Cognitive Dissonance and Confidence

When we act, can carefully examining the reasons behind our actions lead us to the right conclusion? No. We are not programmed that way. Over the past several decades, social psychologists have shown that believing we can make every decision logically is an illusion. In one experiment, for example, participants were shown Chinese characters and asked how they felt about them. They encountered each character anywhere from once to twenty-five times. Surprisingly, there was a strong correlation between the number of exposures and positive feelings. When we consider how the brain operates, this seems natural. Our brains make high-resolution decisions in O(1) time using low-resolution information stored as neural networks. Then we think of reasons to justify those decisions. Because the decisions were not reached deductively, those reasons often are not their main drivers. In fact, we cannot know: the electrical signals in the neural networks used to make a decision cannot be mapped one-to-one to thoughts.

There is a way to use this to accomplish more. When cognitive dissonance occurs, our brains construct information and reasoning to reconcile the inconsistency. What if we deliberately created that dissonance? Even in an unfamiliar field we do not yet understand well, we could act confidently: “I can do this! I am the kind of person who can.” To compensate for the dissonance, our brains would then generate reasons for that confidence, guiding us to find ways to succeed or develop the necessary abilities. Through a positive feedback loop between confidence and growth, this can eventually produce good results, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cognitive dissonance applies to other people as well as to ourselves. When people see someone who is confident, they are more likely to attribute a basis to that confidence and form a positive judgment. Conversely, when we act without confidence, even when there is ample reason to feel confident, our brains generate reasons for our uncertainty, making negative outcomes more likely. Confidence is therefore a dominant strategy. Always believe in yourself and act. Let us make use of the way our brains work.