Part 9
Many who have tried to reason with those who have delusions and prejudices, if reasoning simply involved demonstrating contradictory evidence then cults wouldn’t even exist by now, but the reality is that we usually end up at a loss and or the process just takes too long, because we are not dealing with normal people (fig.4) we are dealing with people with P and C fused to A, so in theory while I have been advocating to transact in A considered productive than P or C, A can backfire. (fig.5)8
Transacting in A a contradictory belief of their prejudices/delusions, as discussed in Part 8 regarding the conflict between P and A, will cause a form of mental anxiety known by Leon Festinger as cognitive dissonance (CD), the stronger the prejudice/delusion described below, the stronger dissonance will be required.
“Let us begin by stating the conditions under which we would expect to observe increased fervour following the disconfirmation of a belief. There are five such conditions.
- A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he behaves.
- The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief.
- The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
- Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.
The first two of these conditions specify the circumstances that will make the belief resistant to change. The third and fourth conditions together, on the other hand, point to factors that would exert powerful pressure on a believer to discard his belief. It is, of course, possible that an individual, even though deeply convinced of a belief, may discard it in the face of unequivocal disconfirmation. We must therefore, state a fifth condition specifying the circumstances under which the belief will be discarded and those under which it will be maintained with new fervor.
- The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence we have specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, we would expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselyte or to persuade non-members that the belief is correct.
These five conditions specify the circumstances under which increased proselyting would be expected to follow disconfirmation.” Leon Festinger, When Prophecy Fails, 2008, p. 19/20, Pinter & Martin Ltd
With my own interactions and hypothesis I came to the conclusion that it is more beneficial to a)to identify the strongest form of prejudice that the person has and b) provide stronger evidence to the contradictory, to create strong dissonance*, all while transacting in Adult (I cannot stress this enough, in A you are trying, in C or P not only are you wasting time but you can also be making matters worse, that means NO aggressive, punitive or try to induce guilt feelings through conversation). This might take time and various attempts, it is impossible to put everyone in one basket but with me I had success with my parents, now they aren’t out but they are more sceptical and see the GB more as a fallible human body than mini apostles.
In TA terms, what are doing by creating CD is for the cult member to seek cognitive consonant information that matches reality, so P and C merge out from A, becoming like fig. 4. These type of interactions in TA that are and change decision making are referred to as life positions:
I’m Ok, you’re OK; I’m Ok, you’re not OK ; I’m not Ok, you’re OK ; I’m not Ok, you’re not OK. They are below demonstrated by the cult member as.
1 - I’m Ok, you’re not OK – I know the truth and you are wrong
2 - I’m not Ok, you’re not OK – I may be wrong with certain things but so are you.
3 - I’m not Ok, you’re OK – I realise the mistakes that I have made and feel terrible
4 - I’m Ok, you’re OK – I have resolved my crisis and accepted your criticism as valid
Final thoughts.
TA is usually applied to business and therapy but rarely applied to understanding cult mentality, most capable of doing so as it is in complete harmony with other psychological perspectives, simplifying and presenting systematic sketches that can easily be applied. Of course what I presented here is just relevant to cults and it’s not even one quarter of TA. One other thing I find crucially important is before we understand others we need to understand ourselves, there is book out there that has sold many copies, How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnege, this book has helped me a lot making me less stressed and less angry because of the cult as I was not aware on how little control I had of myself and how little I understood others, I apply this book and many other books to TA. I wanted to share TA to others who are not familiar with it and to stress that it is better to understand all different perspective of psychology than just one. One last thing, it is human nature that we seek our own consistencies and avoid the inconsistencies of others, we do have cognitive blind spots that we only realise when someone else points it out to us, to understand the impact that this has done in politics and marriage I want to you to read Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me by Elliot Aronson, at least once in your life.
Next time watching your favourite show or a conversation unfolding think of which ego states they are in.
P.A.
* I made a video explaining in full detail what cognitive dissonance is. I can't seem to link the video so you will need to click on the link.
http://youtu.be/D3IgH_Y0l8I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3IgH_Y0l8I
