good idea, and they
ask for behavioral compliance to help pull all three of these aspects
of self over into making a purchase. They manipulate factors to
capitalize on subtle aspects of human nature which makes the
experience seem pleasant and beneficial. In churches, we see the
same types of pressures used to enhance the likelihood that a person
will comply with standards of behavior and emotion which makes
acceptance of their ideals much easier. (“Can you say 'Amen,'
raise your hand, and repeat after me?”) In
both of these examples, the individual challenges seem largely
insignificant, but they work well because they are so subtle and
incremental. We accept and tolerate them because they're not
perceived as threatening.
As a Potential Deterrent to
Communication
In contrast, confrontation about an
offense results in an effect that's anything but subtle, and emotions
are generally more heightened for both parties involved which can
trigger cognitive dissonance. Rather than the indirect, covert
nature that we see in religious recruitment or grooming by a salesman
or manipulator, personal confrontations dive right into the challenge
without disguise. Many people feel intimidated by the idea of
confrontation in general, let alone actually confronting others who
have hurt them, or unpleasant subject matter prompting the
confrontation itself can be intimidating, too. These complications
can be endless, including the baggage that we carry about proper
conduct for Christians and whether or not we see confrontation as a
positive measure that builds relationships and improves intimacy.
I'm going to create an iconic but ficticious scene from a very
troubling occurrence about which countless women have told me. Denial in such an
experience tends to be common when victims break their silence about
these matters, and this more demonstrative example helps to
illustrate that point. I wanted this obviously difficult example to depict what happens when a person is confronted with something
very threatening and why cognitive dissonance occurs.
Hypothetical Example of Something
Tough to Hear
A nineteen year old girl resists
attending a family gathering at a relative's home – a place that
they rarely visit anymore. When her mother becomes angry that her
daughter has refused to go, she becomes frustrated by her daughter's
resistance. The daughter tells her mother that she doesn't want to
go because she'll have to face her cousins who both molested her
several years earlier while staying with them there. She's managed
to avoid seeing them most of the time since the unreported incident
took place, has not had to return to the house where the event
occurred, and the teen has learned that both of her
cousins will be attending the party. She finally blurts out her
secret shame to her mother, terrified that she will be forced to
attend the party to face the two who assaulted her when she was a
child. She's also afraid to return to what is the scene of her world's worst
crime.
Consider that at this point, the
daughter is in pretty rough shape emotionally. She's terrified to
just think about the experience itself, but she's also tried
desperately to keep the matter a secret for a long time. She just
couldn't hold out any longer, partly because of the shame of carrying
it and partly because she didn't want to hurt her mother. The
relatives are also on her mother's side of the family, so the
daughter realizes that the information holds even more impact for her
mother beyond just hearing that her daughter was sexually assaulted.
Here are some pre-existing thoughts
running through the daughter's head, before she even says anything to
her mom:
- I'm disgusting and I hate myself. Everyone else will hate me when they find out.
- I never want to have to see those people or that place again.
- Are they going to try it again? I don't feel safe there. I can't ever go back there. I'll die.
- The nightmares will start again, and I was just starting to get over them since I went off to school.
- My mother puts so much emphasis on sexual purity, and now I'm worthless to her.
- My mother may even blame me. She might not believe me because I hid it from everyone.
- They said if I told anyone, they would make me regret it.
- Etc...
At this point, the mother becomes
flooded with all sorts of emotions, a host of griefs, and both general and
specific fears about this new information:
- What????!!!!! Oh no! The unthinkable!
- What has this done to my daughter?
- Does she have any lasting physical problems?
- Did I miss signs of emotional problems? (This may bring up telling past events.)
- I'm a terrible mother for putting my daughter in the care of my brother and his family.
- What' the BLEEP is wrong with my brother and his wife?
- I'm mortified that I didn't know about this. I've abandoned my child through poor parenting.
- I'm a terrible person and a terrible mother.
- What kinds of problems is this going to create for the extended family?
- Should we go or not go to this or any other family gatherings?
- I don't believe her. She's lying. It never happened. She wants attention.
- Etc.
Imagine the daughter's response if her
concerns are rejected or if the mother feels so threatened that she cannot express empathy openly right away? The daughter might react with anger if the mother blames her or claims that what has happened to her is untrue. Then the mother thinks the daughter is both a liar and arrogant, not realizing that the anger is a sign of pain and terror. This revictimizes the daughter. What if the mother feels so threatened by the experience, or perhaps unknown to the daughter, the mother may have suffered a rape when she was young and becomes lost in her own emotions? The mother may not be emotionally available to her daughter until she gets past her own emotions. The potential for misunderstanding is great if each party doesn't take into account the emotional responses of the other -- and that their behavior might not “be ideal.”
Do you think that either mother or
daughter can have a very effective talk wherein everyone will
remember everything that is spoken to them with any degree of
objectivity? Chances are that the daughter is in a completely
altered state of consciousness, and the mother is as well. Some people tend to handle
stress differently and negative information differently. Each person
has motives and emotions and biases to work through over time., but
it is nearly impossible to predict how certain kinds of information
will affect people. And what they are able to process and what they
can't may make no sense to anyone but them.
Beyond the surface details of events,
neither party is likely in good shape to process details, and
their memories of the confrontation will not be objective. Each
one has gone into cognitive dissonance and they're also highly
emotionally engaged. The information itself is repugnant, but
considering the very personal nature of sexuality and the added
significance of family involvement, both parties feel threatened.
Hopefully, they won't have to deal with any technical information
that they'll need to remember later, because they're preoccupied and
incapacitated cognitively. If you're one of the parties involved in
this exchange, you have to consider also that you've likely
missed a large chunk of what the other party said and that
they're impaired to some extent and may not be
expressing things in a way that's clear, objective or ideal,
if that's even possible.
I've been in many situations in my own
life and as a more objective party in the heathcare setting where I
had to deliver devastating news or came along to help those people
understand what they'd been told by another. In these types of
overwhelming situations, people need review and reminding about the
bad and technical news that they need to process for themselves or
concerning their loved ones. Because of the fear and grief involved,
I know from experience that people experience this kind of cognitive
dissonance all the time, sometimes just due to the fact that the
information is technical and abundant. (I great deal of my own work
in clinical nursing involved teaching patients what the doctor
actually said to them at a pace and a level that allowed them
understand.) And I'm amazed at what information people will find
disturbing and what they can take in with ease. Each person has
their own set of skills and their own baggage that influences how
fast and how well they are able to process what is being told to
them. Sometimes, people cannot hear certain information, and
sometimes, they just cannot retain it. Often, it needs to be
repeated and repeated, and perception colors everything.
My profession focuses on return
verbalization and demonstration to ensure that clients are prepared
and that I have done my job effectively, but we rarely hold out for
repeat verbalization and clarification in our relationships. We're
even less attentive to such things when we confront others with
stressful or emotionally difficult information.
What Cognitive Dissonance Looks Like
How do I know that that people become incapacitated cognitively? Because of what happens to brainwaves
when people experience cognitive dissonance. The thinking part of
their brain slows down, and they stop thinking. They get consumed
with safety and emotion, and that dulls the ability to think
analytically.
When you're thinking clearly and are
fully alert, your brainwaves crank along at about 15 Htz. The
impulses from the analytical part of the brain looks like this on
EEG.
 | |
| Normal Beta Wave Activity usually in the neighborhood of 15-20 Htz |
For more information about these
brainwave states, refer
back to this post. We slip in and out of different states of
consciousness throughout the course of a day very naturally,
depending on what we're doing. Different areas of the brain make
different waves, and this is the type of pattern made by the area
where rational thought takes place. Information is taken in,
processed, and thought and emotion work together to inform one
another in fully integrated function. All of the areas of the brain
are active and functioning well, so the brain image shows a uniform
level of activity.
A Brain on Cognitive Dissonance
Extreme emotional arousal and fear of a
perceived threat significantly alters our brainwaves, and we
temporarily stop processing information analytically (thoughtfully).
Everything becomes a matter of emotions and survival. We cannot
reason because that part of the brain stops working efficiently so it
can process emotion and evaluate potential threat. On EEG, in the
prefrontal cortex, brainwaves generally slow down to an alpha state,
and in some people who have suffered childhood trauma, their
brainwave states can slow down even further into a theta state. This
thinking part of the brain all but goes to sleep. Retained memory
gets tagged emotionally and is not associated with thoughtfulness,
ideas or problem solving when this happens. People often call this
type of cognitive dissonance “a state of shock.”
Our emotional centers and our survival
centers become engaged, and that causes blood flow to the thinking
part of the brain to diminish significantly, just temporarily. (This
is not a real-time picture of what happens when a person experiences
threat, but for our interests, it shows the same temporary
physiologic response.)
Implications for the Process of
Forgiveness
As the next post will illustrate even
further, emotional factors will greatly affect how well and how
quickly a person can adapt to information. When emotions run high,
or when the medium of communication limits the message (through a
misunderstood tone or problems with delivery), the message may be
misunderstood or even completely rejected. As we see in this example
of mother and daughter, both parties become too overwhelmed to
effectively communicate. This often happens when we approach those
who have offended us. Enjoy as I preach to the chorus.
When we confront others over an
offense, often we find that the person who hurt us is not capable of
honesty or perhaps feels so personally threatened that they cannot
communicate very well with us. Chances are that they are not able to
think very well at the time that we confront them. We need to keep
in mind that cognitive dissonance can play a major role in this
process. They may be so impaired emotionally at the time of the confrontation or when certain subject matter is presented to them that they may not be able to receive anything that we say to them. They may be entirely caught up in their own experience, and it may not even have anything to do with us. For some people, they may never be able to receive what we have to say. And what we say may not be what they hear.
Another pitfall that can follow confrontations that are very emotional can be the "he-said-she-said" problem. Very often, if emotions are running high and people feel threatened, no one will remember anything objectively. That applies to everyone who was involved, so compassion and understanding are imperative and vital, and we have to be smart about our expectations, too. The rough stuff in life probably requires several confrontations and discussions over time. Often in such situations, people want to hang on to something said in the anger of despair and fear as though it was the sum total representation of how the other party feels about them or the situation. It can be easy to trick ourselves into reducing complex situations down to a simple reaction that may be the most complex thing in the universe for a person in pain. If you have a conflict with someone who is on their own Path of Bitterness, they may only be interested in collecting kindling to place underneath you when they burn you at the stake, and they'll use such simplifications against you. As Christians, we've got to make sure that we're not in the denial of the same kind of process, looking for utter vindication through blame instead of working to a place of peace in the relationship through forgiveness. Knowledge of cognitive dissonance can help us understand that and can give us better expectations during confrontations. This can help prevent us from playing with this kind of fire about things spoken in the heat of the moment from a place of shock and fear.
We must also recognize that in many
instances, the process of repentance for the other party is just that – a process. The
person we confront may need time and understanding as they take in
information and work through their own emotions. This becomes
particularly hard if a person's motives were very good but resulted
in something very painful for others. All personal factors aside,
they're going to experience their own cognitive dissonance, just
because their intent and what they believed they were doing resulted
in something that worked the opposite of what they intended. For
those who are tender hearted and/or insecure, this is a very
difficult thing to accept, and they will need time and understanding
as they take in and think about what has happened. They will begin
their own grief process which starts with shock and denial, and it
takes time to get through to acceptance. Cognitive dissonance will
be a big part of that process for them. In this sense, repentance
for them can be just as much of a journey as forgiveness is for the
offended person.
This also points out the issue of tone
as well. Most people find confrontations stressful, and because of
emotional arousal, those doing the communicating may exhibit emotions
that are not typically thought of as Christian, anger being one of
them. This can also be a potent source of dissonance that can cloud
the message. You may have something important to say, but if
your intimidation or fear comes across as anger, that may cloud the
understanding of the receiver of the message. In the same respect, I
have also seen a sweet and non-threatening tone used to convey the
most brutal of messages. What we communicate only comprises a small portion of the message, and we are wise to take all of that into consideration.
We have to be understanding and
forgiving of one another when we confront each other. Knowledge about the cognitive dissonance effect can help us on the journey, making us compassionate communicators in humbling way. The phenomenon should remind us that we are all flawed and fallible but capable of amazing compassion.
There's
more to come about how
to
cope when ideal forgiveness
is
impossible or unlikely.
