[Fwd: Views of War and The Psychology of Inevitability]

[The Watcher]

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Views of War and The Psychology of Inevitability
Date:	Wed, 19 Mar 2003 01:05:11 -0500
From:	The Watcher <voy...@usermail.com>
Newsgroups:	alt.peace,alt.war,alt.politics.bush,alt.fan.noam-chomsky

In the following two reports of poll results, separated by several 
months, one can see a shift from less to more support for war with Iraq.

August 23, 2002 Posted: 2:10 PM EDT (1810 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A new poll suggests that support for a proposed U.S. 
attack against the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has fallen 
off in the past two months and the public is split over whether the 
United States will actually be at war with Iraq by the end of the year.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/08/23/cnn.poll.iraq/index.html

Tuesday, March 18, 2003 Posted: 3:46 PM EST (2046 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- With the nation on the brink of war, two-thirds of 
all Americans say they approve of President Bush's stark ultimatum to 
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and say they believe he did all he could to 
resolve the crisis diplomatically, according to a new CNN/USA 
TODAY/Gallup poll. 
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/18/sprj.irq.bush.poll/index.html


Why more Americans might now be favoring a war with Iraq

When one is faced with an inevitable, unpleasant outcome, one attempts
to minimize the unpleasantness of the situation. This is an example of
"cognitive dissonance." When children volunteered to eat a disliked
vegetable, those told to expect to eat more of it in the future came to
believe the vegetable was not so bad after all (in The Social Animal,
1999, by Elliot Aronson, pg. 229). The bombardment in the media of war
with Iraq over the past few months (e.g., CNN's  "Showdown: Iraq," and
MSNBC's "Countdown: Iraq") and public threats of war by the President
and his aids - which were close to promises - all contributed to a
psychology of inevitability. The effect of such messeges possibly
created cognitive dissonance among the American people. Was this effect
intentional? I do not know. But the experiment mentioned above suggests
that as Americans came to realize that war was inevitable, they began to
minimize any negative consequences they might have previously imagined.
For example, one person in a newsgroup on the Iraq war stated that most
of the war victims would be Saddam's "henchmen" rather than innocent
civilians. Other influences undoubtedly played a role in the American's
support for war. Another common method to eleviate cognitive dissonance
in such instances of inevitability is to exaggerate the benefits in the
unpleasant outcome, e.g., democracy will spread throughout the Middle
East. Now, a legitimate question would be, "Why has not the whole world
succumbed to these social influences." The answer is not easy. Perhaps
the US media is not as prevalent in other parts of the world. Another
explanation is that many Americans associate Saddam Hussein with the
9-11 attacks (a whole other subject in psychological manipulation).
Maybe there was cognitive dissonance in other countries, but the effect
was not significant enough to be noticed (e.g., instead of 90% being
against the war before believing it inevitable, "only" 80% opposed the
war after being led to believe war was inevitable). If this theory is
supported, we will be wise to inform the public of this subtle, yet
effective influence on attitudes and beliefs. Hopefully, being aware of
the psychology of inevitability will reduce its effect. Ignorance of
this psychological manipulation could be a matter of life or death,
especially when a decision for or against a war is involved.