Cognitive Dissonance
We constantly make decisions: we choose an iPhone instead of a Samsung, vote for him instead of her, eat meat instead of becoming a vegetarian. Then new information emerges that calls our decision into question. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort that arises when we hold beliefs or perform actions that contradict other perceptions or information. But once we've made a decision, our psyche is programmed to defend it.
We begin to exaggerate the virtues of the option we chose and diminish the value of the one we rejected. New information is filtered, softened, or dismissed altogether if it threatens the coherence of our earlier judgement. Anyone invested in the belief that development aid is a moral imperative and should increase is unlikely to welcome a finding that traditional aid hasn't really worked that well. Hence, failures must be explained away or put into perspective. Such as in: Perhaps there were good reasons for a project to flop. External circumstances were unfavourable. Much bigger programmes achieved much less. Funding was not sufficient.
This mechanism is useful for preserving psychological stability, but fateful for making aid more effective. The intellectually honest response to new evidence should be simple: I was mistaken. Reality requires me to revise my thinking.
Commitment
Commitment is the mental and emotional attachment to a goal, identity, institution, or course of action over time. Development work demands unusually high levels of personal investment compared with most domestic professions. Aid workers leave home, distance themselves from family and long-standing friendships, learn new languages, adapt to unfamiliar cultures, eat unfamiliar food, and absorb the uncertainties of volatile environments. The municipal administrator in Düsseldorf or the engineer in Birmingham is not generally asked to reinvent his entire existence every three years.
The heightened investment by the Development Strategist vastly increases psychological commitment. It becomes harder to admit that things may not function as advertised.
Social Recognition
Human beings crave social recognition and belonging. For development strategists, this sense of belonging is reinforced by a powerful moral narrative. Aid workers are widely regarded, not least by aid workers themselves, as people who care more than ordinary mortals. While others merely live their lives, aid workers are believed to sacrifice comfort in service of humanity, particularly children and the vulnerable. Like firefighters or missionaries, they are imagined as selfless individuals serving a greater good.
Whether deserved or not, this image dramatically intensifies emotional attachment within the aid community. And as Oscar Wilde once quipped: “Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.”
Dissent carries social costs. To question organizational orthodoxy risks tension with colleagues, loss of friendships, and awkward meetings - if not exclusion from a moral community.
Career
Before moving the entire discussion into the realm of morality, let us be realistic: development work is also a career.
Our salaries, allowances, tax privileges and pensions compare favorably with those of alternative professions. And after long years inside the aid system, many development strategists discover another embarrassing truth: their expertise is limited to mastering the rituals of international bureaucracy itself. Intellectual rebellion becomes economically hazardous.
Antidote: Stick to Your Values, Not Your Past Opinions
Many people confuse their identity with their opinions. But opinions merely help us understand reality. Facts change. Evidence accumulates. Knowledge evolves. Our thinking must evolve with it.
It is healthier to anchor identity not in fixed opinions, but in enduring values. One can continue to engage in fighting poverty, to protect children and generally remain a caring person, while accepting new ways on how all this can best be achieved. You can change your views but remain true to your values.
Antidote: Enjoy Learning
Thomas Edison reportedly made thousands of unsuccessful attempts before finding suitable materials for the incandescent light bulb filament. Reflecting on this process, he famously said: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
Similarly, Daniel Kahneman, known for his seminal work on judgement and decision-making, once remarked that he enjoyed discovering he had been wrong, because it meant he was now less wrong than before.
Hi Detlef - I agree that we see examples of doubling down on opinions despite evidence all around us, although I'm not sure it is worse in Aid/Development than it is in other areas - there are plenty of highly visible examples in economics, politics and diplomacy too right now.
ReplyDeleteFor development workers I think it is related to the level of intellectual and emotional investment we have made in something we have dedicated our lives to, AND the wish to avoid looking like we don't know what we are doing lest it affect our next posting or donor grant. I also think in development work we overestimate our ability to plan and control all the variables needed for success and underestimate the benefits of flexibility to respond to emerging issues.
It's one thing for individuals to be willing to learn though - but they also respond to incentives, and I think that unfortunately development organizations and the people that fund them prefer to hear about successes that to open discuss failure and would rather spin a success story out of a situation than take a hard look at what needs to change. This means the individuals working in aid are likely to respond to what is rewarded - I can learn on my own time - but not sure I'll be rewarded for making that learning too visible if the truth is uncomfortable.
I agree - working most of my career in P, M& E - I have rarely seen a strong M or E that is hard hitting and admits failure and uses it as a learning moment. Likewise with our PER system and wanting to not fail to make a smooth exit to next posting. I once had deprep who asked us to identify failed pilots so we could learn - we did find about 25 pilots over 4 CPDs of which only 1 “went to scale by government” - the rest we could not muster the will to critique them or learn why they did not work. In the worst case where a firm was hired to evaluate a district programme - when the entire office could not accept that 20 years of effort failed - then they reverted to belittling the firm and the method used and doubled down on it.
ReplyDeleteLOL one of my adaptive responses - don't like the challenging findings, criticize the data collection methodology.
DeleteThis is a thoughtful piece. It requires a degree of humility to recognise cognitive dissonance in ourselves. Learning often begins at the moment we become willing to say, "I may have been wrong."
ReplyDeleteOne can remain committed to protecting children and improving people's lives while changing one's views about which approaches actually work. Revising our thinking is not a betrayal of our values; it is a way to remain faithful to them.
The comments about career incentives and the costs of dissent resonate. Organisations rarely reward uncomfortable truths, even when those truths are necessary for improvement.
Whatever our differences on particular issues, I think we can agree that honesty is a quality worth cultivating.
Detlef, you brilliantly brought in cognitive dissonance in your piece- several decades ago as a student of psychology the text book example used was red car versus green car which you substituted with Samsung vs IPhone!!
ReplyDeleteI would like to add that the willingness to accept mistakes, analysis, seek learning opportunities, update your knowledge and keep abreast with new thinking is essential for developing alternatives and solutions. DHR’s attempts to fulfil new learnings were perfunctory and certainly inadequate to what was required in many situations.
Oh great — one more piece about how UNICEF wasted the last eighty years, not to mention it's donors' money and he careers of all us amateurs. And it is all because we never got properly trained as "development experts." Worse, it's because we suffered cognitive dissonance when the 'expertly experts' told us to focus on helping governments build dams, power grids and airports and hospitals rather than village schools and clinics.
ReplyDeleteSo do tell us please: how exactly does one do development? Or do it right? Let's see - perhaps the World Bank, the IMF, and (very occasionally) UNDP are the expertly experts — surely they have figured it out by now?
Is it possible that cognitive dissonance runs in both directions. After all, it was UNICEF — the organisation that knows nothing but does everything — that told the World Bank and the IMF in Development with a Human Face that they were measuring human development wrong, and that structural adjustment was killing children. Chalk one up to the amateurs!
In your earlier piece "Where UNICEF Got It Wrong," you noted — almost in passing — that dropping the 'E' from UNICEF's name never made it a development organisation. You were right. And perhaps because the last thing the world needed back then, or now, was yet another development agency.
UNICEF's mandate was always child rights, not development. We were not failed development workers. We were child rights advocates who now seem desperate to apologize for having done our jobs.
Anonymous raises an important point. UNICEF is not the World Bank, and few were economists or "development experts." We advocated, delivered services, supported governments, and tried to improve children's lives. But perhaps that makes self-reflection more important, not less. Recognising that some approaches did not achieve what we hoped is not the same as saying that UNICEF achieved nothing. It is simply an acknowledgement that good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes.
DeleteMany of the countries where we worked fell further behind relative to others. Yet we did not stop to ask if our assumptions were wrong, or what we might have done differently. Too often, challenging findings were dismissed, and uncomfortable evidence explained away.
@Anonymous, thank you for diligently reading my column, even though you seem to disagree with the views it presents.
DeleteI never said that everything UNICEF has done over the last 80 years has been ineffective. However, times have changed, and what may have been useful 80 years ago may no longer be appropriate today. More disturbingly, there appears to be little evidence that lessons from the past have been learned.
Thank you also for mentioning Adjustment with a Human Face (AWHF), a book that everyone quotes but that almost nobody in UNICEF has actually read. Its content is complex, but its importance lies in the simplicity of its message. One could debate whether it was this book itself, or whether the time had simply come for World Bank and IMF economists to reconsider their structural adjustment policies. We can all agree, however, that AWHF was a major milestone, resulting from excellent research, serious debate about development, and a substantial academic effort.
This stands in stark contrast to what 99% of UNICEF's resources and funding (disaster relief operations aside) are spent on today: administering funds in homeopathic portions to often tiny projects with little demonstrable impact, talking largely to ourselves, and substituting government decision-making with a parallel universe of services that remain dependent on aid.
What a piece! This is refreshing. A call to reflect on what is most important - our values and embracing learning through the journey. It is easy to become a dissonant with our true self by becoming what we do rather than what we are.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Detlef for this. But who is at fault? The development worker or the system? or those who built the system and did not want to change the system? Many among us who are members of this group have spent their sweat and tears in UNICEF HQs in senior & influential positions; why were they not able to change the system that would have resolved many of the dissonances you referred to. Instead, the practice is not to repair but to create another leaving the issue/problem intact. I give you one example. I was getting rid of one underperforming staff (P4). S/he had even agreed for separation after several discussions. I got messages from the First Secretary of the UK Embassy confirming how happy they were with her/his work. I got a similar message from Head of one big international organisation. Guess, what happened? S/he was transferred and even promoted to the position of Deputy Rep to another country. Here is the best part. I got a call from the Head of this International organisation (despite s/he being retained in UNICEF) threatening that the caller will make sure that I will be made to pay for not taking her/his advice. Where is the problem? Worker? System?
DeleteThe problem is simple: the formal chain of accountability ceases to function, and a more powerful, parallel chain of incentives fills the vacuum. Institutions are rarely undone by a lack of rules; they are undone when incentives encourage people to circumvent them. History is full of examples.
DeleteSo the real test is straightforward: if you had reported the case through the proper channels, would you have been praised, protected, and rewarded, or marginalised, sidelined, and punished?
If the latter is true, then the institution was not governed by its formal accountability mechanisms. It was governed by incentives.
Yes, I reported to the Regional Director and the Director of the Programme Division. Never heard back.
Delete@Ramesh and Thomas: It seems that both of you experienced the dissonance between what you thought should happen and how reality actually evolved. But let us not confuse ourselves.
DeleteUN development organizations were designed by their member states, and their Executive Boards determine direction, strategy, and oversight. One may debate whether an Executive Board that traditionally approves decisions unanimously and on a “no-objection” basis is genuinely interested in change.
Threats and bribery are not “incentives” but forms of external interference, and a well-run organization would be expected to guard against them. One may also debate whether management applies the available tools to their fullest extent.
Ramesh's example is not evidence that formal accountability exists and was just undermined by unfortunate events. It is evidence that the formal chain of accountability failed. Ramesh followed it to the letter, yet the outcome rewarded the behaviour it was supposed to correct and ignored the person who raised the concern. Whatever terminology one prefers—external interference, informal networks, political pressure, or incentives—the effect is the same: the de facto system of accountability differed from the formal one. Institutions are governed not by the rules written on paper, but by the consequences people observe in practice.
DeleteCompanies resolve the muddle between accountability, responsibility, and morality because their systems force alignment: boards hold authority, managers hold execution, incentives reward performance, and consequences are real. Institutions cannot replicate this because authority is diffuse, incentives are misaligned, and consequences are unclear. This creates a culture in which avoiding blame is rational and owning outcomes is not.
DeleteWell-run institutions neutralise blame avoidance by having leaders absorb political fallout, clearly defining tasks and expected results, and making performance measurable. Independent watchdogs enforce consequences when necessary. When authority, responsibility, transparency, and external scrutiny are aligned, hiding from outcomes becomes harder than owning them. It's basic institutional engineering, not rocket science.
DeleteThanks Detlef for your article on cognitive dissonace. I enjoy and learn from your style of writng.I added the quotes from Albert Einstein and Daniel Kahnamen to my quotes book to use in my evaluation training sessions. Just to share an opinion I have been holding and think that there in increasing evidence (This may be cognitive dissonance) is that aid the way it has been delivered has not been effective in supporting developemnt. Aid has generally provided financial and technical assisstance for governments to perform essential functions. We have provided the fish but not how to fish. I ask myself the question, Hiw did the developed countries devwlop without aid. And has aid not quashed initiative? This does not mean aid is not necessary. It is, but in a manner that is supportive of innovation and self reliance. Ofcourse affirmative action, humanitariance assisstance is need. It is time to critically review how aid helped and perhaps have hindered development. We need to do this against cognitive dissonance and take action.Just some simple thoughts.
ReplyDeleteDevelopment cannot be donated. Africa is riddled with proof that foreign aid does not work. Tanzania is just one case among many. At independence, Tanzania’s GDP per capita was over 60% of the global average; today, it has cratered to less than 10%.
DeleteIt is encouraging, though, that even on this blog, there is an embryo of a realisation: aid does not work as intended. In fact, it often achieves the opposite. Ample evidence proves that prolonged aid dependence guts the foundations of development. Tanzania is a masterclass in how external funding destroys domestic capability.
Development happens when countries put the horse before the cart; do not wait for handouts; grow their economies; accumulate capital (a concept treated like a dirty word by development idealists); expand productive capacity, and tax their citizens. By taxing their people, governments become accountable to them. They create institutions and expand public services. Development is earned from within; it is not delivered from outside.
Consider an obvious question: how did today's wealthy nations develop? The answer is simple. They mobilised domestic resources, unleashed enterprise, built functional states, and established a social contract between the state and the taxpayer.
Nevertheless, the myths of "successful" aid are persistent. The poster children of the aid industry, South Korea, Taiwan, and post-war Germany, are dishonest examples. These nations succeeded because they already possessed the ingredients that matter: state capacity and human capital, and their governments were ruthlessly committed to economic growth. Aid may have provided a bonus, but did not create their success; it just took the credit for it. Aid only works where it is not really needed.
Thanks Soma, you ask pertinent questions. Aid may help, but it does not drive development. It can accelerate development when a country has set the right priorities, has a government that cares about its people, and benefits from favorable external conditions, such as reduced trade barriers and supportive policies from other countries.
Delete