Does cognitive dissonance perpetuate misogyny, or just reflect it?

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

Hi all.

I am aware the title is feminist jargon. By 'cognitive dissonance', I mean, that state where you subconsciously hold two incompatible views. Eg., you know perfectly well that, statistically, most rapes do not happen in dark alleyways, and yet, you feel more frightened there than with your random male friend.

As I understand it, holding a position of cognitive dissonance is tiring and stressful. I wondered if it actually makes us transfer blame onto women, so that we don't just hold these contradictory positions about gender, we actually absorb the idea they're somehow women's fault?

I am thinking this because I remember going through that stage (which I think a lot of women mention) of feeling, first, angry about feminism and angry that women were 'rocking the boat' by challenging all my dearly-held cognitive dissonances.

Now, it could be that cognitive dissonance is just a reaction to living in a misogynistic society. Or, it could be that there's something in cognitive dissonance itself, that pushes us to shift the blame onto the subject of the dissonance (ie., women/gender roles). What do you think?

NB - as you might tell from my tortured syntax, this is a research question I am working on. Please be gentle!

Absolutely last post, mascara firmly on!

Just on the 'cognitive dissonance needed because we need violent men' point: perhaps deep down we feel we need to defend our resources now because of our extremely high level of consumption.

There are nowhere like enough resources at First World rates of consumption to go round.

So if we want the next ipod every 6 months, we need keep our armed forces useful. So male violence good.

Really really off now

Lurcio - I kinda get where your coming from and how this could be used to excuse mens 'letting off steam'

That is interesting about soldiers not shooting to kill. I love your point about us liking narratives where the lone hero emerges 'psychologically intact'. That makes total sense - it must be comforting to us.

But we also like books about (appropriately) tortured heroes, who I suppose play the complementary role of reassuring us that violence really is bad because this scapegoat character is damaged by it.

I have heard the point about armies in peacetime before (though not from Sharpe! ).

Thing is, we're accepting the premise that war is necessary. I know some evo psych and anthropologists would suggest it is - but I don't see how we can prove it, and, even if it had at one time been true, by the time we get to recorded history, I'd say it's demonstrably not.

what - yes, sure, there aren't enough resources now. But you can't really argue that these ingrained social patterns result from what is a very recent problem!

In the past war I guess was seen as what was needed to stop a race to the bottom and men being enslaved by other men and losing their chattels?

Yes, but why? It is not really enough to say 'war is a response to violence' because you could equally say 'violence is a response to war'. Question is, why are we violent, why does it take gendered form, and how is it involved in our cognitive strategies for pretending we're not violent?

Actually, been thinking about the resources issue, and although it plays a role, it's a bit indirect. If you're absolutely desperate for resources, you don't have the energy or materiel to wage war - no-one's ever seen an army of famine victims marching on their nearest well-fed neighbours. Wars are about acquiring and perpetuating inequality - oil fields, mineral resources, land. We in the UK for instance maintain an army because we're rich and we want it to stay that way. Internally, police forces play the same role - they protect the property of the rich, much less interested in protecting the powerless against violence (low rape conviction rates), prepared to turn a blind eye to the occasional bit of violence themselves if directed towards people who've already been othered - high rates of stop and search among ethnic minorities or poor communities, while at the same time accepting civil liberties arguments that you shouldn't do random breathalyser tests. (I believe that officially the police are only meant to stop people on the grounds of them driving erratically - they can't sit down the road from a country pub at closing time and stop every 10th car. While they may do this, your chances as a middle class white motorist of having this happen to you are far lower, I would guess, than the chances of a black man under the age of 25 in Peckham getting randomly stopped and searched).

And actually the resources issue isn't new of course. Wars can be caused by resources, or in an effort to provide political cohesion, or to distract attention from trouble and potential social unrest at home by providing an external enemy as a scapegoat. The Falklands in the 1980s fit this pattern, but so too, arguably, do the crusades.

Yes, that's true too - the indirectness.

There's a very disturbing theory that wars actually happen when society is too productive - when there has been a baby boom and also prosperity, so there are lots of healthy young men and not enough for them to do.

It also seems to be a socially acceptable way to allow male bonding, doesn't it, violence?

This is really interesting and I'm afraid I don't have much to add but I did want to say I really identified with the notion that men often say "Oh so-and-so is a bit racist but he's alright really" (Yeah, to you, because you're white) or "Oh he's a bit of a dinosaur, but he's a good bloke." (Um, yes, TO YOU, because you're a man) - DH does this CONSTANTLY and it drives me absolutely bloody mad because to him, it's really literally not relevant. I suppose perhaps because I have stopped compartmentalising people like that, where I might have done in the past, accepted flawed parts of someone's character where they didn't affect me directly. Now I can see not only how bigoted and selfish that was of me, but that if someone is an arse to some groups of people it doesn't really matter if I'm in the "right" category, they still have arsehole tendencies to believe or behave like that in the first place.

But then perhaps it's just a bit depressing if you are a man and only accept friends who are neither sexist, homophobic or racist because that brings the potential pool of friends and the possibility of being accepted into the "lad" crowd really really low. I mean, there's a reason why I am mostly friends with women, and it's not only because I come into contact with more women, it's because I find a far higher rate of these things among men somehow, or perhaps they are more visible to me because of feminism (perhaps that's a bit of what cognitive dissonance does, acts as a nice blinder to block the nastier bits from view so you don't have to think about them?)

"Why's it beneficial for us as a society?"

I would say it's actually a strategy to avoid conflict. If there's a man in a group who has an obnoxious personality, making excuses for him allows the others to avoid confronting him. Not that the primary fear would be violence on his part, but the solidarity of the group would be split; I believe social pressure within male groups is strongly towards keeping conflicts down. (Maybe because you might have to fight the group next door, and when that happens, you want your fellow warriors to support you.)

Cognitive dissonance in general seems to me like a way to hold onto our comfort, to deny that there are problems we should be dealing with. I wonder if it makes for a more peaceful or a more violent society, in the long run.

Yes, that is exactly what I am wondering too, tei. I think it actually makes us more violent because we're dealing with all of these simmering tensions. But I could be wrong.

Bertie - oh, yes, that would drive me nuts too. And it is so difficult to respond to. I have the same experience of friendships, I think.

Argh, now I'm all angry

All species are violent - in the sense that they compete (defensively or oppressively). Show me a species that is not good at competing - I'll show you a species either extinct or on the road to it.

Though i have heard it said in nature many species 'ruck' eg deer why dont they just spear the other animal but they don't they just butt heads, whereas humans (males) seem more ready to escalate?

I believe all species are violent, cadno, but I don't believe all species support cognitive dissonance.

I think breaking might have a point about escalation, too. Seems to me that's a more complex cognitive pattern.

Sorry to stir up the anger, BB!

Jeanne Sorry - I honestly don't know what you mean by cognitive dissonance. I've only become interested in this thread lately - with the reasons why the our species displays the violence it does.

With the point about human's escalation of violence - if I understand the word 'cognitive' correctly, humans (or the hominids from which we are descended) came to realise that unless you defeat an enemy permanently - it'll be back to fight another day with you - it makes sense to wipe out a competitor completely - humans with their greater cognitive abilities are the first (or the only survivors left to grasp this). (btw Im not looking at this from a moral stance)

human violence is deplorable - but without it we wouldn't be here. We are a species whose own success has backfired on it to a certain extent. Evolution has no sense of hindsight.

I know where your coming from Bertie, I'm a bit of a loner (thank god for the internet) as I have found it difficult to find a group of friends who don't have someone or a few whose too fighty/druggy/grabby which is tolerated by the others.

I claim there is something to be said for BertieBotts' husband's attitude. If she points out that he's condoning people's bad behaviour by saying "Oh he's a bit of a dinosaur, but he's a good bloke" and so forth, he might respond "You're always looking for trouble". You could say it's the avoidance of conflict--that by letting things pass, you're not getting into a confrontation with the person who's doing it. Certainly that makes it possible that there'll be trouble with someone else at some other time, but for him right now, he's preserved peace. He could even claim that the damage the "dinosaur" would do is hypothetical, but tackling him would be real conflict, right then and there, and they might never have a comfortable relationship again. So which is the more peaceful course of action?

Well, anger is one of the things that leads to violence. The question is, why can some people rein in their temper and others cannot? It's incredibly complex. You can't predict it via intelligence, wealth, upbringing, class, physical capability or strength. You can't always predict it by gender, although it seems more prevalent in males of most species (I can only thank David Attenboro for that, I have no proof).

But violence is tolerated in our society, like it or not. You couldn't have most contact sports and material arts without it, or at least in it's milder form, aggression. Someone somewhere in our society has a use for it, so it perpetuates.

Because most of us would rather live our lives without violence, I guess CD is our psychological mechanism for dealing with a necessary evil. It's a bit like buying cheap clothes or coffee. If we thought about the exploitation that lead to cheap prices, we wouldn't make those purchases, so we have to dissociate ourselves from those thoughts.

But I was under the impression they commit as far as they can while still hopefully being able to walk away from the ruck.

Where as in our society you get some poor guy knocked out on the floor in a nightclub/on the street and people are stomping on him where he is no longer a threat.

cad - do you mean, you don't understand it how I put it in the OP? Or you don't agree with something along the way? Sorry, not nitpicking, just confused.

I don't see how you can know human violence - or at least this kind, where we're violent to each other but fool ourselves we're not - was essential to survival. I can believe we're meant to think that but (sorry!) I think that is cognitive dissonance itself.

yops - yes, I agree, the attitude to cheap clothes involves a bit of cognitive dissonance, that's true.

Jeanne - No, I'm apologising as for not knowing what CD means - I suppose I could look it up - sheer laziness on my part.

As for fooling ourselves that we aren't violent - whether its to ourselves or other species - I don't see the point in such a self-delusion. Nor do I have a problem with the fact that human males are much more violent than females.
I believe that is down fundamentally to testosterone - It's found going back millions upon millions of years in our evolutionary past - apparently fish have version of it.

If society wants to curb male violence - I'd suggest doing so chemically -possibly beta-blockers ?? - they've worked for me in curbing my aggression. I think beta-blockers (at least the ones I'm one) interfere with the action of adrenaline - but I think there's a connection between the two hormones.

Too simplistic ? - I don't know, but it worked for me.

So, pondering on this while stuck behind lorries and tractors, I thought, 'well, basically, testosterone and greed' - very reductionist, but not necessarily wrong.

Jeanne: 'I don't see how you can know human violence ... was essential to survival'

I honestly can't see how it wasn't. Just testosterone again, unchecked by law and order.

My point about our capitalist, consumerist society being the 'reason' might be better expressed as, 'This is the reason since 1945, when we decided world war was not a good thing'.

But it's based on the older, established reason, which is having to have violent people in our society (to use when we need defence) and having to have some method of containing them in times of peace.