commitments

Cognitive dissonance theory states that people strive for internal consistence and psychological comfort. It says that people who are "psychologically uncomfortable" are able to actively change what they believe… if they are uncomfortable with two conflicting beliefs. Consider an example:

You look in the mirror, thinking to yourself “I really must lose some weight”. A matter of only a few hours later, you find yourself tucking into a doughnut that someone’s passed round the office. In a moment of panic, you realise that you’ve committed to yourself that you’ll be good – and now you’re a bad person for eating the doughnut. 

You’re psychologically uncomfortable, so what do you do? Your options are as follows:

1. Justify your behaviour: (“It’s Sally’s birthday, it would be rude not to”)
2. Ignore or deny the data: (“It’s probably a low fat doughnut”)
3. Add an extra clause to your contract with yourself: (“I was really good yesterday and I walked to work, so it’s okay once in a while”)
4. Change your behaviour (“Right, I’m throwing this doughnut in the bin”)

Unfortunately, the last one is by far and away the most effective, but also the most difficult.  It’s much easier to do any one of the first three and just change what you believe!  Rationalising and justifying incongruent behaviours are more common than you might think – from “I know I should give to charity, but I’ve been really busy recently”, to “Donald Trump is an alpha male, so it’s OK for him to make those comments”. And as human behaviour and organisational behaviour are identical, intrinsically linked and inseparable, the same things tend to happen in the world of business – to the detriment of us all!

Recently, Amazon drivers have admitted to driving dangerously and even urinating into bottles because of the pressure to maintain an unreasonable delivery schedule. The organisational cognitive dissonance could well be that “it’s OK to treat our drivers like that, because we believe that our customers should come first.”

Sports Direct has engaged in some shocking behaviour by fining staff 15 minutes’ pay for being one minute late, even though they’re made to stand in long security queues. The organisation’s cognitive dissonance there is likely to be “If they didn’t steal from us, we wouldn’t need to be so strict”

Bank bosses justified the dysfunctional behaviour that prompted the banking crisis by explaining that the regulations were too loose, and anyway, “you shouldn’t have let us get away with it”.

There are also hundreds of smaller, micro-dissonances that justify a range of behaviours at work. Consider “Steve’s a bit of a bully, but he really makes us an amazing profit!”. Or “it’s OK that we make people work really long hours, because they wouldn’t make an effort otherwise”.  Or “we know we should have more senior women in leadership roles, but there’s no good women around”.   Justifying or rationalising ‘uncomfortable’ behaviours (rather than challenging them), can lead to a culture of sexism, bullying and low integrity; among many other dysfunctional outcomes.

So, do you want to rationalise, justify and explain away the reasons you reach for the doughnut… Or do you want to take the tough choice and opt to change your behaviour instead?