Cognitive dissonance | Ash Donaldson | TEDxCanberra

Multiple-TED attendee and human factors expert, Ash Donaldson, wants us to better understand why we believe in what we do. In this talk, Ash explains how our minds faced with contradicting ideas protects itself and how we manage to sometimes rationalize behaviors that we know are not in our best interest. Along the way, he tells us his own encounter with cognitive dissonance in a fascinating experience as a trainee pilot.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Good, good!

So, back in the early 1990s,
I was a training commercial pilot

with hair that probably produced more lift
than most of the small aircrafts I flew.

(Laughter)

Anyway, one day,
my instructor Bob came out,

and he said, "Ash, today, I'm going
to instruct you in instrument flying."

This was pretty exciting
because there are two flavors of flying.

There's "visual" where you can see

the horizon ahead of you
and what's below you,

which is kind of for the rookie
pilots and weekend pilots.

Then there's "instrument flying."

Instrument flying
is for the professionals.

That's being able
to punch into the clouds.

So I was pretty excited about this.

Anyway, we went out,
we did our preflight briefing

and grabbed a little Cessna 152,

took off, went out
to the southern training area,

got set up at 5,000 feet.

And Bob whacked this on me.

(Laughter)

This little plastic contraption
is known as "the hood,"

and it constrains the pilot's
view to their six instruments.

Bob said, "Okay, now I want
you to fly straight and level

just by instruments."

I did that, it was pretty easy.
I was pretty good at this stuff.

(Laughter)

Then he said, "Okay, you did well Ash.

I want you to maintain 5,000 feet
and perform a standard right turn."

Now, this was a bit more difficult.

I had to organize to work
the pedals and the controls.

At the same time, I was
scanning all these instruments

without the wealth of information
from the visual sphere outside.

But I got it. It was pretty good.
I was feeling pretty cocky.

And he said, "Okay, done well.

Roll out of that
into straight and level again."

So I rolled out into straight and level.

But my artificial horizon
wasn't quite right.

It was a bit off.

So I looked over
at my turn and slip indicator

and the ball was out of it,
so I kicked in a bit of rudder.

My directional gyro started moving.

I was flying straight and level,
but my instruments were failing.

The altimeter started rising.

Directional gyro was spinning faster.

The artificial horizon
just slipped right off,

the whole dial,
and Bob whipped my hood off.

I'd entered what is known
as "the graveyard spiral."

Now in a recent study,

the average pilot
with no instrument flight training,

punching into clouds
lasts a mere 178 seconds.

That's two seconds shy of three minutes

before spiraling to their death.

Fair enough, my vestibular
senses had tricked me.

The sense that tells me
which way is up, had tricked me,

and Bob got me good with it.

Bob taught me a good lesson.

Next time I'll know:
trust the instruments.

So we went up for the next lesson,

and I failed,

and the next lesson, and the next lesson.

This was frustrating me.

I considered myself
a good, confident pilot.

Yet I couldn't accept
the evidence in front of me.

My intuition took over every time.

My brain kept on making up these excuses:

"Oh, this aircraft has
a dodgy vacuum pump."

"The static intakes
on these little tomahawks

always blocks up,
the instruments are failing."

I knew the instruments weren't failing,
but I couldn't seem to accept it.

It's amazing where we're
often taught or told

how wonderful and powerful

the hundred billion or so neurons
that make up our mind are.

Yet, we rarely discuss the cognitive
shortcomings that we have.

I mean, at school I was
taught how the mind works.

It's very much like
a modern laptop computer.

You have your high definition video camera

and your mic that takes
in everything around you.

You've got everything then
stored to memory, bit for bit,

perfectly written to data
on your hard drive.

And our brains process things
in a very logical fashion,

like we should all have Intel Inside
stickers on our foreheads.

This is the metaphor that's used,

but it's not a very good metaphor.

In fact, it's completely wrong.

You see, our senses aren't like
high-def recording equipment.

We only take in snippets
of the information,

and our mind fills in the gaps for us.

As a pilot we're taught
a whole lot of tips and tricks

to get around human limitations.

Things like when we want
to find an aircraft in the sky,

we've got to break it up into quadrants.

You see, our eyes only see
this much clearly at any one time.

It's hard to grasp,
but this is what we see.

Our eyes dart around
at a thousand degrees a second,

that what's called "a saccade."

Our mind fills in the rest of the picture
with what it expects to see there.

So if you're looking up at the sky,
it expects to see a lot of blue.

You have to actually break
up the sky into quadrants

and saccade across
until the aircraft lands

within the focus of those saccades,
before you'll see the aircraft.

And it's not just our visual
senses that work like this.

All of our senses work like this.

Our mind just fills in the gaps for us
without us being aware of it.

That's why illusions work.

That's why Simon takes great delight
in knowing how your perception works

and being able to fool you,
being able to manipulate that.

And up here, it doesn't
take in everything.

It doesn't store everything to memory.

It takes snippets,
little grabs of feelings,

of sights, sounds,
tastes, smells, emotions.

And then it pieces them together
when you recall a memory.

When it pieces them together,
it makes up the bits in between again.

It creates a movie,

only the movie is based on a true story.

The next time you recall that same event,
you're recalling it from that memory,

taking snippets of that memory
and piecing it together again.

So next time, it's actually
more like a screenplay

based on a book based on a true story.

Each time you remember
something, it changes a bit more.

It takes one more step away from reality,

even if it feels like you
remember it clear as day.

And our cognitions, the way
we think, they're adapted.

We evolved to be really good
at surviving in small social groups,

for being able to match patterns,

for being able to keep track
of social relationships -

not very good at logic though.

That horrible feeling I experienced

when I couldn't get my instinct

to match up with
the evidence in front of me,

that's known as "cognitive dissonance."

Now cognitive dissonance

is when your mind tries to hold
two conflicting ideas simultaneously.

It gives you a horrible feeling.

It'll be a negative feeling,
it'll be feeling sick.

It'll be feeling anxious or even angry.

Cognitive dissonance is the mechanism

by which we start being
able to, I don't know,

account for irrational
behaviors like smoking.

I've got a friend Janine,
very warm, intelligent lady.

She's very smart. She works
as an intensive care nurse.

Everyday, she's looking after people
with throat cancer and lung cancer

who are dying from smoking.

She knows the damage
that it causes, yet she smokes.

I asked her why,
she sat me down and said,

"Ash, I need to explain
this to you: I'm a nurse.

I work long irregular hours.

I don't get to exercise.
I don't get to eat well.

Smoking helps me keep down my weight!

(Laughter)

You think there are problems with people
who have smoked for a long time,

you should see the long-term
problems of obesity."

So just like that, she'd rationalized away

her behavior with her knowledge.

Cognitive dissonance
does this in a number of ways.

Also, it's a great protector
of our self-concept.

What we think of as

"I'm a good, moral, intelligent
person," that self-concept,

it protects it for us.

This guy will never admit
that he was wrong about invading Iraq,

not because he's evil,

but it's because he really thinks
he wasn't wrong about invading Iraq.

He thinks of himself
as a good moral Christian.

He was president of the United States.

He was leader of the free world.
He was the good guys.

Unfortunately, he also
set up the perfect context

for making bad decisions.

You see, George Bush
was well-known

to fire or demote anyone
who disagreed with his opinions.

So he cocooned himself,
surrounded himself with yes-men.

He protected himself
from cognitive dissonance.

So when he decided that there must
be weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,

all his cronies went out
and scoured the intelligence reports,

picking up the most tenuous
little bits of information

and stringing them together
to feed his belief

that there were weapons
of mass destruction.

That's what is known
as "confirmation bias,"

seeking confirming
evidence of our beliefs

and disregarding or minimizing
the impact of disconfirming evidence.

That's just one of the mechanisms.

It's one of the most common
mechanisms that our brain uses

to protect us from cognitive dissonance.

But it's just one of many,
many biases that we have.

In fact, you may be
experiencing one right now.

Now these biases build up.

(Laughter)

That's why you're meant to be seeing.

These biases build up and attack
our ability to reason logically.

And people take advantage of this.

Whole industries,
billion-dollar industries,

are wrapped around our faulty reasoning.

Things like cosmetics,

anti-aging creams.

You're right!

Vitamins and supplements,
well, you urinate them all out.

They don't boost your immune system.

If they did boost your immune system,
you'd have an autoimmune disease.

Alternative health practices,
aligning your energies,

we got rid of that concept

when we discovered
the central nervous system.

Just the other day,
I was on a train in Melbourne

and I spotted a young guy in a suit.

He was wearing one of these,
it's a power band bracelet.

The makers of Power Balance claim

that this piece of silicon
with a sticker on it

will make you stronger and more flexible.

Now on face value,
that is laughable, it's silly,

but he probably didn't come to this belief
from a claim like this.

He probably came to it from seeing
one of his sports stars wearing it,

and then noticing other
top athletes wearing it.

These things have to chip away.

Now Power Balance is smart
enough to give away these

to every top athlete they can
and sponsor key top athletes to wear them.

So he's had this.

He has formed an idea,
and he goes and searches online.

Power Balance has littered
YouTube and blogs

with testimonials and demonstrations

much like they have used
for years in martial arts

and in applied kinesiology,

a simple trick to show
that it makes you more balanced.

So he probably saw this stuff,

and that was the confirmation bias
building up the belief,

and then he went out
and spent 60 hard dollars

on a rubber band with a sticker on it.

That cemented his belief even further.

People then asked him,
"Does that work for you?"

And he would recall a time

when he performed
a bit better than normal,

and not recall the times
when it was average or below average.

More confirmation bias!

When more people asked him,

he would keep recalling those same
events of better performance,

except those events would now
get even better, and even better,

making it legendary performance.

So his Power Balance bracelet
is working, it is good.

Then someone might
come up to him and say,

"You realize that they actually did
some scientific tests.

Double blind showed
that it's just a rubber band."

"- Science doesn't know everything.
Don't be so closed minded.

You got to try it to understand!"

These are the types of things
people will come up with

when their mind is painted into a corner.

And it's not just that.

When you come up against a hard
or an unwinnable argument,

cognitive dissonance can cause anger.

If that argument
is unwinnable on both sides,

it escalates to rage.

It can escalate to ideological wars,

people fighting to the death
trying to prove their point,

trying to prove that their imagining frame
is the real one, not yours.

It's not all doom and gloom
though, there is hope.

Science is testament to that.

Now when you say "science," people
have the wrong idea a lot of the times.

Science isn't a person
or a thing, an organization.

Science is simply a process.

It's a process that was designed
specifically to overcome our biases.

And as well as that process,

it's also the body of knowledge
that results from the process.

The process is just known
as "scientific method."

It's simply down to making a prediction,

testing that prediction,

and then coming up with your conclusions,

but most importantly being transparent
about how you did it all

so other people
can pick apart your arguments,

other people can test and see
if you reasoned correctly.

It's a very important part of it.

And enough people, like Temple said,
enough people are working on this.

They spend their whole lifetimes
doing small detailed work,

making tiny little
increments in knowledge.

It's none of these eureka
moments that you hear about.

It's tiny increments but it all goes
into a pool of knowledge.

And because of that pool of knowledge,

in medicine alone, I've never
seen a child with smallpox.

I've never seen a child
afflicted by polio.

I've never had a loved one
die of measles or diptheria.

These killed millions of people
until we figured out vaccines for them.

And closer to home,
this old fellow, my dad.

I should have lost him,
twice in the last 15 years.

He actually had a tube
fed through his groin

and a balloon pulled through his heart
to flatten the fatty deposits in there,

saving him from having
another massive heart attack.

He also had tuberculosis injected
into his bladder a number of times

to kill the cancer
that was growing there.

just recent advances in science
that kept him around with me today.

And it's not just in the area of health

that this way of thinking
is useful for us.

Getting rid of these misunderstandings,

actually knowing about your
brain and how it's tricking you,

compensating for cognitive
dissonance and cognitive biases ;

it's everything, any
type of decision making

from deciding on a consumer product,

fighting with your partner,
to public policy ;

accounting for all these cognitive biases

and being open about how
you reach your conclusions

is a useful and powerful thing,
and we should start with the schools.

We should start getting rid of these
outdated metaphors for how we think,

and teach kids how we actually do think.

If we can do that,
they'll appreciate science more.

Just like when I was a pilot,

it was hard for me
to get over this whole thing.

There was many white-knuckled,
sweat-soaked flights

for me to be able to get over

my own internal battle
and trust my instruments.

We can all actually go
through this process.

We can all learn not to start
with conclusions and find evidence.

We can learn to start with evidence,
evaluate it, and come to a conclusion.

We can all learn to use
our brains more effectively

and I think that's
an idea worth spreading.

Thanks.

(Applause)