Abstract

In the age of social media where everyone has something to say and post, it is very important to be mindful of the information we consume, and one of the best practices is to be able to differentiate facts from beliefs and opinions. Being exposed to opinions, thoughts, and beliefs which are completely opposite to that of our own cause cognitive dissonance – a feeling of unease when our preconceived notions and belief about something is challenged. However, cognitive dissonance does not have to be an overwhelming feeling after all, because when combined with critical thinking, we can make it work in favor of us and reap its benefits which can potentially broaden our horizon. In this study, I have assigned two different groups of students, where they are asked to attend bi-weekly socials for four months, where they discuss sensitive topics with their peers. The experimental groups were actively practicing empathy and critical thinking. At the end of each month, data has been collected from a sample size of 1000 students (both controlled and experimental groups). After the study was completed, the results from the pretest and posttest groups indicated that the participants who practiced both empathy and critical thinking have started to live a happier life with feelings of higher satisfaction, and fewer internal conflicts as compared to those who did not practice it.

Keywords: Empathy, Critical Thinking, Beliefs, Facts, Social-Media, Exposure, Behavior, Conflict, Understanding, Compassion, Cognition, Cognitive Dissonance.

Introduction

In the recent years I have made observations as to how people perceive heterogeneous opinions in a social gathering/media and the way they respond/react to it. To better aid the understanding of this topic, this is a study based in context to social psychology. We live in a time where everyone has their own set of opinions and beliefs that they try to impose on one another, and how we feel about it depends on the way we respond to it. We are taught how to find the value of velocity by measuring displacement against time, but what the system has failed to teach us is to effectively handle the opinions of people who are different than our own. Everyone has different opinions about different things in life because of the collective experience they have gathered over time, and all experiences are very subjective. And therefore, it is very important to view someone’s opinion from their standpoint and still be rational about it at the same time. Not being able to do that leads to misunderstandings, conflicts, and judgment. And this happens every single day. This area of social psychology It not well studied yet, but the understanding and key takeaways from this paper are crucial for the public to become more aware of these dynamics and that how it negatively contributes to their mental health. This is also such an important topic to investigate due to the decline in mental health conditions in recent years. I believe too many opinions can lead to higher cognitive dissonance due to the person holding two contradictory thoughts/beliefs at the same time. Having higher cognitive dissonance can lead to feelings of uneasiness, anxiety, and panic attacks (Jeong et al., 2019). It also makes a person feel invalidated and they find it difficult to process and make sense of new information to themselves (Klimecki et al., 2019).

For example, whenever we open social media apps such as Facebook, or Instagram and check the comment sections, there is a very high chance we see people arguing about a certain topic or post. The post could be religious, or political, or something sensitive. We may not realize it, but when we read the comments, opinions of others and read something online, we are exposing ourselves to new information. And sometimes when it is completely the opposite of our sense of belief, we start to feel uneasy and anxious due to stress from cognitive dissonance (Jeong et al., 2019). However, cognitive dissonance does not necessarily have to be a bad thing because when combined with the right kind of tool and practice, it can make us more wise, open to new experiences, broaden our horizon, and help adapt our growth mindset (Riess et al., 2017).

I hypothesize that practicing empathy and critical thinking can turn cognitive dissonance into a chance for the individual to acknowledge new ideas and grow in positive ways and broaden their horizons. Otherwise, it can be difficult as having their pre-conceived notion challenged can put them into a fight or flight response which can lead them to justify or rationalize ideas with arrogant behaviors that can be harmful and toxic.

This issue is very alarming because we spend almost 4 hours every day on our phones (Riess et al., 2017). It is something to really think about if we consider the fact that we are living in the twenty-first century (which has witnessed the highest evolution in technology) and are full of abundance, yet so many of us are unhappy and suffering from chronic depression (Klimecki, O. M.) and there never has been so much it before.

I have taken into account several sources and picked up the most reliable journal articles which address and support my thesis and have successfully investigated the problem. In 2019, Jeong et conducted a study - Feeling displeasure from online social media postings: A study using cognitive dissonance theory, found that youngsters and adults are miserable more than ever, mostly because how they are constantly given opinions about almost everything and it is evident in their social media posts. For those who keep quiet, instead of talking about it, they post quotes on their “stories” on Instagram reel, which is an indirect way for those youngsters to imply that they have been hurt in the past during a conversation because their opinion wasn’t heard. But just because they could not come up with something to talk back with at that moment, does not mean they do not have opinions. This builds up a form of passive aggression that happens a lot on social media which makes it toxic.

However, this sub-area of social psychology is fresh and requires more research. As this is a very new and not well-studied area about social psychology it requires more investigation as to its relation to cognitive dissonance. It needs more empirical studies to make better claims and acquire better evidence based on facts that can connect relevant characteristics of the effects of empathy and cognitive dissonance together. As this field requires more research, in this paper I elaborate points that are not well mentioned, by carrying out experimental research, tested upon different conditions, and collecting and inferring the data.

My hypothesis: If people deliberately practice empathy and critical thinking, then they become more open-minded, and be understanding of peoples’ opinions while having their own. In this literature review, I have surveyed scholarly articles, and other research journals relevant to social psychology, empathy, cognition, critical thinking and by doing so, providing a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works.

Methods

The participants for this study were a group of Simon Fraser University undergraduate students who voluntarily took part in the study and to win a 500$ raffle prize at the end of the study. At the end of every 2 weeks, students were required to meet their classmates and peers and discuss a sensitive topic. The aim of the study was to collect large quantitative data, so I had to aim for 1000 students where 500 of them were from the controlled group and 500 from the experimental group.

I conducted the study using university students where I formed two different groups – A and B. For an entire semester (4 months), Group A (non-experimental) was being asked to participate in bi-weekly conversations where they talked to others about sensitive topics (politics, religion, mental health) and were asked to share their opinions on such topics. Group B (experimental) were asked to do the same, but they were manipulated - actively practicing empathy and critical thinking and asked to be considerate of others and listen to people with an intent to seek new perspective, avoid biases, and ask more questions on the topics presented. At the end of those sessions, both groups were asked to fill in questionaries and surveys. I used the questionnaire data collection method where they were asked a set of 5 questions, and all of them were based on the Likert scale to give a collective data of a total of 25 points (5 questions x 5 points). Firstly, the experimental group would label their emotions using the Likert scale from 1 to 5, with one being sad to 5 being happy. Secondly, they would again use the Likert scale to rate their experience level with 1 being very unsatisfied to 5 being very satisfied. Thirdly, they were asked open-ended questions where they mention how much they liked or disliked the entire conversation or experience. And for the last 2 portions, they were asked dichotomous choice questions where they were asked how much this experience challenged their belief and how comfortable or uncomfortable, they felt.

During the entire term, both groups also are asked to view online content, write comments, and share their point of view. Group B (experimental) were asked to do the same, but they were manipulated be required to practice empathy by being considerate of others and listen to people with an intent to seek new perspective, avoid biases, and ask more questions on the topics presented. And to reduce cognitive biases, they were asked to see and understand things from others’ points of view. When asked to meet groupmates in person, they were asked to pay attention to the body language, listen with the intent to understand and not reply, ask more questions, and challenge themselves to undertake new experiences from someone else's story. Group B was required to deliberately practice critical thinking along with empathy. That is, Group B paid attention and analyzed facts from opinions by interpreting them with reasoning and logical thinking.

They also be required to practice meditation to grow awareness and be more mindful of their actions and words. At the end of those sessions, both groups rated their experiences. The experiment was run on every biweekly sessions for 4 months and both groups were asked to fill in the questionaries, and by the end of the term it was used to assess whether being empathetic and thinking critically helped the subject feel better about themselves and be more aware of their information consumption. A pre-test and post-test report was created at the end of the study to demonstrate the data and findings.

In this paragraph I discussed about the steps I took to prevent some of the anticipated problem from occurring. One of the problems with methods that I was anticipating was the internal validity – which is to check the point to which my study established a trustworthy cause and effect relationship. This is because I cannot control social interaction and attrition. However, I tried to avoid other errors such as selection bias and testing by taking in account a large amount of data and make the study gender inclusive. I have discussed more about this in the discussion section of this paper. Other limitation could be the absence of empirical evidence. Direct observation of the students’ behaviors and tone and how they carry out the conversation would have added more stronger evidence to any change in their behavior over time. Because the study was ongoing for four months and it took 30 minutes to do the survey after the end of every 2 weeks, some students had missed out on the surveys because they took courses and were busy with their schedule

Results

After the end of the term, all the data were collected and compared. The average pre-test score of the controlled group was 7.86 points and the and for the experimental group, it was 12.38 points. The average post-test score of the controlled group was 10.19 points and the score for the experimental group was 17.47. The controlled group had an elevation of 2.33 points in four months and the group which practiced empathy and critical thinking saw a rise of 5.1 points. One of the reasons why the pre-test score of the controlled group is already higher is because the data has been collected from the results of the first week after the experimental group had already started practicing empathy. I have written more about this in the discussion section.

The results added to evidence and supported the hypothesis – Students who practiced empathy and cognitive thinking were less stressed from cognitive dissonance and make better judgment and were more satisfied. The data was used to compare and investigate whether practicing critical thinking and empathy has influenced their emotions or not. It further indicated how important it is to have an open mind and be critical about the information we are interpreting at the same time. This study opens new doors as to why people need to be critical in the age of social media because we are being constantly bombarded with lots of information. There is a fine line between facts and subjective opinions based on the persons’ experience, therefore developing a higher emotional intelligence allows the listener to correctly analyze, rationalize and reason and accept the right type of data, while having their own point of view.

I have provided additional data and evidence to support my claim from other research papers in this literature review to solidify my findings. The papers I have included for my research paper have carefully been considered and the paper by Szanto, et al., from 2019, -Introduction: empathy, shared emotions, and social identity gives an overview of what is empathy and critical thinking. As I move towards explaining my findings for the paper, I elaborate on the ideas of how someone can be empathetic and be critical about the information at the same time. It is very important in a time like this as we must become aware of the information we are taking in and yet be considerate of someone else’s point of view.