Demonstrate a Concept- But You Voted for OBAMA!

As you can see in the above video, my boyfriend, Phillip, is a super staunch republican and has been ever since I met him. I would like to think that I have liberalized him a bit since we have been together—however, he of course adamantly denies said liberalization. I had no idea what I was going to write this blog about until I looked back at the conversation that we had earlier today and found the perfect example of one of the most practiced social psychological theories currently studied.

I secretly videoed a conversation we had on politics in its entirety (however, this video doesn’t even come close to some of the yelling that can happen during one of our debates). During the conversation he wasn’t aware that I was taping him and therefore the conversation we had was completely candid and honest. The entire video is just over 15 minutes long—because that’s how much battery my camera had left— but I edited it down to the interesting part of the debate where Phillip tried to explain why he (in all of his conservative glory) voted for Barack Obama. As the video showed Phillip said that he was not voting for Barack Obama, he was voting against Sarah Palin. I was so baffled by this logic that I was almost speechless, and of course being a mega liberal tried to convince him that he actually voted for Obama because he believed in the message that he was promoting. Phillip absolutely maintained that he was in no way voting in favor of Obama.

It wasn’t until I looked back on the conversation (because I was hoping that by taping it candidly an idea would somehow magically spring into my head as to what to write about, and it did! Sweet!) that I realized that Phillip was perfectly displaying cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance theory states that when an individual holds contradictory cognitions (whether through discrepancies between one’s attitudes and how one behaves, or between beliefs and attitudes, or beliefs and behaviors) it creates psychological tension that people become intensely motivated to diminish (Abelson et al., 1968). Phillip displayed cognitive dissonance when he, a Republican, voted for Obama, a Democrat. The political beliefs and attitudes that he holds so dear (that are SO wrong, I know, but he’s a good cook, what can I say?) are completely at odds with how he behaved. How can Phillip correct this major discrepancy and make his behavior seem to be consistent with his attitudes? Well, Phillip explained away this inconsistency by convincing himself (and trying to convince me) that he didn’t vote in favor of Obama he voted against Palin because he knew that there would be a large chance that she herself would become president.

Over the course of the campaigns and election Phillip has felt a lot of tension and confusion in terms of who to vote for. It was almost as if, during the course of the past several months, Phillip was experiencing a definite gap between his actual self (self concept and personal standards) and his ought-self (the person that he thought he needed to be, for whatever reason). Using the self-discrepancy theory I tried to explain to him that this gap between who he viewed himself to actually be and who he thought he should be was causing a lot of feelings of confusion and probably some guilt and resentment (Higgins, 1989). I believe it was the built up of all of these feelings that led to Phillip voting for Obama in the presidential election. However, because Phillip is such a fervent supporter of the Republican party and conservative ideals he experience such cognitive dissonance that he had to find an explanation that reduced his psychological tension.

Abelson, R. P., Aronson, E., McGuire, W. J., Newcomb, T. M., Rosenberg, M. J., & Tannenbaum, P. H. (1968). Theories of cognitive consistency: A sourcebook. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Higgins, E. T. (1989). Self-discrepancy theory: What patterns of self-beliefs cause people to suffer? In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 22, pp. 93-136). New York: Academic Press.