A few years back, after I came out of the Watchtower Society, I read a book about propaganda techniques. It discussed the various ways that politicians, marketers and religious leaders used mind-control techniques and mental sleight-of-hand to get people to vote for them, buy their products, give their money, and the like. A particular chapter in that book about How To Be a Cult Leader described 7 steps that were all direct from my experience as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was simply blown away, especially since I had discovered the book thanks to a reference in an Awake! magazine in the first place. Ironic.

Today I was listening to NPR’s Science Friday via podcast and one of the authors of that book, Dr. Elliot Aronson, was a guest on the show discussing his new book on cognitive dissonance, another fascinating topic that is quite relevant to a former or current Jehovah’s Witness. In brief, cognitive dissonance is “the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change” (as defined by my Dashboard dictionary widget). It was explained by the good Dr. on the program as the stress caused by holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. Dissonance Relief is the process by which we ease that stress. An example given on the program was a public prosecutor who puts a man behind bars for a rape for 20 years and then DNA evidence proves the man innocent. The prosecutor may reject the new evidence and refuse to open the case because re-opening it would be an admission that rather than being the defender of the innocent, the role he sees himself in, he has committed an injustice, broken up a family, etc. The intent and goals and desires and self-image of the man will be in direct conflict with the actual mistake that he made and the easiest thing for his mind to do would be to suspend his thinking completely and develop a rationalization. DNA evidence can’t be trusted, or, somebody made a mistake, something that will allow him to avoid having to accept the negative consequences of his actions. Another example of this process that was brought up was if the leader of a country starts a war that turns out to be a big mistake but keeps blundering ahead giving himself rationalizations regardless of all evidence to the contrary. I don’t know who he could have been referring to in that hypothetical… but…

Before I heard this radio program today I was well aware of cognitive dissonance theory and I was also well aware of the role that cognitive dissonance had played in my life as a Jehovah’s Witness. I was also well aware of the role it plays in the lives of my brother, sister and father. There were a few things in the program, however, that I had previously been unaware of. The most interesting one involved a recent study in which brain scans were done of people experiencing dissonance (the abstract of the study is here) and it was discovered that the brain literally STOPS THINKING until the dissonance is reduced. This is not figurative, but quite literal. The brain ceases to perform thought when under severe cognitive dissonance until the dissonance is reduced. This is a deeply-ingrained evolved trait across all cultures and genders. What this means is that people who are undergoing cognitive dissonance reduction are unaware that they are doing it because they aren’t thinking at the time. That, my friends, is interesting.

Let’s say you’re a Jehovah’s Witness (hell, maybe you are… does the Society know you read my blog? naughty!) and you’re absolutely convinced that you have The Truth. One beautiful part of your spiritual paradise is that you are among the only truly loving group of people in the world. You think of yourself as a warm, caring, sincere, intelligent, loving, person who loves their fellow man. You hear things about Witnesses, about how it’s a cult, how it’s broken homes, and this directly conflicts with your self-image and your experience as a Witness, so the dissonance is minor and easily reduced with simple thoughts like “Jesus had enemies” and “worldly people can’t understand because Satan has blinded their minds”. Then, somebody close to you leaves, somebody you love and think highly of. Maybe they leave voluntarily, maybe they’re kicked out, but they’re gone. Now, your mental image of that person is that they are good, caring, loving, intelligent, kind, but now you know that they are in the world, the world that you must be no part of. If they show repentance, attend meetings mutely, grovel to the elders for reinstatement, your dissonance is reduced because you have a rationalization for what has happened. Oh, you think, they really are a good, caring, loving, kind, intelligent, person, they will be back, it will be OK. What, however, if that person says, “you know, now that I’m out here I realize that I was wrong to be in, they are wrong about a lot of things and they were wrong for me”. What, in short, if the loved one still seems to be the same person but now disagrees with your beliefs? In most religions that would be OK, but in the Witnesses, with their One True Religion, it is cause for severe dissonance.

Reduction of this dissonance, oddly enough, can lead to more dissonance. For example, you may decide that the person who left is a liar, even though you know of now demonstrable example of dishonesty on their part. You may decide that they are immoral, even if they have an apparently moral family life. You may peg them as arrogant or rebellious even though you’ve never witnessed behavior that is anything other than humble. In short, you need to invent weaknesses, flaws, and negative personality traits to account for the disagreement with your beliefs. In this way, Witnesses often demonize their former family, friends and loved ones. The psychological effects of cognitive dissonance, especially as it related to shunning are extremely powerful.

However, reducing dissonance is not always a bad thing. Sometimes, the dissonance is so great that it cannot be rationalized away and you are forced to confront it. You are forced to admit that perhaps the issue that is bothering you is legitimate. Instead of demonizing your former associate, perhaps you believe in them and know them just well enough that you instead consider the possibility that maybe they are still loving, and intelligent and maybe it is yourself who is in the wrong. This process has lead some people to break free of the control of the Society.

Another form of dissonance faced by Witnesses is the conflict between science and their religion. This form of dissonance is particularly stressful to a certain type of person with a certain type of mind who cannot easily forget contradictions. For many, however, science is simply too abstract, too confusing, to be any sort of real issue. They rest assured in their faith that all those scientists who believe in evolution are liars and frauds and that they themselves have as much science on their side as the evolutionists. This isn’t remotely true, but to be fair, the majority of Witnesses don’t know this and will never know it. The average person is incapable of telling the difference between science and pseudo-science. It’s all jargon and mumbo-jumbo and if it sounds scientific, then it must be. Still, the stress of holding the belief that the entire world was destroyed by a Flood 4,000 years ago eventually snapped my brain out of the JW myth.

One final form of dissonance that I’ve seen is the dissonance between the belief that the Organization is Jehovah God’s True Religion and the actual things that take place within the organization. Just as in any other institution, bad things take place in Kingdom Halls. I do not single out Witnesses here, mind you. Many of the same things take place in offices, churches, schools and any other place where people are together socially. Sex, for one. Yes, extra-marital affairs, divorces, molestations, rapes, all these things happen in the the Witnesses just as they do anywhere else. Children get molested, spouses leave each other, unmarried people sleep with each other, teenagers have sex, it all happens. This is, perhaps, less stressful to people who are aware of it than the massive deficiencies in the Judicial System setup to supposedly safeguard the congregation. The naive and completely ineffective rule that matters are to be established by the word of two witnesses is a major source of the trouble. A husband may be cheated on by his wife, his wife may come to him and tell him exactly what took place, when and with whom, and he may then choose to divorce her. However, if she does not tell the elders or anybody besides the husband, he cannot remarry and may be disfellowshipped from the organization if he does. His love life is in suspension indefinitely unless she confesses to another or gets caught. I don’t know the percentage of Witnesses who are disfellowshipped for remarrying after “unproven” infidelity, but I would guess it’s quite common, I know of multiple instances myself. Is a system that punishes the innocent spouse one that is going to make you feel that it’s divine in nature? Other, far more egregious examples can be given, but the point is that the system is faulty. Basing a system of justice on the “two witnesses” concept would be laughable if not for the thousands of people who are wrongly served by it every year. Victims are sometimes punished, perpetrators are sometimes protected, and yes, sometimes it works if the perpetrator feels bad enough to confess or it sloppy enough to get caught. Being involved in the Witness Judicial arrangement is a serious form of dissonance for a lot of people because they simply cannot accept that such a fundamentally flawed system that does so much damage to so many lives is a product of a loving, just God.

So, Witnesses face a lot of dissonance. These are just a few of the major sources. There are minor sources everywhere, many encouraged by the Society. Going door to door, for example, only works on the Witness because of dissonance. Being constantly confronted with people that tell them they are wrong or ignore their message strengthens their belief in the rightness of their cause because it is a regular exercise in rationalization and dissonance reduction. The more you go out in service, the less likely you are to fall out of the organization.

What happens, though, when Witnesses leave? Do they ditch the dissonance? It is my general experience that while some do manage to, many do not. They carry their cognitive dissonance with them for as long as they believe that the Watchtower Society has The Truth. They generally reduce their dissonance by turning on themselves and rationalizing that it is not the Society that was at fault, it was themselves. They still can’t accept that the view that they were taught is simply false, and so they hate themselves. These people are decent candidates for re-instatement in the religion if they are able to channel the stress into the self-control and discipline that it takes to rejoin. If they cannot do that, they often wind up in long term cycles of depression, anxiety, and obsession over the Society instead of moving on and living productive lives.

Some leave and rejoin, some leave and their life falls apart. Some, however, ditch the dissonance and accept that they simply had been wrong in the past. They don’t rationalize it, they simply do their best to be right in the future. These people, and I believe I am one of them, have still got a big task in front of them, namely re-integration of their personalities. I speak from personal experience when I say that it has been astonishingly difficult to feel like myself again after carrying that dissonant stress around as a part of my mind for so many years. Being able to accept people, facts, and reality was liberating but felt extremely alien. I was used to splitting the world into the things and people that fit my belief structure and the things and people that did not. I did this categorization on a sub-conscious level. It was so deeply ingrained that I could not even view my wife as just a person for a long time, she was a “worldly person” and it created a very real block in my ability to connect to her emotionally. This splitting isn’t dissonance, but a learned response to it, dissonance reduction. Take the “worldly person” example. In school as a child I made friends, met people. I was aware that these other kids were “worldly kids” and that I couldn’t really be friends with them but natural affection was still there. I liked my friends but I knew I shouldn’t like them, not really, because they could die at Armageddon soon. So, I rationalized, I separated, I made a category in my mind for “worldly” people versus those “in The Truth”. This became so much a part of me that even when I was no longer a Witness and couldn’t even speak to Witnesses, I couldn’t connect to worldly people.

There are, I don’t know how many, ways that the lifelong process of dissonance and dissonance reduction shapes everybody, regardless of whether they were ever Jehovah’s Witnesses. However, there is one thing that can help and that’s awareness. Dr. Aronson, on the radio, said that most of the people who read his book had commented that they had never noticed themselves doing reduction before but that since reading it they had begun to catch themselves in the act. I haven’t read the book yet, but I plan to, because I hope that it will help me with my continuing process of becoming a whole person again and a fully-functioning member of society instead of “The Society”.]\]=

More From Ryan Sutter

RyanSutter has content marketing with Arkayne Socialize.

Related posts