He Who Says A Does Not Have to Say B

On Decem­ber 21, 1954, at mid­night, a dev­as­tat­ing flood was to wipe out all life on Earth. That was the prophe­cy of Dorothy Mar­tin from Chica­go. She had received this warn­ing from extrater­res­tri­als through tele­path­ic con­tact. But there was also hope: Aliens would come with their space­ships and save Dorothy and her sect, the “Seek­ers.”

Most peo­ple back then did ignore this improb­a­ble prophe­cy. Not so Leon Fes­tinger, a 35-year-old psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta. He also doubt­ed that the world would end on this date. But he was curi­ous how the peo­ple of this sect would deal with the fact that no space­ships would come to save them. So he infil­trat­ed the sect with a few asso­ciates in the run-up to this apocalypse.

How did these peo­ple, some of whom had sold their homes and quit their jobs in the hope of immi­nent sal­va­tion from doom, process such dis­ap­point­ment? Did they fall away from their faith and scare the hell out of Dorothy Mar­tin? Far from it. After a brief moment of hor­ror, the sect found a remark­able way out of their predica­ment. They rein­ter­pret­ed what had hap­pened: Their unshak­able faith had saved the world, as Fes­tinger described in (Fes­tinger et al., 1956).

When real­i­ty con­tra­dicts one’s con­vic­tions, humans can per­form extra­or­di­nary men­tal con­tor­tions. Leon Fes­tinger called this phe­nom­e­non the “The­o­ry of Cog­ni­tive Dis­so­nance” (Fes­tinger, 1957). Accord­ing to this the­o­ry, peo­ple usu­al­ly try to dis­solve this painful dis­so­nance by rein­ter­pret­ing real­i­ty accord­ing to their men­tal model.

He who says A does not have to say B. He can also rec­og­nize that A was wrong.

Bertolt Brecht cit­ed in (Knopf & Brecht, 2001)

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is not as easy as Bertolt Brecht thinks to rec­og­nize and con­fess that one was wrong. We pre­fer to be con­sis­tent and stick to our more or less quirky view of the world. More so when build­ing this view had cost us a lot of effort. This cog­ni­tive bias of sunk costs is well doc­u­ment­ed, lead­ing to a spi­ral of esca­lat­ing com­mit­ment, jus­ti­fy­ing fur­ther invest­ments with the already made (sunk) ones.

Some peo­ple, even so, resolve their cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance in a way that pro­motes insight and growth. They see the devi­a­tion of real­i­ty from their assump­tions as a chance to learn some­thing new. Like Nobel lau­re­ate Daniel Kah­ne­man describes it in the pod­cast by Adam Grant. After all, in the best empir­i­cal tra­di­tion, every the­o­ry is valid only if obser­va­tions do not inval­i­date it. Why should this sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ple not also apply to one’s world­view and beliefs?

A man who com­mit­ted a mis­take and does­n’t cor­rect it, is com­mit­ting anoth­er mistake.

Con­fu­cius

This abil­i­ty to ques­tion one­self and one’s con­vic­tions is essen­tial for lead­ers. Their world­views are usu­al­ly not a per­son­al mat­ter but affect and influ­ence many oth­er peo­ple. Good lead­er­ship requires a bal­ance between stead­fast­ly pur­su­ing com­pelling visions and the great­ness to humbly ques­tion and relent­less­ly cor­rect those visions and worldviews.

Along these lines, loose­ly based on Rein­hold Niebuhr: Give me the strength to stand my ground when I am right, give me the humil­i­ty to admit mis­takes when I am wrong, and give me the wis­dom to know the difference.

References

Knopf, J., & Brecht, B. (Hrsg.). (2001). Brecht-Hand­buch: In fünf Bän­den. Bd. 1: Stücke (Bd. 1). Metzler.

Fes­tinger, L. (1957). A The­o­ry of Cog­ni­tive Dis­so­nance. Stan­ford Univ. Press.

Fes­tinger, L., Rieck­en, H. W., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophe­cy fails. Univ. of Min­neso­ta Press.