On Sun, 9 May 2004, Jon Johanning wrote:
> Obviously, we would hope that a large number of Americans would react
> by dropping their earlier belief in the rightness of the war, but it's
> not easy to reliably influence the way people resolve the dissonance.
Yep. We're covering cognitive dissonance in my social psychology class this week, and most of the students seem to be making the connection between the need for cognitive consistency and U. S. citizens' reactions to the torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately we humans seems to be infinitely creative when it comes to the justification of cruelty.
Miles