Barbie Learns about Cognitive Dissonance
Barbie has been celebrated as a font of girlhood pleasure and play and rebuked as an instrument of toxic gender norms and consumerist ideals of femininity. If Barbie has been a culture-war hot spot for about as long as it’s been on the shelves, it’s because the doll perfectly encapsulates changing ideas about girls and women.
In recent weeks, everyone has been wearing pink! Some fellow Social Work colleagues and I discussed the recent release of the movie “Barbie” and the Cognitive Dissonance Barbie experiences and tried to ultimately resolve.
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term that refers to the discomfort or tension that arises when a person holds contradictory beliefs, attitudes, values, or experiences. This state of cognitive dissonance can occur when an individual faces information or situations that challenge their beliefs or attitudes, leading to psychological discomfort.
To reduce this discomfort, people often seek to resolve cognitive dissonance by changing their beliefs or attitudes to align with the new information or minimizing the importance of the conflicting information. For example, if a person believes smoking is harmful but continues smoking, they might experience cognitive dissonance. To alleviate this discomfort, they might either quit smoking or convince themselves that the risks of smoking are not as significant as they previously thought.
Cognitive dissonance theory, developed by psychologist Leon Festinger in the 1950s, suggests that individuals are motivated to reduce this dissonance by seeking consistency in their thoughts and actions. This theory has been widely studied and applied in various fields, including psychology, marketing, communication, and social behavior, to understand how people respond to conflicting information and how attitudes and beliefs are formed and changed.
In the movie, Barbie travels from Barbie Land, where the “Barbies” have instituted a matriarchy running every aspect of doll life, to the “Real World” where things aren’t quite so perfect for Barbie. In the Real World, Barbie’s dissonance is most noticeable. Los Angeles isn’t what she predicted — it’s not perfect, and women aren’t in charge. Her belief that “the world is perfect, women rule, everyone loves me” doesn’t match reality.
People don’t love her for who she is. She feels unsafe. She discovers that construction workers are not women but rude men who comment on her appearance. A teenage girl calls her out on the damage the Barbie doll has done to people’s views of their appearance. In the movie, Barbie’s experience of cognitive dissonance leads to pain expressed by her first tears.
The solution to this conundrum is perhaps buried under all of the pink sparkle and glitter of who “Barbie” is both in Barbie Land and the Real World. The things that once defined Barbie (and we as humans) will no longer be able to do so accurately. Perhaps our feet will fall flat, we will gain weight, and our previous values will no longer match the version of who we thought we were. To embark on this journey of sometimes painful growth is an inevitable aspect of being human. Luckily, there are tools available to resolve this conflict. If you can identify with this, feel free to reach out to one of our wonderful therapists at LSP.
