#235: Cognitive Dissonance Reduction, Association Bias & Signal Interpretation

3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on Losing Followers

I. Cognitive Dissonance Reduction

Unfollows and unsubscribes are to social media users and newsletter writers as falling leaves are to autumn. It’s a natural part of the season. For me, most unsubscribes happen quietly and without a trace. But there are a few exceptions, and they follow a fascinating pattern. Whenever someone unsubscribes AND tells me why in an email, the reason has always been the same.

They don’t cancel because I misquoted someone. Not because they disagreed, in substance, with something I wrote. Not because my occasional humour was unbearably annoying and distracting. They all seem disappointed, even outraged, because of a person I quoted. The context can be political, but often is not.

The underlying reason might be Cognitive Dissonance Reduction. If we like a publication but now see a quote from someone we strongly dislike, there’s an internal conflict. The easiest way to resolve this discomfort is to stop the exposure. Unfollowing or unsubscribing restores consistency between our attitudes and actions.

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II. Association Bias

You’re quoting Bob? Really?

If we dig a little deeper, we encounter Association Bias. Merely featuring someone’s words creates an implicit association between the writer and this terrible person whose words shall not be uttered, no matter the context. (Damn you, Bob!)

The mechanism is called evaluative conditioning. People’s attitudes toward one thing (the quoted person) influence their attitude toward another (the writer and their content).

Even if Bob’s message was non-political and benign. Even if your stance was neutral. Even if you featured ideas that contradicted each other or otherwise made the reader think. If someone dislikes the quoted person, their negative evaluation can “contaminate” the publication through association.

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III. Signal Interpretation

A particularly noteworthy unsubscribe happened explicitly because I quoted BJJ coach John Danaher on Success Strategies. By the reader’s own admission, Danaher had “great ideas”; however, he was a “terribly flawed human being”.

Debatable (the second part), but fair enough. For some reason, though, the reader had firmly placed me in John Danaher’s camp. As if I had just outed myself as the official spokesman for Cobra Kai to a Miyagi-Do disciple.

So our mind can go even one step further beyond mere association. In the age of highly polarised discourse and gym drama, readers often treat references as signals of allegiance and support. Quoting somebody becomes not just a textual act, but a symbolic one.

Put differently, people respond less to the content of a quote and more to the social meaning they assign to the act of quoting; the perceived signal of loyalty behind the choice. And sometimes, only sometimes, or a little bit often, I catch myself feeling the exact same way about a writer or YouTuber I’m subscribed to. 🐘

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com