Poet Sharon Olds has declined to attend the National Book Festival in Washington D.C. who won a National Book Critics Circle Award and who is professor of creative writing at New York University, was invited along with a number of other writers by First Lady Laura Bush. Here's her letter…
Football hero Pat Tillman died a military hero, defending the U.S from terrorism, right? How convenient. Or did he die of friendly fire? It depends on what official version of the story you care to believe. Tillman's story reeks of cover-up. Now take a look at this evidence. And now take a look…
The title to this post is from a bumper sticker shown in "Generation Chickenhawk," a video shot last week by Max Blumenthal. The scene? The College Republican National Convention in Washington D.C. Here's proof that our young Republicans love wars as long as others do the fighting. Blumental's ten-minute video…
NPR recently interviewed psychologist Elliot Aronson, co-author, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). Aronson worked closely with Leon Festinger back in the 1950’s “designing experiments to test and expand dissonance theory.” Here is NPR’s plug for the interview:
We all have a hard time admitting that we’re wrong, but according to a new book about human psychology, it’s not entirely our fault. Social psychologist Elliot Aronson says our brains work hard to make us think we are doing the right thing, even in the face of sometimes overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I listened closely to the interview (you can listen on-line too by visiting the above link) because this was yet another serious attempt to apply psychology to a critical real-life situations. Exhibit A during this interview was the President’s dysfunctional attitude toward to continued U.S. occupation of Iraq.
According to Aronson, cognitive dissonance “is a drive, like hunger or thirst.” It is directed toward the human need to define who we are in a good light in order to reduce dissonance, so that we can “sleep well at night.” It is “a powerful and unconscious motor” that smoothes out our mental “rough edges.”
We commonly refer to cognitive dissonance as “justification.” Regarding many simple mistakes, it’s no big deal to spin the incident in a way that deflects blame and embarrassment from one’s self. If you spill wine on the carpet, you justify that that it was only white wine, or that the damage wasn’t noticeable, …
Members of the U.S. military are now speaking up, as documented by DemocracyNow. This set of interviews by DemocracyNow was provoked by a recent article by The Nation. Here's how DemocracyNow describes that article, entitled "The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness": The Nation has published a startling new expose…