Freedom to Extremism – Cognitive Dissonance and the Free Choice Paradigm

Abstract

In the heavy traffic of the internet’s platforms, corporations, governments, and our own avatars wage a battle for exposure. As psychological research makes advertisement more targeted, effective, and personalized, technology is rapidly increasing advertisement ‘attack surface’ through a plethora of platforms (increasing psychological load and impact). However, on the other end, individuals spend increasingly more time having to compare between what they possess and whatever they are being presented, whether it be another individual’s lifestyle, a political ideology, or a particularly shiny shampoo. As dissonance research suggests, each of these dichotomies causes a psychological strain, dissonance, that we are driven to reduce. In cases of successful advertisement, the discomfort’s ransom is paid and some sort of exchange is made. On the flip side, when what is presented is rejected, dissonance reduction mechanisms cause an incremental off-centering of per-episode opinion of either the held or presented. Through repetition, this paper posits that the rejecting notion and reduction pathway are reinforced and gradually opinions trend to the extremes. Dissonance and group dynamics research mesh to suggest this strain would cause ‘bubbling’ in social “discrimination” as the group becomes a vehicle of dissonance reduction and an accelerator for radicalization of attitude and ideology.