PRINCETON, 24 June 2004 — George W. Bush and Dick Cheney seem to be men who do not change their minds easily.
Even after the 9/11 Commission announced last week that ‘’no credible evidence exists” of ‘’a collaborative relationship” between Saddam Hussein’s government and Al-Qaeda, they continued to insist that ‘’there were numerous contacts” between Saddam and Al-Qaeda (Bush) and that evidence of a relationship was ‘’overwhelming” (Cheney).
The commission agreed that there were contacts, but has found no evidence that these meetings ever led to any activity. So were the president and vice president lying or distorting the facts to suggest in the buildup to the Iraq war that such a link existed? Are they lying about it now? Not necessarily.
As a behavioral psychologist, I have studied people’s reactions to contradiction and inconsistency. We are capable of convincing ourselves of something, and the more evidence that builds up to contradict us the more we believe it. For more than 40 years, social psychologists have studied the phenomenon of ‘’cognitive dissonance” — what happens when people have pieces of information on the same subject that are inconsistent. The presence of contradictions is psychologically unpleasant, and people do whatever it takes to resolve the inconsistency.
Bush and Cheney’s position resembles that of people who volunteered for some of our research on communication. We asked the volunteers to write a statement taking a position on a political issue with which they disagreed. As soon as they had written their essays, these volunteers were struck by the inconsistency of their position. There was a discrepancy between what they had written and what they truly believed. To reduce their discomfort, the volunteers changed their private opinions. They convinced themselves that they really did believe in the position they had taken in their essay.
In the case of the vice president, who has been the administration’s most outspoken advocate of the Iraq-Al-Qaeda link, he may well be someone who has experienced a lot of cognitive dissonance. As the top sidekick for the president, he has steadfastly spoken the administration’s position to justify the war in Iraq, which may have been wishful thinking since he presumably had access to the same classified reports from which the 9/11 Commission drew its conclusion.
When you say something that is discrepant from the facts and from the conclusion that rational men and women would make when examining the same evidence (in this case, the 9/11 Commission), there follows the psychologically unpleasant state of cognitive dissonance.
It makes sense, then, that Cheney would come to believe his own words. He would become increasingly convinced about the existence of a link that the intelligence community cannot find. Every time he repeats the dissonant statement, the more he moves his belief closer to that position.
As for the president, he told reporters last week that he had never alleged that Saddam was connected to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but that there had been ‘’numerous contacts” between the Iraqi president and Al-Qaeda. ‘’For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with Bin Laden ... in the Sudan.” The commission cited this meeting, in which Bin Laden apparently asked for space for training camps in Iraq, but concluded that the Iraqis had never responded.
It could be that the president deliberately left out that seemingly vital detail; but he could also be far down the slope of believing his own dissonant statements.
And that leaves the rest of us. How do we deal with the fact that the men holding the highest offices in the land draw one conclusion while the bipartisan commission charged with unpacking the evidence draws the opposite? We, too, will be in a state of dissonance and we, too, will feel pressure to reduce it.
The most benign way to reduce the dissonance is to make the two conclusions compatible. Perhaps there is a way to believe Cheney and the commission.
The door to that solution was opened briefly by Bush when he explained that there was a difference between acknowledging Iraq-Al-Qaeda contacts and the implication that the Iraqis were in some way responsible for 9/11. One could believe that there was no productive contact that led to the Sept. 11 event — this is what the commission meant — and also believe that there was contact, which is what Bush and Cheney are saying, and be satisfied. However, that door was all but closed last week by Bush’s statement that he supported Cheney’s more extreme assertions because, well, they were true.
With a middle ground made less likely, it forces us as the recipients of both positions to make a choice. In a rational world, people can make an assessment about the motives of a member of the administration in a re-election year versus a bipartisan commission that is not involved in the election. In a rational world, the credibility of the commission on this point would be virtually unassailable.
As we know, though, people are not always rational. The need to reduce our dissonance is one of the forces that compromise our rationality. People who identify with Bush and Cheney for any number of reasons will have difficulty resolving dissonance by dismissing their position.
In research conducted in Australia and the United States, people watched a member of their group take an unpopular position on a political issue. Not only did the speaker experience dissonance, so did the audience. Being a member of the same group caused the audience to bond with the speaker.
The audience felt uncomfortable when the speaker took a position that was at variance with the facts and with his true attitude. The members of the audience changed their attitudes to make them consistent with the speaker’s public statement. And the more the audience members identified with their group, the more they changed their attitude.
Many Republicans may well do the same. It is not that Republicans will change their opinions because they are convinced by the substance of the administration’s argument; the substance of the argument is barely relevant. Seeing their leaders making statements that seem inconsistent with facts will cause group members to experience psychological discomfort, and they may resolve it by becoming adamant about supporting the Bush-Cheney position. The commission, they may conclude, is biased or ignorant, its report incorrect or flawed.
As time goes by, some Republicans may part company with the administration. They may take an alternate path to reduce dissonance by psychologically redefining their group and deciding that Bush and Cheney do not represent what it means to be a mainstream Republican. But for those voters who continue to identify with the administration, the result of the inconsistency between the president and vice president and the 9/11 Commission will lead to more polarization and hardening of attitudes.
In March, polls showed that more than half of American voters thought that Saddam had given ‘’substantial support” to Al-Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission’s findings should lower that number considerably.
However, the psychology of everyday life warns us not to be surprised if some people become more, rather than less, convinced of Saddam’s conspiracy with Al-Qaeda. The president and vice president are moving dissonance to new heights.
— Joel Cooper is a professor and former chair of the psychology department at Princeton University.
