The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance relates to an individual’s inability to accept new information. There is a threshold of resistance to be overcome, due to their cognition or ‘world view’, which has been built up over their lifetime.

Bizarre behaviour, can be exhibited by people, who find their position untenable on some matters. In extreme cases, psychiatric patients have even been unable to actually hear particular words associated with their disabilities.

The following example of cognitive dissonance cost millions of lives, as it led to World War 1. We experience cognitive dissonance in our daily lives, let us hope it never has such an effect again.

The Sarajevo Crisis followed the assassination of the heir to the Hapsburg Empire and his wife by a young Serbian nationalist.

The incident, which occurred in the capital of Bosnia, involved a group of conspirators acting with the prior knowledge and material assistance of the Serbian government and its General Staff.

At first it appeared that the crisis would abate. By late July 1914, however, tension had mounted following an Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. As in the Bosnian Crisis of 1908 – 1909, Germany stood by its ally. Unlike the earlier period, however, France supported Russia; the latter in its turn agreed to aid Serbia in the event of an Austrian attack.

A complicated series of partial and full mobilisations, declarations of war, and movements across national frontiers in late July and early August finally involved five of the six European major powers in a general conflict.

Japan, the only Asian major power in the system, declared war against Germany and Austria-Hungary a few weeks later. Italy followed suit in 1915, as did the United States in 1917.

The World War 1 mobilisation plans were based on the assumption that the advantage lay with the offense and that speed was of the essence. European leaders believed that a one to three day lead in mobilisation would be militarily significant for the course of the war, leaving those who delayed vulnerable against their better prepared adversaries.

These perceptions created enormous incentives to strike first, which placed a premium on rapid mobilisation plans, and which in turn required detailed advance planning. The entire process would be conducted by rail, and general staffs had been working for years to perfect their timetables. Thus the railroad timetables became exceedingly complex and left little margin for error.

In countries such as Russia, the whole plan of mobilisation was worked out ahead to its end in all its details. When the moment was chosen, one had only to press the button, and the whole state would begin to function automatically with the precision of a clock’s mechanism.

The direct link between mobilisation and war was particularly compelling in the German Case. The German Schlieffen Plan, was designed in response to the threat of a two front war, called for a holding action against Russia in the East while the bulk of the German Forces were directed against France in the West.

Chief of Staff von Schlieffen recognizing the strength of the French forces along the Alsace – Lorraine frontier and entranced by Hannibal’s double envelopment of the Romans at Cannae, concluded that the French could be quickly defeated only by an enveloping movement through Belgium. But any advance through Belgium required the seizure of Leige, an absolutely vital railway junction.

The seizure of Leige had to be quick and surgical, so as not to destroy its vital tunnels and bridges. This required ‘meticulous preparation and surprise’ and had to be achieved before Liege could be reinforced, and thus immediately after declaration of war if not before. Complicating this was the fact that the railway lines required that four German armies, over 840,000 men, had to be routed through a single junction at Aachen.

Because mobilisation was a tightly coupled system in which many discrete elements had to mesh with perfect timing, no change or improvisation was perceived as possible during mobilisation. Any delay in German mobilisation might jeopardise the rapid defeat of France that was perceived to be essential in a two front war. Some have argued however, that strategically sound alternatives to the Schlieffen Plan did exist, and that Germany could have directed her offensive to the East in a Russo-German war if such action were warranted by political conditions.

The development of German military plans without regard for political considerations had enormous consequences. The problem of civilian lack of understanding of military matters is compounded if the military is unaware of this ignorance. Admiral Tirpitz tells of how ‘horror-stricken’ he and Chief of Staff Moltke were to discover that political authorities had been unaware of the plan to seize Liege, and observed that the ‘political leadership had completely lost its head’.

Cognitive theory suggests that individuals are more responsive to new information which supports their preexisting beliefs than to information that contradicts it, and consequently there is a tendency to discount warnings that military plans are inadequate.

This ‘irrational consistency’ also leads policymakers to fail to recognise the existence of conflicting objectives and the need to make value trade-offs among them, resulting in a tendency to inflate both the value of the objectives and policy aims to achieve them, and the probability of success. At the same time both the likelihood of negative outcomes and their costs are minimised.

There is also a tendency for policymakers to become convinced not only that their plan is on balance superior to alternatives, but that it is superior in every possible respect.

This is perhaps one explanation for German insensitivity in 1914 to the likelihood and cost of British intervention, given the perceived necessity of the rapid defeat of France through an invasion of Belgium.

Even more important in reinforcing commitment to existing plans is the cognitive phenomenon of post-decision rationalising or bolstering, which Festinger (1957) attempts to explain in his theory of cognitive dissonance.

To satisfy a cognitive need to justify their actions, individuals tend subsequently to modify their perceptions and beliefs and ‘spread apart’ the earlier alternatives – upgrading the perceived benefits and diminishing the perceived costs of the alternatives they have chosen, while doing the opposite for those they rejected. This increases the threshold of new information required to trigger a change in preference and hence increases resistance to policy change.

These tendencies undoubtedly solidified commitments to the Schlieffen Plan and other military plans in 1914. The rest is history, however the fact that the Australian Defence Force has adopted Australian Standard AS4360 – Risk Management for its operations may comfort some people.

Reference:

Choices in World Politics Sovereignty and Interdependence

Russett, Starr, Stoll

Publisher: W.H. Freeman and Company

41 Madison Avenue, New York

ISBN 0-7167-2018-3