By: Chris Brown
“Music helps overcome undesirable consequences of cognitive dissonance.”
(Perlovsky, 2017)
How can you be pro-life, but believe in the death penalty? Festinger (1957), defines CD as the psychological discomfort occurring when one experiences two mutually inconsistent “elements of cognition.” Cognitive elements are for Festinger (1957, p. 9–10) what a “person knows about himself, about his behavior, and about his surroundings.” These cognitive elements not only “represent knowledge about oneself” (feelings, pains, desires, attitudes, etc.) but also represent environmental and causal states, concerning “the world in which one lives” or “what is where, what leads to what,” and so forth. Festinger desired to understand how individuals could resolve inconsistencies within their own behavior.
One way they could justify this dissonance is by claiming the child is innocent, and the death row inmate is not. This type of rationalization would help one to decide that killing an innocent and helpless unborn child is wrong but killing an individual who has committed murder has in some way forfeited their right to life.
Another way a person could justify this dissonance is by actually being thrust into the situation of finding themselves or someone close to them with an unwanted pregnancy. Now what do they do? The Pro-life part of their brain says, ‘you cannot abort!’. But their 12-year-old daughter was raped and is now pregnant. The harm from the rape has caused emotional problems and doctors worry that forcing the child to go full term may add stress not only to her body but also to her mind. As a pro-life parent do you allow your beliefs to place your child in more danger after all she has already been through or do you justify your decision to have her abort? Do you risk the life of one child for the life of another? Would you change your beliefs now that it’s your child?
A third way to help with this dissonance is to turn on the radio and let the pleasant music play. The “Mozart effect” refers to claims that people perform better on tests of spatial abilities after listening to music composed by Mozart. Perlovsky et al., (2013) used the Mozart effect to explore cognitive functions of music, this publication demonstrated (1) that students allocate less time to more difficult and stressful tests (as expected from CD theory), and (2) with music in the background students can tolerate stress, allocate more time to stressful tests, and improve grades. These experiments tentatively confirmed the hypothesis that pleasant music helps overcome undesirable consequences of CD. It follows that music likely performs a fundamental cognitive function; music makes possible the accumulation of knowledge, and thereby stimulates human evolution. Music helps students to hold contradictory knowledge despite stress from CD caused by this contradictory knowledge. Leonid Perlovsky, (2017) discusses, within his book Music, passion, and cognitive function, a revolutionary theory of evolution and the function of music: “music helps us to overcome cognitive dissonances, and in this way makes possible the continuous evolution of culture. Furthermore, this theory explains why music has such a power over our souls: knowledge causes grief because every piece of cognition causes cognitive dissonances, we live in this ocean of grief, and music helps us to overcome these negative emotions and to continue living”.
As said earlier a close family member becoming pregnant after being raped may change someone’s cognition. The same could be true if they where on death row, or perhaps you may say they deserve it still. I also think being in either situation could also change your beliefs.
One way they could justify this dissonance is by claiming the child is innocent, and the death row inmate is not. This type of rationalization would help one to decide that killing an innocent and helpless unborn child is wrong but killing an individual who has committed murder has in some way forfeited their right to life.
Another way a person could justify this dissonance is by actually being thrust into the situation of finding themselves or someone close to them with an unwanted pregnancy. Now what do they do? The Pro-life part of their brain says, ‘you cannot abort!’. But their 12-year-old daughter was raped and is now pregnant. The harm from the rape has caused emotional problems and doctors worry that forcing the child to go full term may add stress not only to her body but also to her mind. As a pro-life parent do you allow your beliefs to place your child in more danger after all she has already been through or do you justify your decision to have her abort? Do you risk the life of one child for the life of another? Would you change your beliefs now that it’s your child?
A third way to help with this dissonance is to turn on the radio and let the pleasant music play. The “Mozart effect” refers to claims that people perform better on tests of spatial abilities after listening to music composed by Mozart. Perlovsky et al., (2013) used the Mozart effect to explore cognitive functions of music, this publication demonstrated (1) that students allocate less time to more difficult and stressful tests (as expected from CD theory), and (2) with music in the background students can tolerate stress, allocate more time to stressful tests, and improve grades. These experiments tentatively confirmed the hypothesis that pleasant music helps overcome undesirable consequences of CD. It follows that music likely performs a fundamental cognitive function; music makes possible the accumulation of knowledge, and thereby stimulates human evolution. Music helps students to hold contradictory knowledge despite stress from CD caused by this contradictory knowledge. Leonid Perlovsky, (2017) discusses, within his book Music, passion, and cognitive function, a revolutionary theory of evolution and the function of music: “music helps us to overcome cognitive dissonances, and in this way makes possible the continuous evolution of culture. Furthermore, this theory explains why music has such a power over our souls: knowledge causes grief because every piece of cognition causes cognitive dissonances, we live in this ocean of grief, and music helps us to overcome these negative emotions and to continue living”.
As said earlier a close family member becoming pregnant after being raped may change someone’s cognition. The same could be true if they where on death row, or perhaps you may say they deserve it still. I also think being in either situation could also change your beliefs.
References
- Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Vol. 2. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
- Perlovsky, L. (2013). A challenge to human evolution—cognitive dissonance. Front. Psychol. 4:179. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00179/full
- Perlovsky, L. (2017). Music, passion, and cognitive function. San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=psyh&AN=2017-20896-000&site=eds-live&custid=magn1307