Confusion

     Some people staunchly defend their opinions and beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Why? 

     One explanation is cognitive dissonance. Cognition is simply thinking and reasoning. It’s how we gain knowledge and understanding. Dissonance is a musical term that means a lack of harmony among musical notes, but it also means there is a clash that results from contradictory information. 

     In psychology, cognitive dissonance is mental discomfort that is triggered when a person's belief clashes with new evidence they have been introduced to.

     To reduce the psychological discomfort, they will have to change either their mind or their behavior to resolve the mental conflict and thus restore their mental and emotional harmony. Thus, many people will people will simply refuse to consider anything that does not agree with their beliefs. Instead, they prefer to vigorously defend, excuse, justify and keep their beliefs even when confronted with irrefutable proof they are wrong...it’s just easier that way! 

     To reduce dissonance, or , mental discomfort, a person can 1) change their behavior or belief so that it’s in line with the new information. 2) justify their behavior or belief by changing the conflicting information or 3) ignore or deny information that conflicts with their existing beliefs. 

     For example when a person, any person, be it a politician, religious leader, family member, anybody, has been shown to have lied, cheated, stolen or committed crimes that would send most people to jail, many people will still vigorously defend them despite credible and incriminating evidence. By doing so they reduce their cognitive dissonance. 

     Very often people will just ignore or deny information that conflicts with their existing beliefs by claiming it’s fake news or part of a conspiracy theory. 

     In the Bible, in the book of Jonah, God spoke of more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left. He was referring to the people of Nineveh who could not tell right from wrong. Last year Arizona state lawyers and the U.S. Supreme Court’s majority showed that they, too, cannot tell right from wrong. 

     The Supreme Court ruled that a person no longer has the constitutional right to present new evidence in federal court to support claims that they weren’t adequately represented at trial or on appeal. What that means is that there is no longer a safeguard against prosecutorial and judicial errors or misconduct. 

     People who have been wrongfully convicted are now left with nowhere to turn. It also increases the likelihood that some innocent prisoners will be executed. 

     The justices ruled 6-3 against two men sentenced to death in Arizona for murder who petitioned to present new evidence in their cases. In 2018, a federal court overturned one of the prisoner’s conviction because he did not receive effective counsel, a violation of his Sixth Amendment rights. In other words, the prisoner had a crappy court appointed lawyer who failed to even try and adequately represent him. The judge ruled that if he had received proper legal representation there was “a reasonable probability that his jury would not have convicted him of any of the crimes with which he was charged and previously convicted.” 

     Arizona’s attorney general appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. During their arguments the state prosecutors repeatedly argued that “innocence isn’t enough” of a reason to throw out a conviction. And, the Supreme Court agreed that innocence is not enough to keep the prisoner off of death row even if there exists a preponderance of evidence that he committed no crime.THAT IS A VERY SCARY RULING!