priests, physicians, citizens, soldiers, spouses, teachers, employees, etc.

 

One corollary of Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency is that a person making big

sacrifices in the course of assuming a new identity will intensify his devotion

to the new identity. After all, it would be quite inconsistent behavior to make

a large sacrifice for something that was no good. And thus civilization has

invented many tough and solemn initiation ceremonies, often public in nature,

that intensify new commitments made.

 

Tough initiation ceremonies can intensify bad conduct as well as good. The

loyalty of the new, “made-man” mafia member, or of the military officer making

the required “blood oath” of loyalty to Hitler, was boosted through the

triggering of Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency.

 

Moreover, the tendency will often make man a “patsy” of manipulative

“compliance-practitioners,” who gain advantage from triggering his subconscious

Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency. Few people demonstrated this process better

than Ben Franklin. As he was rising from obscurity in Philadelphia and wanted

the approval of some important man, Franklin would often maneuver that man into

doing Franklin some unimportant favor, like lending Franklin a book. Thereafter,

the man would admire and trust Franklin more because a nonadmired and nontrusted

Franklin would be inconsistent with the appraisal implicit in lending Franklin

the book.

 

During the Korean War, this technique of Franklin’s was the most important