Relational Cognitive Dissonance Disorder

I want to talk about a psychological phenomenon that I have recently become aware of through personal experience.

A few months ago, after almost 5 years at my former employer, we parted ways and I re-entered the job market. Happily, I was more okay with the separation that I thought I would be, and the company handled things as well as one can hope in a capitalistic system, which is to say that they did not screw me over or anything like that. In fact, it was only after a month or so of reflection and job searching that I recognized the idea I intend to write about here.

There is probably a formal name for this phenomenon, but I’m going to call it Relational Cognitive Dissonance Disorder (RCDD). I propose the following definition:

That’s a mouthful, so let me break it down.

RCDD occurs as a result of a relationship, and is therefore relational. The relationship can be with any other party: a person, multiple people, a group, an organization or even animals.

The core of RCDD is a divergence between one’s actual desires and goals and one’s perception of their desires and goals. With altered desires and goals, cognitive dissonance¹ becomes inevitable.

The thing that makes this a disorder is that the subject has no conscious control or awareness. If they had control and awareness, it would essentially be self-improvement. Importantly, subconscious control and/or awareness still complies with this definition.

So, back to the story…

My previous title was Director of Engineering, and when I first started looking for a new job, I focused on roles that had a similar title and scope. The job market is very challenging right now though, and so I quickly decided to include individual contributor (IC) roles in my search. As I did so, I wrestled with the question “do I really want to go back to an IC position?” At first, my answer was essentially that I wouldn’t really mind it, and I needed to get a job as soon as possible. However, after several weeks, something shifted in my thinking, and I started to develop a preference for an IC role over a managerial one.

As I felt my preferences shift, I knew something strange was going on, because I have been very focused on the manager track of software engineering for about 7 years now. Just a few years ago, I was completely against shifting back to an IC role, so I was experiencing some serious cognitive dissonance as I felt my feelings about the topic changing, seemingly out from under myself.

As I continued to reflect, to listen to my own feelings and figure out what factor was driving me in my career, I landed on the idea of impact as what I really cared about. When I used the lens of impact to look back on my career to see when I had the most impact and when I enjoyed the work that led to that impact, the picture started to become clear.

In my career, IC work has led to my greatest impact, and it has been the most enjoyable for me. I did enjoy leading people and that produced plenty of impact on “the books,” but it’s not what I’m most proud of and it’s not what I most enjoyed.

As soon as I felt like I understood this change in my career preferences and formed an hypothesis that felt right, I asked myself another question: “Why didn’t I realize this sooner?” If my hypothesis was correct, then I should have been able to identify this issue a long time ago, so what got in the way?

To try to answer that question, I thought back to several points in the last few years and considered how I saw my situation at those points in time. I tried to think about everything: my thoughts about my role, my career goals, my achievements, my work environment, my personal life, the job market, etc.

At the beginning of my tenure at my last job, though I was in a management position, I was hired to solve a specific problem that I found interesting and my team was small so I was heavily involved in building the solution. As I took on more people and spent less time innovating and more time reviewing the technical work, I felt less enjoyment but I became convinced that I enjoyed it more, because I equated more reports to greater impact, and it was how my role was naturally evolving.

Why did I equate more reports to greater impact? And why did that lead me to believe that I enjoyed it more? In hindsight, not only did it seem obvious that these conclusions didn’t make sense, but it was hard for me to even understand how it could have made sense to me at the time.

As I continued to reflect, a narrative emerged that rang true for me: Relational Cognitive Dissonance Disorder. As a result of my relationship with my employer, I lost touch with my own feelings and intuitions about my career goals, and those goals transformed into something that diverged from what I really wanted and aligned with the path that I saw myself on at the company.

As a software engineer, when I find a bug and understand the root cause, I want to figure out how to prevent it from occurring again. Preventing RCDD, however, may pose a serious challenge, because it is a road to hell paved with good intentions². In other words, it can emerge in relationships where all parties act with good intentions.

Actually, it may be much more likely to occur in relationships where all parties are good actors, because it requires some level of participation of the subject of the disorder. What I mean is that a person is much more likely to allow subconscious alteration of their goals when they want to collaborate with others, which usually requires them to feel respected. If the other party is trying to force the change, the person will likely resist it or be aware of the change as it occurs.

In my case, I wanted to be useful in my role at the company, and the company wanted to provide a career path for me to grow based on my current role and responsibilities. I was not forced to change roles or shift career paths. I also wanted to enjoy my job, and I didn’t want to deal with trying to find a new one. All of these factors came together to incentivize me to want to continue on my existing career path at the company, even if it diverged from the goals I would have set for myself independently.

At this point, someone might question whether I had conscious control or awareness of these changes, and this is where the “conscious” part comes into play. Obviously, external parties cannot rewire my brain and change my self-image, but external parties and the environment can trigger subconscious changes in one’s mind, and that is what I am positing is occurring here. Additionally, these conditions evolved slowly over time, which made it much harder to notice.

RCDD is subtle, and it may be hard to identify when it is happening, and it may seem like it is happening even when it is not. In light of that, the least worst way I can think of to prevent it is to regularly play out a thought experiment with the premise that it is currently happening and think about what you would do. If you would proceed the same way whether it was happening or not, then there is nothing to do. If you would do something different, then explore that option and see how it feels.

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