Wade Rathke, ACORN’s founder, is using his blog to attack James O’Keefe, whose bizarre pimp-and-prostitute charade exposed the culture of corruption in the organization he created. O’Keefe, who was arrested for trying another sting on a U.S. Senator, certainly deserves criticism. But it is safe to say that Rathke’s purpose is a little different than that of most pundits, for O’Keefe’s stunt hurt his baby. Rathke’s intent, other than  revenge, is to use the power of cognitive dissonance to make ACORN’s ethical failings seem less serious by making making O’Keefe look worse.

Cognitive dissonance is often referred to in the media but seldom correctly. A psychologist named Leon Festinger devised a scale—-vertical, with zero in the center, extending upwards from +1 to +100, and downwards from -1 to -100. (The diagrams below will use a simplified version of the scale.) The Cognitive Dissonance Scale measures how positive and negative attitudes toward people and things subconsciously influence attitudes toward other people and things that they have connections to and associations with, through the involuntary reduction of cognitive dissonance in the human mind. For example, assume you admire a writer, let’s say George Will. He writes frequently about how wrong campaign finance reform measures are, and because he is high on your Festinger Scale, his opposition alone lowers campaign finance reform on the scale, not because of the wisdom of his arguments, Dr. Festinger noted, but simply because you admire him. Using Festinger’s scale, imagine that Will is a + 10, and your hero’s opposition pushes campaign finance reform to a – 3…

+10 George Will
+9 ______
+8 ______
+7 ______
+6 ______
+5 ______
+4 ______
+3 ______
+2 ______
+1 ______
0 (Neutral)
-1 ______
-2 ______
-3 Campaign Finance Reform
-4 ______
-5 ______
-6 ______
– 7 ______
-8 ______
-9 ______
-10 _____

Then it is revealed, perhaps, that George Will is a cannibal, or a tax cheat, or a spy. He drops on the scale like a stone, and because of that, what he has attacked is likely to rise in your estimation. In fact, cognitive dissonance theory suggests, it has to. Will’s disgrace has caused you dissonance; you no longer regard his positive views on something as an indication of worth, or his opposition as an indication of fault. Indeed, if he falls far enough on the sale (if he is shown to be a cannibalistic spy who doesn’t pay his taxes, for example), Will’s criticism of something may even cause it to have a positive ranking on the scale, keeping the same relative distance from the now reviled Will:

+10______
+9 ______
+8 ______
+7 ______
+6 ______
+5 ______
+4 ______
+3Campaign Finance Reform
+2 ______
+1 ______
0__________________
-1 ______
-2 ______
– 3 ______
-4 ______
– 5 ______
-6 ______
– 7 ______
-8 ______
-9 ______
-10 George Will

Suddenly, without really knowing why, you may be more receptive to criticism of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizen United v. Federal Election Commission, striking down legal restrictions on direct campaign advertising  by for-profit and non-profit corporate entities. Now, logically speaking, the Constitutional and policy issues are the same regardless of whether Will is eating people or not. His conduct should have no effect on the validity of his arguments. They do in your mind, however, because that is how human minds tend to work. Our minds don’t like inconsistency, and they feel inconsistent when good guys like bad things, bad guys like good things, bad guys attack other bad guys or good guys detest other good guys. Your mind wants to make sense out of it all, so it subtly adjusts the values on the scale.

Cognitive dissonance and the process whereby it adjusts our attitudes explains much of advertising, political affiliations, biases, social behavior and most important, how powerful, popular leaders, celebrities and institutions can influence (or pervert) public culture for good or ill.  What Rathke is doing on his blog is one of the more unethical uses of dissonance theory, using it to discredit a factual message by lowering estimation of the messenger. This is a bi-partisan tactic, cynical, unfair, but effective.

Perhaps the all-time masters of using Dr. Festinger in a political context were President Richard Nixon and his VP, Spiro Agnew, who depicted anti-Vietnam War protesters as smelly, unruly, drug-crazed draft-dodgers in a largely successful effort to make the cause they were protesting for—a U.S. exit from Vietnam— as unsavory as the protesters seemed. The fact that the protesters were dressed and groomed oddly should have been irrelevant to the validity of their anti-war arguments, just as Special Prosecutor Ken Starr’s excesses didn’t excuse President Clinton’s cover-up activities, just as the fact that Daniel Ellsberg improperly released the Pentagon Papers didn’t diminish the importance of what the papers revealed, just as the fact that the East Anglia University emails were illegally hacked doesn’t make what the hacker uncovered any less troubling. In each of these cases, however, one or more politicians and numerous commentators tried the cognitive dissonance trick with varying success.

I don’t predict much success for the effort to rehabilitate ACORN by tearing down O’Keefe.  ACORN’s ethical problems are wide and deep, beginning with the organization neglecting to tell its donors that Rathke’s brother had embezzled millions from ACORN’s treasury. I mention the cognitive dissonance game because you will recognize this tactic many, many times, if you are looking for it. Its objective is to manipulate your judgment.

Remember: not only do two wrongs not make a right, the fact that one wrong exposes another never makes the second wrong less so.