cognitive dissonance

A chance remark I made to Scott Sommers some time ago in another thread has led me to wonder whether there isn't an element of cognitive dissonance to the behaviour of debunkers in this forum, not least myself. It's not what the truthers like to think it is; they have a typically half-formed...

At the same time the Republicans are were arguing vociferously as to the need for the wealthiest Americans to keep the Bush-era tax cuts (apparently only a few thousand families), it was just reported that the US has reached a settlement with the German Deutchebank over their facilitation of...

Very often in the conspiracy theory section, JREFers become exasperated at the tendency of "truthers" to present contradictory evidence in support of their arguments. When asked, "How does this fit into your theory?", they reply, "I don't have a theory. I just want the truth!" This, of...

Is there a difference between ignoring evidence vs. not believing in it? Is it the same? I was wondering what you might say about someone who considers themselves skeptical, but who refuses to act on the evidence. Let's say in the case of a skeptic who smokes, he knows it causes cancer, yet...

Transcript here. "Barack Obama is my candidate, and he must be our president." Meanwhile in La-La Land ... Yes, I couldn't resist seeing what the people at Hillary Clinton Forum (Not Affiliated With Hillary Clinton In Any Way) would make of it all. BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

I thought I would start a thread on this as I am currently reading mistakes were made (but not by me) which is an absolutely fascinating book on cognitive dissonance and how it affects what we think and how we think it. The core of the book centres around the idea of cognitive dissonance...

FCP: Free Choice Paradigm CD: Cognitive Dissonance The draft paper can be found at http://www.som.yale.edu/faculty/keith.chen/papers/CogDisPaper.pdf. Chen argues that there is a widespread methodological failure in experimental psychology using the FCP.

We get a lot of threads here about whether skepticism and belief in God are compatible. This is not one of those threads, although it's obviously inspired by them. The question I'm interested in is more about behavior than belief. Can you simultaneously be a member of an organization like the...