In the fable "The Fox and the Grapes," Aesop tells the story of a hungry fox who spotted a cluster of grapes—but no matter how hard she tried to jump up and knock the cluster down, she couldn’t do it. Finally, she gave up her efforts and waved her paw dismissively, claiming that the grapes were sour anyway and she didn’t really want them at all.
Academic psychology interprets such behavior as an attempt to reduce cognitive dissonance—a state in which a person’s two attitudes, values, or actions contradict each other. According to the theory of Leon Festinger, who introduced this concept, such a contradiction is unpleasant, and a person unconsciously tries to reduce or eliminate cognitive dissonance.
By expressing her disdain, the fox resolved the conflict between her belief in her own abilities and her inability to reach the grapes. There are many similar beliefs: a textbook example is a person’s tendency to find positives in what they have done (to justify the meaningfulness of their actions) or to downplay the risks to which they consciously expose themselves (to justify the meaningfulness of their actions).
The power of cognitive dissonance is clearly evident in domestic and sexual violence. The media portrayal of sexual violence depicts unshaven deviants lurking in dark parks—monsters despised by all, devoid of any human qualities. But this is not based on truth—and, like other falsehoods, it is harmful to everyone.
Perpetrators, however, are not vampires falling from the sky. They are recruited from among people who lead quite normal lives in cities and villages. Potential perpetrators have their own families, friends, and acquaintances. All of them consider them to be quite ordinary, perhaps even quite nice people—and so do the perpetrators themselves.
So the assault triggers cognitive dissonance, which prevents the perpetrator from understanding what he has actually done. The simple implication: rape is committed by monsters; I don’t feel like a monster; ergo, what I did was not rape. Because the perpetrator has internalized the first premise and his self-esteem depends on the second, the only way out is to deny the rape. Which, naturally, makes self-reflection and rehabilitation impossible.
But this is by no means limited to the perpetrator alone. In the vast majority of cases, the perpetrator and the victim know each other. At least initially, the victim also views the perpetrator as a normal, kind person. The result is, once again, cognitive dissonance: Is this person, whom I’ve trusted for a year, really such a monster that he would beat me up or rape me?
The easiest way is to deny the experience. After all, the perpetrator is happy to help the victim with this. It is most convenient for both of them to come up with a shared lie, to fabricate a story with some “but,” to rebrand a punch as a shove and to call the shove a generally unacceptable but, in this specific case, justified and excusable—or even correct—reaction.
The social circle also faces an equally false but painful dilemma. To brush off the situation by saying “it must have been some kind of misunderstanding,” because the perpetrator is a nice person, a great teacher, a good friend, or just an ordinary guy from the disco—is the easiest option not only for the victim but also for the person to whom she might potentially confide. Could my beloved grandson have beaten his wife? That’s simply impossible!
As long as it’s possible, cognitive dissonance will lead to denial—and if not, it’s necessary to find some other solution. “My grandson would never hit his girlfriend. But you know, if you burned his Sunday lunch, then you shouldn’t be surprised if he loses his temper,” the grandmother offers as a last-ditch solution. She’s loved her grandson for thirty years—and someone so kind simply can’t be a violent abuser. As long as she could, she ignored the woman’s bruises and the sounds of blows coming from the apartment next door. But she can’t ignore what she’s seen with her own eyes. There’s only one way left to remain consistent: to deny that the fact her grandson beat up his girlfriend actually means he beat her up.
Such nonsense is no more absurd than psychotic delusions. The brain has no way of examining objective reality and seeking the truth. It compares sensory input with stored (not only) cognitive content and seeks a solution to bring everything together.
Which we’ve known for a long time. If the task of the twentieth century in the realm of domestic and sexual violence was to show that sexual crimes occur solely through the fault of the perpetrators, not the victims, the task of the current century is to build effective prevention based on knowledge of cognitive processes and postmodern psychotherapy. And to start, quite simply, with Aesop’s fox.
And to situate it within reality. Classic research on media effects shows that extreme threats have no effect on people. This is precisely due to cognitive dissonance: people refuse to admit that something “terrible” could happen to them—because it would too severely undermine their sense of security. That’s why, for example, the graphic scenes warning against driving without a seatbelt that aired years ago on ČT1 had no effect.
Statistical findings suggest that moderate-level threats—ones people are able to process despite their defenses—are more effective. And this applies generally—in the media, in therapy, and in prevention. That’s why it makes sense to explore cognitive dissonance, which is otherwise quite a boring topic.
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