Interesting question.

First, I would be careful using the concept of evolution and cognitive dissonance as two distinct factors. (BTW nothing can "stop" evolution, evolution may be "altered" in some ways, but it is not "stoppable") In fact, I think I would argue that what psychologists describe as "cognitive dissonance", and way our brains are dealing with it, is a consequence of evolutionary adaptation.

The discomfort by getting two (or more) mismatched inputs is dealt with by changing the individual feeling about on or the other, which, of course, is accompanied by discomfort till the decisions are made. The way people are choosing their decision is actually depending (to some degree) on their social and cultural environment and therefore it strengthens the social community. This response alone may not be evolutionary stable because it would lead to a very conservative society, without much change, because the opinion of the majority would hold progressive minds back (and I would argue that this is happening to some extend). However, when comparing two different inputs, also the validity of those inputs is compared (e.g. to scientific results etc.) and justified. To have a good judgement system and allow changes in opposition to the opinion of the majority is an adaptive value, I would argue.

Second, to discard one of the inputs is one way to deal with it. However, answers to cognitive dissonance situation may be leading to a compromise, to a new solution to the problem. And this ability has a high adaptive value I think, and makes complex societies possible, because we are able to do it.

To summarize, I think that evolution has driven the ability to deal with cognitive dissociation, by allowing to judge different information on their viability (for each individual) and also allows to think about new alternatives, which contains a compromise of both available informations. - If this leads to a big struggle and the individual cannot find a viable compromise they will still discard all but one options.

Thanks for the interesting thoughts! Lukas

Thank you Lukas for your comments,

in particular that "stopping evolution" may be an ambiguous statement.

I am not sure that your suggestion about creative influence of cognitive dissonance (CD) responds to my concern about the opposite effect of CD. There have been several publications suggesting that CD is an evolutionary adaptation, but there have been no convincing argument that CD would help accumulating knowledge and human cultural evolution.

Creative resolution of a contradiction requires an ability to HOLD contradictory knowledge. CD PREVENTS holding contradictory knowledge and induces irrational discarding of contradictory knowledge. This is the definition of CD, which you can check, e.g. in Wikipedia, and which is well demonstrated in thousands of experiments since the 1950s. In a recent paper (Perlovsky, Cababnac, et al 2012) we have demonstrated that stress from CD during academic tests REDUCES time students spend on solving more difficult problems, even so this results in lower grades. So the effect of CD is anti-creative. This has been well known to Ancient Greeks 2,600 years ago: Aesop fable about The Fox and The Grapes describes the Fox, which made irrrational decision to resolve CD: "the grape is sour."

I would emphasize that cognitive dissonance (CD) is invoked not only by two elements of contradictory knowledge, but also by one element of knowledge contradicting to an inborn instinct. Instincts predate knowledge and exert more powerful effect on behavior than a recent and uncertain knowledge, therefore CD should have stopped knowledge accumulation and human cultural evolution.

You might be correct that genetic evolution might be independent from CD and a slow genetic evolution might have continued. But this is unlikely to lead to evolution of humans. Human evolution requires accumulation of knowledge in the mind, not in genes.

So it seems Cognitive Dissonance should have prevented human evolution. This "shadow" over one of the most interesting and well documented areas of cognitive psychology remains unresolved.

Well, when consulting wikipedia for the definition you provided I found also following:

"Cognitive dissonance is the term used in modern psychology to describe the state of people when holding two or more conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously."

and also:

"According to Festinger, we engage in a process he termed "dissonance reduction", which he said could be achieved in one of three ways: lowering the importance of one of the discordant factors, adding consonant elements, or changing one of the dissonant factors.[8] This bias gives the theory its explanatory power, shedding light on otherwise puzzling, irrational, and even destructive behavior."

I usually would not cite wikipedia, but, admittedly, I am not a psychologist nor anthropologist, so it was the fastest way to find the definitions I was looking for. (However, I would consider myself to be interested in those matters).

So, the statements above clearly show, as you said, that CD can produce an irrational discard of cognitions, but also "adding consonant elements" or "lowering importances". That means, it has not to be just 'black' or 'white', there is something in-between.

However, concerning your arguments about "anti-creativity" of CD. I would ask the question: "Why should CD be enhancing creativity?". If CD evolved because the humans "needed it" to cope with cognitive conflicts and to enhance the capability to form larger groups etc, why should we expect CD also to enhance creativity? There might be other evolutionary drivers which are working against an extreme form of CD, but work in favor of "creativity". CD can be irrational in one situation but favorable in another, same with "creativity".

there are some cultures like asian(india, china) where two opposite propositions can be true. because these culture belive that reality changes with time, place etc. so both the sides of an argument is true without having opposite statement (nisbett and others), so these cultures(asian) will not have problems of cognitive dissonance. it means that asians would have more survival benefit.

evolution is very long process, i think that MODERN WESTERN LOGIC is relatively very recent invention. and logic is compulsory to have cognitive dissonance. so before the development of logic no effect of CD, and even after development of logic, asians will have no/less CD , no adverse effect on development.

I would argue that, in economics terms, the utility of having technology to compensate for biological inadequacies was greater than the utility of not experiencing slight psychological discomfort that arises from cognitive dissonance. Since evolution selects for the traits that are more beneficial to the individual (and arguably the society or species as a whole) then this would lead to the conclusion that knowledge is selected for by evolution. Perhaps cognitive dissonance has decreased over time (and many thousands of human generations) and still remains useful as a tool for us to think objectively and question ourselves. Perhaps it is also a necessary evil for having self-awareness.

Dear Lucas,

Festiger is great, but let us not forget, he was the first who made CD a part of contemporary psychology, this was almost 60 years ago. Thousands of papers and books have been published since. "...adding consonant elements, or changing one of the dissonant factors" - is usually done in experiments under the guidance of an axperimenter. Of course people can also themselves ovecome CD tension - otherwise there will be no knowledge. But this is not caused by CD, it is a way of OVERCOMING CD. My question is HOW? what is the cognitive mechanism that helps us doing this?

You are right in that CD is useful (1) because maintaining the wholeness of one's psyche is more important for survival than infitely wondering about what one does not understand, (2) when it is necessary to make decision fast, (3) when it is necessary to maintain social coherence.

And you are obviously right saying that that there should be other creative drivers. This is exactly what I want to emphasize - among thousands papers about CD emphasizing resulting irrationality, I did not see studies of creative drivers overcoming CD. I did not see a concentration on the fact that human cultural evolution have accumulated a lot of contradictory knowledge despite CD. Irrationality is ubiquitos, but not a defining factor of human evolution. My question is exactly about what are these defining factors.

Indrajeet,

A very interesting point. It suggests that CD experiments should be performed in Asian countries (selecting Asian American students in US universities might be inadequate). And in general, intercultural comparisons are of great interest.

In reality it seems, your hypothesis about absense of CD in Asian cultures does not seem to be correct.

A recent paper (Masataka & Perlovsky 2012) describes experiments conducted in Kyoto University with 4-year old Japanese kids as participants. One part of the experiment reproduced a classical CD experiment since the 1950s, with the same results - Japanese kids experienced CD and discarded contradictions the same way as American kids, and the same way as Aesopean Fox in Ancient Greece 2,600 years ago - before Aristotle and logic.

Our hypothesis is that music is the driver that helps holding contradictory knowledge. And the second part of this experiments has confirmed this hypothesis.

Jonathan

Of course you are right, the evolution has selected humans that can accumuate knowledge. However even today it takes decades to establish usefulness of any new piece of knowledge. If you publish a scientific paper, you will see how long it will take to be read and quoted by other people (if you do not count your professor, his students, your students and other people interested due to interests unrelated to knowledge - it is all good, but not wha we try here to understand). So how knowledge contradicting to powerful inborn instincts could be accumulated, before usefulness of this knowledge was firmly established?

i think CD may help also in the development of knowledge. for e.g. contradiction in the modern science is key to other studies.

and one more statistical argument: suppose there are N number of cognition pieces(arguments/preposition) .this N will be very big tending to infinite

and there are K no of people in the world(k is also very big)

now there will be many pairs of pieces of cognition.

probability of being contradictory peices in a given pair will be very less

even going the contradiction pair to the same person will be very very low

and there is temporal gap also so coming both the cotradictory pieces at the same time, its probability is also very very low

and in the situations where there is lack of modern day communication, probability of reaching all the pairs to all the person /cotradictory pairs to all the persons is very low

SO CD IS STATISTICALY VERY VERY LOW PROBABLE EVENT, DOESNT MATTER FOR EVOLUTION

Believing something is right (thus removing much of the problem you are referring to) and that actual piece of knowledge being correct are not necessarily one and the same. Religion and arguably science are simply people believing they are right. CD is activated only when your beliefs (not necessarily facts) are questioned. Once it is activated, your mind acts quickly to negate the CD. It's a necessary response to living in a random and chaotic existence. You can also insert quantum mechanics into this argument, which says that an unobserved object can be both in location A and location B at the same time; that is, until its observed. I still believe CD is an evolutionary response created in order to resolve knowledge. I don't see it as preventing knowledge at all.

Indrajeet,

CD does not concern contradictions between different people. CD is about contradictions between elements of knowledge in one person's mind.

Every two elements of knowledge are contradictory to some extent, otherwise they will not be different. Even a minute difference, such as a choice between coke and sprite requires a decision and therefore some emotional involvement, in other words, it involves contradictions. The number of these contradictions is near infinite. CD are involved in every minute decisions. We do not notice this, because we are solving these small differences very well, without noticing them; we are overcoming CD very well. The question is how do we do this? What are cognitive mechanisms that do it so easily?

Jonathan,

Science and religion is an excellent topic, it is so important that it deserves a separate discussion. And actually this discussion is going on RG separately under a topic of Science and Religion.

"I don't see it (CD) as preventing knowledge at all" - think again - it is an excellent example of a CD resulting as expected in rejection of knowledge. You rejected a contradiction, and you lost an opportunity to find a new knowledge. (See recent publications Masataka & Perlovsky 2012; Perlovsky, Cabanac et al 2012)

Do you treat having two logically inconsistent beliefs as equivalent to emotional conflict from finding two mutually exclusive courses of action that are similarly attractive? In your other question on cognitive dissonance, you include the second meaning. I thought contradiction is only the first, holding two beliefs which imply that a proposition must be both true and not true.

My understanding is that you experience conflict if you both want to have your cake and eat it, but you are aware you can't do both. A contradiction only occurs if you believe that you can do both. I think the difference between contradiction and conflict is important. Only contradiction involves epistemic irrationality right from the start. Conflict may secondarily generate epistemic irrationality if the conflict is resolved by adopting beliefs that either contradict each other or a belief that contradicts the best interpretation of available evidence.

If you accept that distinction, it no longer makes sense to say that "Every two elements of knowledge are contradictory to some extent, otherwise they will not be different." Euclids five postulates are definitely different, but not logically inconsistent. They don't contradict each other.

When cognitive dissonance is a response more to contradiction than conflict, then if the response is to examine the logical relationships and/or collect evidence until at least one of the contradictory beliefs is proven wrong, then cognitive dissonance is an engine of new learning and could be favoured by individual level selection. further, the new learning triggered by a desire to remove contradictions would provide material for cultural evolution. At least kin selection should favour that trait in biological evolution.

When cognitive dissonance is a response to conflict, then deciding that one option is not so important, or calling to mind reasons to prefer one option seems instrumentally rational, and it does not have to be epistemically irrational. Only changing your beliefs about one option merely to justify a decision would always be epistemically irrational.

My impression is that your argument depends on two points that I believe to be wrong:

1) You do not seem to make a distinction between contradiction in the sense of logical inconsistency and conflict in the sense of having trouble to decide what you like better.

2) You say that beliefs that are not identical must contradict each other.

As I understand your argument, you then say that each new piece of knowledge makes people feel more uncomfortable, that therefore people should stop learning very quickly. I am not clear about the conclusion you draw regarding evolution. Are you saying that if discomfort discourages people from learning, there will be no variation in behaviour on which selection could act? I don't think that follows either, unless you assume that everyone is equally susceptible to cognitive dissonance. That seems unlikely.

CD will occur if humans are rational but there are many stances where rationality assumption does not hold true. even the subjective maening of two pieces of knowledge will vary people to people and time to time. all knows that alcohol is injurious to health still many drinks. it mayhappen that even having CD, we can keep both the knowledge.

Many things are called CD. I consider a most simple, standard, and confirmed by hundreds of experiments:

CD is the feeling of discomfort when holding two or more conflicting cognitions.

It has nothing to do with ASSUMING logic, or rationality, or anything. It is a fact of human psychology.

It is known to lead to discarding contradictory knowledge; it is experimentally proven. This is how people behave today. Every knowledge-cognition contradicts instincts and every other knowledge. This slows an ability to acquire knowledge.

It follows that 2 mln years ago when language started emerging, CD should have lead to discarding abilities for language and for acquiring knowledge.

The question remains unanswered: how was human cultural evolution possible?

the neural correlates for cognitive dissonance is dorsolateral PFC and ACC to my knowledge. as the frontal cortex in humans came later in evolution, the CD would have not been peresent in species not having PFC or less developed PFC.

somatic marker hpothesis(damasio1991) and risk as feelings(lowenstein) suggests that the relationship between the cognition and emotional system is not efficient like the connections between emotion to cognition. CD suggets that discomfort(emotion) is the results of cognition. this process will be very slow and weak. i dont know what is the effect of anticipated and anticipatory emotions on CD. but it seems that the CD evoking emotion is overestimated.

even in terms of attitude, cognition does not always lead to affect for example i have cognition: pulution is bad but if we see polution due to a factory, the bad feeling associated with it will vary people to vary, even many will not have emotions for the event that is expected by the cognition.

Without using logic how i can decide that two cognition are conflicting?

prefrontal cortex is not developed in infant and it develops slowly with age and reach to maturity by 25. many reasoning problems can not be solved by the children(piaget theory of cog development). detecting a conflicting cogntion is not possible by the children. this will help in learning the culture and even keeping conflicting cognition in the mind. so there is no need to discard the conflicting knowledge by the children. and the aspect of culture that makes the child more competent for survival can be transferred to the child without CD. in this way CD did not prevented the evolution of culture.

Dear Indrajeet.

(1) The mind is not a logical device. Conflict detection does not require logic

(2) There are tens of thousands of publications on CD. You do not need to invent your own hypotheses about how it works and if children can experience CD. These are all well known things. I do not know why do you need to discuss children, but you can read about CD in adults and children.

The question that I have suggested for discussion is a fundamental unknown in contemporary cognitive science.

Any scientist before suggesting a hypotheses studies the topic. Especially it is so easy today at least to look up in the Wikipedia.

I appreciate your interest and would like to hear your ideas. A minimal familiarity with the topic would made your ideas much more relevant.

Robert,

I just noticed your answer, somehow it did not show up on my RG page earlier.

There are many interesting turns, my difficulty with you arguments are logic. You often consider a piece of knowledge as a logical statement, and then analyse logical contradictions among statements. But this is valid only for highly evolved cognition. Consider a Euclid postulate about parallel lines. It contradicts a simple observation that rail tracks intersect at a horizon. Highly developed logic and geometry are needed to come to other conclusions.

But my arguments about evolution are even more basic. Mind needs knowledge to make decisions (especially an evolving primitive mind). Even more simple organisms make decisions instinctively, motivated by organismic needs. If this is sufficient, no knowledge is needed. A knowledge might be needed only if it leads to a different decision than existing instincts. Otherwise knowledge cannot emerge. Therefore knowledge is always a contradiction to instincts. Exactly same relation exists between two elements of knowledge: if they lead to exactly same decision, the two different elements of knowledge are not needed. Therefore knowledge is always a contradiction. Of course we can overcome these contradictions. But in fact many people do not , and this limits growth of knowledge.

Now consider evolving language and knowledge 2 million years ago. Contradictions would be discarded before their usefulness would be tested. There would be no knowledge and no language. What is the fundamental cognitive mechanism that has enabled our progenitors to overcome cognitive dissonances? It still enables us to accumulate knowledge.

Evolution of language and knowledge about 2 million years might have been a non-actualistic process (as there are so many in the history of life), i.e. not much can be deduced from behaviourial/psychological studies in extant humans who differ in too many aspects from their ancestors.

Why not assume a "third-opinion-mechanism" which was active earlier in human evolution (but is no longer today)? In a relatively static environment you can always gather new data/ a third or fourth opinion if cognitive dissonances arise.

Dear Michael,

Cognitive dissonance could even be active in monkeys.

Can you suggest an example of your "third-opinion-mechanism" operating in animals?

There are thousands of publications on cognitive dissonance. It operates irrationally, and it prevents accumulation of knowledge. It is sufficient to look around to see that people reject knowledge if they do not like it for whichever reason. And there are always enough reason to reject any knowledge. Ancient Greeks knew it 2500 years ago and Aesop described it in a fable about the Fox and the Grapes.

Still knowledge is accumulated, what is psychological mechanism that enables this ability?

Dear Leonid,

the "third-opinion-mechanism" was only the first example that came to my mind.

(If a real world exists and is not percievably unstable and some means/ mechanisms of cognition are better than others and thus beneficial it seems plausible that they somehow have overcome counteracting principles, such as cognitive dissonance.)

My point was to look at the historical perspective when addressing such a problem. Like a criminalist who has only some minor testimonies and indications for a process he tries to reconstruct. (E.g. palaeontologists always percieve evolution as a closed historical process which is only to a certain degree accessible by experiment.)

For this particular question it might be not so interesting to look at all these accounts of cognitive dissonance but to study those rare occasions where it is apparently not at work, i. e. to look for behavioural artefacts in humans or their relatives that explain why/ how some stronger principle counteracting CD could have existed in a way sufficient to enable accumulation of knowledge.

One question you have already adressed: Is CD really much older than human cognition/ thinking/ language/ culture? If it is also present in apes/monkeys you can deduce that it was also present in human ancestors (by "phylogenetic bracketing"/ extant phylogenetic bracket approach).

If CD is not found in apes and monkeys, how can you be sure that it is not much younger than the cognitive mechanism that eventually led to human culture? Your Greek example has an age of merely 2500 years - not much if you consider art to be at least 40.000 years old (usually associated with the dispersal of anatomical modern man from Africa). CD could be a comparatively modern attitude to deal with a complex world.

If cognitive dissonance or an analogue is actually found in apes/monkeys and we have not the slightest indication from psychological studies of present-day humans/apes/monkeys for any reason why CD did not prevent the evolution of knowledge and culture, the whole explanatory model becomes more complex and speculative because you have to assume the involvement non-actualistic processes (hypotheses of this kind are always tricky in terms of falisifiability)..

Dear Michael,

I appreciate your detailed discussion of many aspects of this problem. What are psychological mechanisms that enable humans to overcome cognitive dissonance and evolve culture?

To move forward our discussion, could you please more clearly summarize your main ideas related to this topic.

In a nutshell: Cognitive dissonance was not yet at action when human culture/ thinking/ language initially evolved but is a relatively recent acquisition of the human lineage that came into being as a consequence of a increasingly able cognitive apparatus and as a reaction to the challenges of a more complex worldview.

The idea that cognitive dissonance should have prevented the evolution of knowledge is based on the fallacy that CD is an ancient human trait because it is universally present among present-day human beings and mentioned in Greek sources or other early written accounts (which are still much too young),

Cognitive dissonance requires the ability to hold two incompatible cognition in mind and to use reasoning to detect the incompatibilities. This requires a high level of reasoning ability that was not fully developed until very recently. Once the ability of incompatibility detection had evolved as a byproduct of human brain evolution and its cultural sequelae, humans also were bright enough to manage the incompatibilities. Example: When religious and scientific worldviews have both been internalized, cognitive dissonance can be allayed by either modifying the scientific worldview (e.g., by denying biological evolution) or modifying the religious worldview (e.g., by "demythologizing" the Bible). These would be the responses of those who are sufficiently intelligent and mentally alert to be bothered by the dissonance. For those who aren't, it really doesn't matter.

Dear Michael,

Your idea would be good, if supported by data. But it is not. Monkeys experience cognitive dissonance. You can easily find papers and discussions on a web, since 2007.

Dear Gerhard,

Like Michael's suggestion, your's would be good if supported by data. But it is not.

Cognitive dissonance does not require ability to use reasoning to detect the incompatibilities. Discarding contradictory knowledge is fast, momentary, and needs no reasoning (there are many publications on this).

Your example is valid, of course humans can overcome cognitive dissonance. Of course human cultural evolution HAS happened and continues. The ways to overcome cognitive dissonance that you mention and even better ones have been demonstrated experimentally. A question remains how did people get to this level of reasoning despite a strong tendency to discount contradictions? And what ARE cognitive mechanisms that enable people to keep contradictory knowledge rather than discount it right away?

@ Leonid: So the presence of cognitive dissonance in other apes and monkeys can be considered as proven beyond reasonable doubt ... and one question that still remains is the holding and use of contradictory knowledge.

Perhaps rise of contradictoriness in human beings can be considered as a special case of the transition from consistent/contradiction-free to inconsistent/contradiction-bearing information processing systems (with useful analogues outside the mere study of human mind).

The ancestral state could be a envisioned as a centralized decision-making system which evolved to a more hierarchical (federalism with more or less autonomous hierarchy levels) or to a system of checks-and-balances (several complementary equal-ranking instances). (What could be such instances - left vs right hemisphere? id vs ego?)

The political analogues may not be particularly original but arguably they yield a nice example how primitive systems which avoid contradiction give rise to functionally advanced systems which use contradictory views to their advantage.

My motivation for this question is that cognitive dissonance is anti-creative. There is a lot of experimental evidence for this. But there is little evidence for creative overcoming of cognitive dissonance.

It is possible that some rare people overcome cognitive dissonance due to strong drive for creativity. But there is no experimental evidence for this. May be this did not receive scientific attention.

There is evidence that music helps overcoming cognitive dissonance:

Masataka, N. & Perlovsky, L.I. (2012). The efficacy of musical emotions provoked by Mozart's music for the reconciliation of cognitive dissonance. Scientific Reports, 2.

Perlovsky, L.I., Cabanac, A., Bonniot-Cabanac, M-C., Cabanac, M. (2013). Mozart Effect, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Pleasure of Music. ArXiv 1209.4017; Behavioural Brain Research, 244, 9-14.

And possibly this is the fundamental cognitive function of music, the reason for its origin and evolution:

Perlovsky, L.I. (2006). Music – The First Priciple. Musical Theatre,

http://www.ceo.spb.ru/libretto/kon_lan/ogl.shtml

Perlovsky, L.I. (2012). Cognitive Function of Music, Part I. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 37(2), 129–42.

Perlovsky, L.I. (2013). A challenge to human evolution – cognitive dissonance. Front. Psychol. 4:179. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00179

http://www.frontiersin.org/cognitive_science/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00179/full

This bold hypothesis requires more evidence.

Does music really help to solve cognitive dissonance or does it rather act like a tranquilizer which consoles the frustrated mind? Was this effect sufficient to initiate the evolution of knowledge?

To "overcome" cognitive dissonance through music leaves the conflict unsolved? (Not necessary as long as it enables us to hold conflicting knowledge for some time?)

Michael,

This is an excellent question. We addressed it in

Masataka, N. & Perlovsky, L.I. (2012). The efficacy of musical emotions provoked by Mozart's music for the reconciliation of cognitive dissonance. Scientific Reports, 2, doi:10.1038/srep00694

Music stimulates mind, rather than tranquilizing it.

Whilst cognitive dissonance leads people sometimes to reject contradictory information, that is only part of the story. We are also a highly exploratory species, ("Home Ludens" - Huizinga, J. (1949) Homo Ludens: a study of the play element in culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and many many others). We investigate novelty (specific exploration (Berlyne, D.E. (1960) Conflict, Arousal and Curiosity. New York: McGraw Hill.)) and we try to create novelty, by playing (diversive exploration). This is an example of what Hess (1954) called ergotrophic behaviour - behaviour concerned with behavioural engagement with the environment, exploration, play, learning, sociability and cognitive mastery, i.e. behaviour focussed on long term success. (see Hess WR 1954 Dencephalon: Autonomic and extrapyramidal functions Grune and Stratton. Also Trevathen C and Aitken K (2001) The two kinds of motive educating early human psychological talents In Regression periods in human infancy Heimann M (ed) 2003 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates ) This is to be contrasted with trophotropic behaviour which is concerned with immediate self maintenance and protection. Most cognitive dissonance phenomena would probably come into this latter category.

There is a fallacy in the question originally posed: "But any two pieces of knowledge contradict each other to some extent (otherwise they would be identical and would not be needed)." It is simply not true that any two pieces of knowledge which are not identical, contradict each other. That Paris is the capital of France is not contradicted by Everest being the highest mountain. However, to be fair, I think Leonid Perlovsky wanted to focus on the process of cultural and conceptual change and development rather than the simple accumulation of information.

People differ in how much they inhibit contradictory information, age, attachment security, ability, personality, current state of fear, etc. all influence.

Scientists are not immune as Kuhn pointed out (Kuhn T (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press)! This illustrates a valuable aspect of cognitive dissonance phenomena, namely that we need systems of understanding and action which help us carry on in the face of the bewildering complexity of the world we experience. This is well illustrated in psychotherapeutic theories (Freudian, etc etc) They are criticised for being "unscientific" but that misses the point, their value is precisely that they can explain anything that happens and justify anything the therapist does, and thereby this helps the therapist do the best they can for their patients; the best therapists really using their intuition rather than their pseudo theories when deciding what to do, but then post hoc explaining and justifying it (see e.g. - Mandel A 1967 Golf and Psychotherapy Arch Gen Psychiat.).

Finally music. A number of people have argued that the most enduring beautiful music (Mozart, Schubert, etc) delight us by setting up in a series of notes, a musical "problem" or tension, but then solving it in a novel way but which feels just right. If there were no initial tension, or the solution was a cliche or was wrong, the piece would not be (as) beautiful, at least not to many people (some may be comforted by cliche!).