THE CARE AND FEEDING OF FALSE BELIEFS: A Cognitive Dissonance Analysis

How do beliefs and expectations that are contradicted by reality become entrenched in people’s thinking? In this chapter, we consider the confluence of factors that come together to motivate people to hold on to false beliefs. We begin with cognitive dissonance, a motivational state that is aroused when people’s expectations are contradicted by reality. We hold that cognitive dissonance motivated the tenacious belief among some MAGA Republicans that their candidate won the U.S. Presidential election in 2020, similar to the well-known doomsday cult that held on to their belief that the Earth would be destroyed in a catastrophic flood. We posit that, while dissonance motivates holding false beliefs, it is not sufficient. Rather, we argue that holding false beliefs depends on a confluence of other factors, including repetition of the belief, anchoring the belief in a meaningful social group, and believing one’s own judgments are objective while other people’s are biased. We present evidence from a preliminary study that shows that these factors buttress the tendency to hold false beliefs. We find reason for optimism in the fact that attention to the factors responsible for false beliefs can also be applied to reducing their impact.