The Impact of Cognitive Dissonance on SEO

Intro

At least up to now, even in a new world with AI, content is still king (well, good quality content).

Nevertheless, it can be a challenge to create content that balances informational value and also appeals to your target audience.

One factor that can impact the effectiveness of SEO content is cognitive dissonance, which I will discuss more in-depth in today's article.

So I will cover…

• What is cognitive dissonance, and how it affects decision making
• How it affects SEO
• What role does chat GPT play regarding cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias
• How to mitigate cognitive dissonance in (SEO) content
• How to measure cognitive dissonance in SEO

What is Cognitive Dissonance, and How Does It Affect Decision Making

Let's first make an example. There is Bill (I intentionally use a masculine character).

Bill, one day as every day, gets out of his bed in the morning to get some coffee and get ready for his daily commute to work.

For years he had the belief in being a good driver.

The thing is, he has been to the car workshop already for the 6th time this year, and his car insurance policy gets more expensive by the month.

Yes, he was in six accidents, nothing serious, but enough to make his car workshop a little fortune.

It was things like backing into a parking space and overseeing the opened door of another car. Happened like three times, and he has a parking aid.

So Bill may experience cognitive dissonance.

How so?

He likely will struggle to reconcile his belief of being a good driver with the evidence (well, six accidents in one year) that suggests otherwise.

To make him feel comfortable about this conflicting inner state of mind, he will try to blame other drivers, the weather, politics, aliens, you name it.

So when you hold to or more conflicting beliefs, values, or ideas cognitive dissonance is "triggered".

According to Wikipedia, it's "the perception of the contradictory information and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment." (source)

How Does Cognitive Dissonance Impact Decision Making?

To answer this question, you just need to remember that most people (provided they didn't train themselves intentionally) always will try to avoid cognitive dissonance at any cost and will look for comfort.

And to seek a comfortable state of mind, they will be more likely to seek out information confirming their existing beliefs and avoid information that contradicts them.

So you could say that cognitive dissonance fuels confirmation bias (as I discussed in my last article here on Ranktracker).

And cognitive dissonance is nothing else than seeking out information that confirms existing beliefs.

In the case of Bill from above, he may look for content about how even the best drivers can't deal with extreme weather phenomena.

Or he may even go down the conspiracy route, checking for information about how aliens suddenly make open car doors appear when trying to back into a parking space and that insurance companies are in on it to improve their bottom line with their policies.

So overall, this leads to a biased decision-making process since people will overlook important information or alternative viewpoints that could help them make more informed and objective decisions.

Try to debunk yourself for one day regarding your beliefs. Not a fun experience.

(Photo by Myriam Jessier on Unsplash)

How Does Cognitive Dissonance Affect SEO

You may already see by now how cognitive dissonance affects SEO.

In the state of cognitive dissonance, people prefer to search and find information confirming their existing beliefs (remember Bill looking for car insurance conspiracies to avoid confronting himself with the fact that he is actually a sh*ty driver).

So they will likely use specific keywords or search phrases aligned with their existing beliefs or values. This, in turn, impacts the types of search results returned by search engines.

It will not be a good idea to actively cause cognitive dissonance, for example, in your content marketing strategy. For the reasons above, you will enter a losing battle.

However, cognitive dissonance shows pretty well how strong beliefs work.

And beliefs inform search volume. The more people believe in a particular topic, the more people will search for it.

This happens for the same reasons as already discussed above: people are more likely to search for information on topics relevant to their beliefs, interests, and values.

Only a minority of people will actively search for topics contrary to their beliefs to avoid cognitive dissonance.

Let's say a large number of people believe in the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, more will search for it and thus increase the search volume.

SEOs will see a trending topic in one of the search analysis tools and start producing more content to rank for the particular search query.

You could say that if you want to increase the search volume for a low-traffic search query, you just need to bring more people to believe in this topic.

(Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash)

What Role Plays Chat GPT Regarding Cognitive Dissonance and Confirmation Bias

Chat GPT gets more and more used by and integrated into the workflows and use cases of SEOs, and you could consider it a multiplier of what the human (SEO professional) brings already to the table in terms of biases.

What do I mean by that?

When you want to cover a particular topic that confirms your beliefs or the beliefs of your users, it's not Chat GPT that actively reinforces confirmation bias.

It's the user that is already "confirmation biased."

While the training data of Chat GPT covers a wide range of topics and viewpoints, there is a risk that its responses can reinforce existing beliefs or biases.

Returning to Bill from the beginning, some conspiracy websites covering topics like aliens and insurance companies being out to get you may produce content catering to people like Bill, confirming their beliefs.

So an SEO and content writer may use Chat GPT to explain how insurance companies do everything in their power to increase their policies.

This writer may ask Chat GPT with a leading question implying the assumption that insurance companies are out to get you: "How do insurance companies trick you into higher and higher policies?"

Then you may get a biased response.

And the response could be in a way that it confirms the existing belief that insurance companies are out to get you.

It is well known that Chat GPT but also Bing Chat tend to confabulate without checking the facts (source). So it is in the realm of possibility that this can actually happen.

To mitigate this risk, you need to use Chat GPT actively to gain different viewpoints and perspectives on a given topic.

But again, this is only something a "human" can actively do, knowing about the risk of confirmation bias.

Nevertheless, from an SEO perspective, it's actually a good thing that it's biased and may fuel confirmation bias to avoid cognitive dissonance since the latter is rather a tricky thing when caused in content for SEO purposes.

When people have a particular search intent ( related to their beliefs), they don't want to find content that suddenly takes a turn and causes cognitive dissonance.

This can have all kinds of negative effects on ranking signals, such as time on site, bounce rates, etc.

That's not to say you can't produce balanced articles including different perspectives, but it's a challenge to not cause cognitive dissonance.

This leads me to….

How to Mitigate Cognitive Dissonance in (SEO) Content

As the title implies, you may mitigate cognitive dissonance in the context of SEO content but not eradicate it completely.

So even the best content in the world may trigger some people (e.g., cognitive dissonance).

So if you want to include different perspectives or information that may contradict a person's existing beliefs a bit, you want to do it in a balanced and clear way.

This can reduce discomfort or tension (you show that you don't abandon their belief completely).

You play basically still on their team, but just open the perspective a little.

Therefore you may want to massage contrary information a bit and provide evidence or research to support the information presented, but not in extremely biased language.

Additionally, you may also provide additional resources for users to explore so they can consider multiple viewpoints and perspectives.

By the way, according to this study, by already studying confirmation bias and becoming aware of it, you train yourself to be less biased.

However, this may not help in content that doesn't have this as the main topic.

How to Measure Cognitive Dissonance in SEO

You can't directly measure cognitive dissonance in SEO since it's a pretty subjective state of mind.

Well, many biases are pretty subjective. That's why they are cognitive biases.

However, you can measure the effects of cognitive dissonance.

It will likely show in various engagement metrics (or key marketing performance indicators) informing ranking signals, such as…

1. Bounce Rates

Someone landing on an article not aligned with the search intent and going another route causing cognitive dissonance in the end will likely bounce earlier than other website visitors.

2. Time on Site, Pageviews

This is related to bounce rates. Of course, someone finding content contrary to their beliefs will spend less time on the site and thus not click on other pages of the site.

The latter will reduce the number of page views.

3. Click-Through Rates

The cognitive dissonance may already happen when a user finds search results conflicting with their existing beliefs (the person might not be the best Google search user, though).

So all the above lower engagement metrics can signal search engines like Google that the content is less or not relevant at all.

Conclusion

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon we humans have to live with, including in the context of SEO and content production.

You may rather want to avoid causing cognitive dissonance in your content and use "balanced" or even conflicting content with various perspectives sparingly.

Why?

Cognitive dissonance can still be triggered and then impact engagement metrics such as bounce rates, time on site, page views, and click-through rates which also likely impact ranking signals.

Chat GPT can be considered almost neutral in this. However, it rather leans towards helping you avoid triggering cognitive dissonance in the content you produce with it.

Why?

The tool itself tends to be a bit biased if not used correctly.

To create balanced content that may cause cognitive dissonance, you need to give it the proper prompts so it generates content from various perspectives.