How To Protect Ourselves From Cognitive Dissonance, Logical Fallacies, and Media Distortions

As I recovered, I wanted those I loved to recover with me. I saw how they were still caught up in the chaos I was escaping, and I wanted them to escape it, too. When people who were threatened by me changing and growing hurt me, I wanted to protect other people from getting hurt. Due to this, I tried to talk to people and help them understand where I was coming from. When people didn’t listen, I wrote letters in a final attempt to resolve the situation or have a positive closure. I wore my heart on my sleeve and twisted my insides up trying to make it better. It never worked. The people I was trying to communicate with didn’t want to rise above the chaos and/or couldn’t understand my growth changes since they hadn’t been there yet. My husband watched me tear myself apart doing this, so he talked with me about concepts I was not aware of before that talk.

The first concept he made me aware of was Cognitive Dissonance. Here is a link to an article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance. The nutshell definition is that when someone is introduced to ideas that don’t align with their current philosophies, they experience psychological discomfort, which they will try to relieve. I was one of the people who investigated new ideas to see if they were accurate. If they were, I expanded my worldview. My mistake was that I assumed everyone else would do the same thing. In reality, many people find ways to manipulate their current beliefs to allow them to discount and ignore new beliefs. This is true even if the new beliefs are more accurate.

This was very difficult for me. I was forced to recognize that the Christian denomination I was in at that time went to great lengths (lengths they would call sinful if they saw them in someone else) in order to manipulate their hateful interpretation of the bible. Let me state that I am only talking about a few denominations of Christianity and not the religion as a whole. I still consider myself a Christian, but I’ve chosen not to attend fundamentalist churches any more. I took that so seriously that I took seminary classes and found theologian mentors to learn a broader perspective of the bible. When I shared what I was learning with other fundamentalists, it only pushed them further into their cognitive dissonance. When I recognized that, I gave up even though it caused me great emotional and spiritual pain.

Another concept my husband taught me was logical fallacies. Logical fallacies can be used to protect a person’s cognitive dissonance. A good resource for understanding logical fallacies is “Your Logical Fallacy Is” at the following link: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/. The nutshell definition is very well explained on the first screen of this site: “A logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning. Logical fallacies are like tricks or illusions of thought, and they're often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people. Don't be fooled! This website has been designed to help you identify and call out dodgy logic wherever it may raise its ugly, incoherent head.” I strongly encourage you to take a look at all of the logical fallacy types in this website.

Cognitive dissonance and logical fallacies are often tools used by the kinds of toxic people I had to learn to set boundaries with. If you are learning to set boundaries too, I recommend you become very familiar with what all of the logical fallacies are. You will then be prepared to spot them and react to them appropriately. I also recommend you learn how to spot cognitive dissonance, so you can learn when to walk away from people who are so trapped in it that you can’t co-exist with them peacefully.

Sadly, in our current culture, there are many people who distort news stories to brainwash people into accepting their cognitive dissonance. The fundamentalist Christian denominations of my past bragged from the pulpit that they were going to put only their type of Christian in office so they could mandate morality by law. They felt this was God’s work in spite of the fact that 1 Corinthians 5:12 tells Christians not to judge the world or we’d have to leave it but instead to judge sin in the church. The bible is only for those who choose to be a Christian as part of their God-given free will, and we have no right to infringe upon their free will. In order to see that goal succeed, too many of them began to act like the stereotypical dishonest politician. A popular tactic was to use the burgeoning social media to spread their message without regard for fact-checking while planting seeds of doubt toward the mainstream media who employ fact-checkers. They were willing to spread any fallacy that would get people to vote for the candidates who supported their agenda, an agenda that was becoming increasing dishonest. I can’t count the number of times I reminded them that God is not the one who is the father of lies, so when we resort to lying I have to wonder who we are really worshiping. They ignored that sin in the church, because their goal was more important than the health of their denomination.

This trend has spread so rapidly that it’s imperative to know how to vet news sources and the stories they publish. This is a good slideshow that gives you some good tips (in the blue bar at the bottom of each cartoon) in an entertaining way: https://newseumed.org/cantdupeme?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=medialit&utm_content=tip10&fbclid=IwAR0rIQvSV0cNwEZY2uaE1xwU1upTCNzw_q9AtG-T8sDRLFeJVi1Ji4cC5YQ

My college degree required that I take journalism classes, and that taught me some valuable tools for vetting a news source. If I weigh everything I learned, I would say that the A#1 rule of vetting a news sources is leave your confirmation bias at the door. Do not only look at news sources that validate what you already believe. That is a form of cognitive dissonance. Make sure you are weighing all sides of a subject before you make a decision.

I had a friend once who was so sure her religious and political opinions were the only ones that were right. She would spread her message without any recognition of boundaries. She would share her opinions on social media in ways that stomped all over people’s boundaries and then erase any comments that challenged her opinion. After taking seminary classes, I recovered from the same opinions she still holds. Now that I understand how harmful those opinions are, it scares me that she is so adamant about sharing her opinion without allowing any other opinion to be seen or heard. I truly now understand what is meant when the bible says that zeal without knowledge is dangerous. In my educated opinion, the A#1 rule of vetting a news source is to avoid confirmation bias at all costs.

If you want to learn more about vetting a news source, a great text book I had in college was “Understanding News (Studies in Culture and Communication)” by John Hartley. This book can still be purchased through Amazon at this link: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-News-Studies-Culture-Communication/dp/0415039339

There are many fact-checking sites that are very valuable, but many people hide behind their cognitive dissonance to try to invalidate all of them. Therefore, I’m not going to give a list of all of the best ones, because many people are going to argue that it’s just a matter of opinion. I will; however, share one that has won the Pulitzer Prize for accuracy in fact-checking. I don’t think many people can credibly argue that the noble history of the Pulitzer Prize is invalid. The fact-checking site that won this prestigious recognition is Politifact. Their link is https://www.politifact.com/. I believe using this site for a while will prove how unbiased they are, and I believe this will increase trust in other fact-checking sites.

It is important to understand these things, because toxic people use cognitive dissonance, logical fallacies, and biased news sources to cement people to their toxic beliefs and behaviors. Too often, people who challenge them will be met with more logical fallacies, triggering, gaslighting, scapegoating, proxy abuse and other toxic behaviors that are designed to control people and invalidate other people’s opinions and/or knowledge. Therefore, the more we understand these concepts, the safer we will be.