tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5330073701777698255.post7275884938615492147..comments2017-03-20T19:39:20.312-07:00Comments on Dead Professor: Why paranoia has not been eliminated by natural selectiondead_professorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04801208074736640666noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5330073701777698255.post-23987803294759657042010-02-17T16:15:19.692-08:002010-02-17T16:15:19.692-08:00"... tenure and promotion committees have to ..."... tenure and promotion committees have to make binary decisions, at least when it is about tenure and it is up-or-out time. For whatever reason, once they get on the wrong side of that, then the rationalization sets in. They want this to be a clear-cut decision, so they can have no qualms of their own consciences. So they convince themselves that you really were profoundly incompetent. It was a no-brainer. They did the college a service keeping you out. Lost in this is how they could have lived, worked and socialized with a profoundly incompetent person for six years and only now come to realize it."<br /><br />Leon Festinger made this phenomenon famous as cognitive dissonance -- how "beliefs" and rationalizations are made to conform with "forced compliance" situations. It is scary stuff in the history of social psychology, and its story is recounted in my chapter, A Cultural History of Dissonance Theory, in War in Heaven/Heaven on Earth (my edit). I had loads of fun with the chapter, and with the book as well. How many of us get to phone the office of a N-prize winner to say, Sorry! We cannot take your chapter.<br /><br />The book should be in the college library, part of a series Millennialism and Society (ongoing).Glen S. McGheehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00558711814846199468noreply@blogger.com