Information is constantly passing
through our brains every second of every day forcing us to make decisions from
the small things to the large ones. The Elaboration Likelihood Model explains
the cognitive aspect of processing communication messages. It looks at message
processing through two routes; central and peripheral. The peripheral route is
a mental shortcut process that is used to make quick decisions. I want to focus
more on the central route. The central route involves message elaboration which
is the extent to which a person carefully thinks of something. When people are
using the central route, they are focused in on the information and are
carefully scrutinizing the ideas. The information that passes through here is
generally stored in long-term memory. Cognitive dissonance is defined as the
distressing mental state caused by inconsistency between a person’s two beliefs
or a belief and an action. Cognitive dissonance is what we experience when information
is being passed through the central route.
In the movie ‘How Do You Know’,
there are a couple of great examples that demonstrate cognitive dissonance. How
Do You Know is a fun movie about Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) who just got cut from
the USA softball team for being past her prime. She finds herself evaluating
her life and in the middle of a love triangle, as George (Paul Rudd), a business
man in a crisis competes with Matty (Owen Wilson), her current baseball player
boyfriend.
In this scene, Annie (Katheryn Hahn),
who is George’s secretary and friend, is going a little nuts. She knows
information that could negatively affect George’s life. However, she signed a
contract promising to keep her mouth shut.
Annie is trying so hard not to tell
him, but it’s making her insane. She is experiencing cognitive dissonance. Her
distressing mental state is being caused by this desire to share the important
information yet being contract-bound to remain silent.
This may be a stretch but you could
say there is counter-attitudinal advocacy which is publicly urging others to
believe or do something that is opposed to what the advocate actually believes.
George strongly believes in Annie staying true to the contract and not telling
him anything, but Annie strongly believes she should tell him. Annie is trying
to urge him to have the same belief as she so that she can relieve her
distressing mental state and tell him the information. He doesn’t want her to ‘rock
the boat’, even though she knows something about the boat that will destroy
him. It’s a challenging position to be stuck in, just as any dilemma in life
can be.
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Selective exposure is the tendency
people have to avoid information that would create cognitive dissonance because
it’s incompatible with their current beliefs. This next scene demonstrates
this.
This scene has George on his way to
meet Lisa for a date when his father, Charles (Jack Nicholson), comes to tell him
some important information. When George first saw his father, he was friendly
and curious to see why he was there, but once he realized it was going to be
bad news, he made the decision to avoid the information because he did not want
to deal with it. George knows the information will not settle well with him. He
says “I’m not ready to take on anything that I can’t handle” to his father. This
is a perfect example of him portraying selective expose. He knows that
something terrible is in his future and that mentally he could not handle it.
He knew that it would cause him to enter a distressing mental state and because
I don’t want to be a spoiler alert I will just say that later in the movie you
learn of the difficult decision he must make between two terrible options.
Cognitive dissonance is something
we all experience, weather it be on the heavy or the light side. The more we think
about it and the further it goes into our central route, the more uncertainty
it causes. When we experience it we try and justify one side or the other, make
a comedy out of it, pawn it off onto others, or simply follow the crowd. These
theories are relevant when looking at them from a communicative perspective
because they can help us realize when we, ourselves or others enter these
mental states. It sheds light on the actions and reactions to help us get a
better understanding of ourselves and others while communicating with one
another.
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