Cognitive Dissonance, Leon Festinger

From the bookshelf of Charles Vallance, founding partner VCCP

This book explains the limits of what can and can't be communicated.

Festinger delineates the workings of the human mind with total cogency; how we manage our beliefs, how these defend themselves, how we edit and reprocess information to shore them up. Only when you understand how the human mind is naturally closed, can you have any chance of opening it up.

If everyone understood his theory, I'd say that 75% of communications briefs would never be written, let alone implemented. And that is before we apply the learning to other areas of our lives. The gist of the theory is that the human mind is programmed to change its beliefs (or cognitions) only with extreme reluctance. Any message that conflicts with an established cognition will cause cognitive dissonance and, as such, is likely to fail.

For instance, you can never win an argument by power of argument alone. You can never win a war unless the conquered feel they have something left to lose.

Rather than represent a counsel of despair, however, the book allows you to understand how mental defences can be re-configured, managed and unlocked. Minds can be changed, but only once you understand how they won't be changed. It is amazingly liberating to understand how trapped we are.

Too many brands, whether they are commercial, political, personal or religious, get caged within the narrow confines of their own dogma. At which point any hope of persuasion is lost.

This article first appeared in Brand Strategy, the monthly, thought-leading marketing magazine www.brandstrategy.co.uk/subs