Leon Festinger put forward the theory of cognitive dissonance.
Cognition is the process of acquiring knowledge through our thoughts, experiences, and senses.
Festinger states that an individual cannot hold two mutually incompatible thoughts simultaneously because this occasions cognitive discomfort.
In such a situation the only recourse the individual has is to eliminate one of those competing cognitions.
For example, one cannot know that smoking kills and smoke at the same time, this would result in cognitive discomfort.
As a result, the individual eliminates one of those thoughts for instance by getting him or herself to believe that they stand as good a chance of being killed by an accident as cancer.
They can then smoke in peace 'knowing' that they are not killing themselves.
Public health emergencies such as HIV/AIDS and Covid-19 have highlighted how powerfully cognitive dissonance can hinder the national effort at achieving desirable behavioural change meant to save lives.
With the HIV/AIDS pandemic, national and global efforts were focussed on preventing promiscuity, where this failed getting people to practice safe sex. However, for a tragically significant part of the population this was not an acceptable compromise.
But, people could not be intimate without using protection knowing simultaneously that there is an incurable sexually transmitted disease.
Doing this would result in cognitive dissonance.
As a push back people came up with various conspiracy theories to discredit and discount the HIV\AIDS message. Among these that AIDS stood for American Idea of Discouraging Sex, another that condom lubricant was carcinogenic and a way of killing off young virile black men. Others stated that the dreaded disease was actually "Runyoka" ( a complex venereal disease caused by sleeping with a 'fenced' woman or man) and therefore could be avoided by staying away from married women.
Then there were the jokes, this subconscious effort to ridicule and belittle the threat out of being a discomfiting cognition. These were the jokes about the "slimming sickness", the "bye bye" bumps at the back of the ears etc.
Tragically all these efforts worked, people went on with their wanton sexual habits and many died.
Then along came the Covid-19 outbreak and the reaction was pretty much the same.
People engaged in high risk behaviours such as not observing social distancing, not wearing masks, sharing beer containers and crowding into vehicles among others.
Some people came up with conspiracy theories that Government was desperate for foreign currency hence it misrepresented infection figures, that Covid-19 was invented by the disingenuous Chinese to wipe out the Europeans and their economic system and hence was not really a concern for black Africans.
Others put their faith not in preventative measures but in the heat of the summer months to kill off the virus.
On the religious front, some, led by eminent men of God, labelled the virus a demon that was bent on preventing people from worshipping and hence needed to be fought not by human means but by faith. And of course there were jokes that attempted to reduce the pandemic to a matter for laughter.
What people did was to manage its perception: from being a killer into a nuisance that all sensible people would do well to ignore and get on with their lives.
Those who observed strict Covid-19 protocols were ridiculed and regarded as being paranoid.
The underlying principle here is that people cannot ignore health protocols in the face of a killer disease so that ailment must be reinvented so they can go on with their carelessness without suffering cognitive dissonance.
So long as humanity has not managed a cure for viruses all societies will be faced with public health emergencies or pandemics that require mass behavioural modification.
The challenge for Government therefore is how to root out entrenched undesirable behaviours in the individual and society at large during a public health crisis. This means that the health awareness and preventative messaging must overcome the cognitive bias towards undesirable if not downright dangerous thoughts whenever cognitive dissonance pushes an individual to choose between two competing cognitions.
This article highlights to the authorities, those who will be confronted with the urgent responsibility of saving lives when the next pandemic comes around, the challenges that cognitive dissonance will pose to the assimilation of public health information.
If people are exhibiting a certain behaviour that means the conduct is beneficial or rewarding to them.
This behaviour is therefore the result of a cognitive process.
Public health messaging is therefore not just about getting information out. It is about countering the cognitive processes that led to the formation and perpetuation of the now undesirable behaviours.
When public health warnings hit the individual there results a cognitive contestation between the old and dangerous behaviours and the new lifesaving conducts.
This process results in cognitive dissonance.
The individual by default and subconsciously opts to eliminate the public health awareness message to escape the dissonance because of their attachment to the old behaviours. These now life threatening behaviours bring obvious socio-economic benefit and or psychomotor gratification.
To counter this, our social scientists must come up with a decision making matrix at both the individual (psychological), and societal (sociological) level.
How do we make our positive messaging the dominant cognition that eliminates the undesirable one instead of it being the casualty?
Ignorance on its own is acceptable but when it assumes a distrust or even contempt of knowledge it becomes an existential threat to the individual and society.
One such way is to pursue a method that engages with the people rather than shovelling reams of information to the public.
Engagement entails an interaction and this allows the sponsor of the positive messaging to correct misinformation, and also to keep the facts of the message alive through directly acknowledging and countering cognitive dissonance.
In such times therefore health authorities must actively work to identify and counter conspiracy theories that are used as a cognitive counter to the positive message.
This is to reduce their potency in countering the positive cognitions induced by the health awareness efforts.
One can also make the effects of the pandemic more real to individuals.
The HIV message actually got through after everyone in Zimbabwe had seen the mental, physical and social effects of the disease on a loved one.
Culturally, we are relatively unscientific, so how can you get someone who has never looked through a microscope to believe that a tiny microscopic entity can end their lives?
And not only that but to get that fear to outweigh the very real and pressing socio-economic demands of their lives.
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The issue becomes about getting the right information to people in such a way that presents the choices available to the individual as existential ones.
In some cases, even the use of graphic images or videos should be used to shock people out of this thought that makes them ignore Government's efforts to save their lives.
Opinion leaders must also be harnessed to the national effort instead of them preaching a counter narrative to the scientific one that seeks to effect behavioural change.
Their counter narrative presents a cognitive counter to the Government's messaging efforts.
In other words, a Christian thinks ".... why should I change my behaviour for a demon? I will not bow down to a demon?" such people can then engage in unsafe behaviours without experiencing dissonance.
Indeed, doing this becomes the right and zealous thing to. Many Christians today still celebrate the clandestine services they held during the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Before the nation attempts to induce behaviour modification in people, there is a need to appreciate how powerfully cognitive dissonance will attack messaging and how this psychological phenomenon can critically undermine all efforts. In turn, we must come up with counter arguments and package messages in a way that they become the dominant beliefs that eliminate the undesirable one.
The national effort towards achieving behavioural change to save lives cannot and must not be measured by the bytes of information that we have put out, but by the extent to which the maladaptive behaviours have been eliminated and replaced by the adaptive ones.
*Ignatius Tsuro is a psychology graduate, social commentator and keen researcher
