What is Emotional Dissonance?
In my experience, cognitive and emotional dissonance tend to be intimately intertwined. In our modern society, we tend to view both cognitive and emotional dissonance from a negative perspective. However, in reality, they are the first step to true, authentic learning. Without cognitive and emotional dissonance, we never move passed our initial frame of reference. Let’s be honest, we don’t know what we don’t know. Emotional and cognitive dissonance provide the catalyst to help us see we might have missed something.
Cognitive dissonance, that moment when you realize that the facts in front of you don’t match your understanding of the world, the subject matter or simply your view of yourself, is a part of our thinking selves. It’s typically represented by thoughts like “huh, that’s not going to work.” or “something is not right here”. The concept of cognitive dissonance is not a new one. In fact, it is a commonly discussed concept in the world of education and has been for many years.
Emotional dissonance, however, is a new concept. In the educational world, we tend to see emotions as the enemy of learning. They are something to be controlled and managed so they don’t disrupt our perfectly built classrooms. But what if we are wrong about emotions? I propose that emotional dissonance, that moment when something doesn’t feel right, is a key component of lasting learning. When we insist on disregarding the emotional context, we intentionally create surface level of experiences without lasting impact.
Math: An Emphasis on Cognitive
When the many different types of people I have encountered in my life find out I teach Math, they almost always respond in one of two ways Either, a) they are a “Math person”, someone who enjoyed the strict logic and rules based approach found in most Math classrooms or they are b) not a “Math person”, someone who found that approach to be stifling and disconnected from the real world. If I could count the number of times someone told me that they never use Math in their real life, the number would be astronomical. And yet, we all use the concepts of Math daily, whether we realize it or not. In my experience, this disconnect stems primarily from a lack of connection to the way the subject matter is presented rather than the lack of application.
Math is a clear example of the disregard of emotional dissonance in our traditional educational methods. Math is, in a traditional way of thinking, primarily a cognitive subject. But what if it wasn’t? If Math was seen as a method for describing all of the wonder we see in the universe rather than a series of stepwise tasks to find an answer with very little direct connection to anything, we might find that it creates a more lasting impression. In other words, if we accounted for passion, frustration and the joy of discovery in our Math classrooms, it would change everything.
Music: An Emphasis on Emotion
Music, my other subject of expertise, is on the opposite side of the spectrum. It is almost always taught with an emphasis on the emotional perspective of learners. So much so that it often loses the cognitive components woven into the subject. Music is primarily considered an elective, a break from the “real” subjects. The traditional thinking is that music is all about emotional context. This end of the spectrum is no better than the purely cognitive focused approach of Math.
Interestingly enough, even though Music is traditional disregarded from a cognitive perspective with an emphasis on the emotional, we only discuss the positive emotional components. Emotional dissonance is messy. In our current society, where emotion has been intentionally suppressed and disregarded, it almost always equates to anger, fear and frustration. In reality, true emotional dissonance encompasses the full range of emotions, both positive and negative.
What Emotional Dissonance Requires
If we are to move forward with any type of intentionality around the concept of emotional dissonance, we must first recognize that it exists. When we encounter something that is outside of our current frame of reference, we have an emotional response to it. This doesn’t mean the response has to be negative. In fact, emotional dissonance is often wonder, joy and surprise.
Second, we must understand that our emotional energy is what connects us to lasting learning experiences. It’s what we remember. If this is the case, and we want our learning experiences to have lasting impact, then we must intentionally plan for the emotional context.
Finally, we must employ intentional strategies that direct emotional context in a method most suitable for learning. This means the lower frequency emotions, like anger, fear and frustration, must be acknowledged and redirected purposeful into curiousity, joy and wonder. The higher frequency emotions must be acknowledged and cultivated as a vital part of the intentional experience.