How - Dov Seidman [61]
How about the retail store that, with a smile and a swipe of a credit card, takes your money in seconds, but requires you to stand in line for 10 minutes, fill out a form, surrender personal information, and obtain a manager’s approval to return your purchase? Are they still smiling? Does that affect your purchasing decision next time you need something? The message management is sending to their retail salespeople is just as dissonant: “We trust you enough to take their money, but not enough to give it back.” One might try to explain away this dissonance by suggesting that businesses require a higher level of scrutiny in matters of money because of the commensurately higher potential for abuse and fraud. But trust, as we know, begets trust. Employees who feel truly trusted are less likely to betray that trust because they understand innately that it works to their benefit. Employees who feel disrespected or not trusted by their management and companies are more likely to strike back in subtle ways—like cheating on expense reports or dipping into the till—to get payback for the burdens they feel unjustly placed upon them. The layers of additional rules in fact create the conditions that prompt people to game the system.
The opposite of dissonance is consonance, a sense that things belong together. Consonant messages inspire in those around you a greater sense of alignment to a common cause. That creates strong synapses and makes more Waves. It is more profitable in the long run to send signals of trust to employees submitting expense claims, verify them in a random and diligent manner, and deal harshly with the few people who betray that trust than to institute layers of procedure that send the message that you don’t really trust anyone. When people are subject to dissonant messages that seemingly make no sense—like the bakery that doesn’t cut rolls—they lose their sense of connection to whoever is sending them and strike out on their own, either physically or intellectually. They view your Wave with suspicion and a wait-and-see attitude; then they may get up slowly or without passion, or they may leave the stadium entirely.
Even more damaging is the profound, deleterious effect dissonance exerts on people’s ability to learn and adapt to new information. French developmental psychologist Jean Piaget gave this phenomenon specific language to describe it. Accommodation—the ability to reconcile conflicting ideas—is more difficult than assimilation —the ability to accept a new idea as wholly true.11 In other words, if someone is called upon to learn something that contradicts what they already think they know—particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge—they are likely to resist the new learning. Studies of the brain have shown that not only will they reject the dissonant message, but, amazingly, will feel good about so doing; their brain actually rewards them.
Emory University professor of psychology Drew Westen demonstrated how this works.12 He put self-described partisans from opposing political parties in brain scanners and asked them to evaluate negative information about various candidates. Both groups rapidly identified inconsistency and hypocrisy in the candidates, but only in the ones they opposed. When Westen confronted them with negative information about the candidate they supported, the parts of the brain associated with reasoning and learning switched off and the parts associated with strong emotions kicked on. These strong emotional reactions allowed