Into the mind of a "Peasant" (Warning: Wall of text)

Please keep in mind that this is all in good fun and I am in no way a psychologist or a doctor of any kind nor am I purposefully trying to offend or insult anyone. I’ve just been curious for the longest time on how or why a “peasant” thinks the way they think or how they cannot see how insanely bonkers they can sound sometimes, so here goes.

Cognitive Dissonance is a psychological condition that might explain and help you understand the state of mind of a “peasant”, How and why they come up with their ridiculous and usually absolutely made up "facts" about consoles and PCs, such as the ever popular “30FPS is more cinematic” or “the human can't see past 24FPS” etc. There are so many more examples but you get the idea.

Anyways, I will be pulling a few summary highlights from Wikipedia and throwing in my thoughts as well to really drive my theory home.

So now we dive in to the mind of a peasant if you can bear with the wall of text that is to follow, then instead of hating peasants or getting enraged by them you can begin to understand and feel pity for them and just maybe make you more willing to try to get them the help they need, enlightenment.

In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs...or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values. (e.g. The stress/psychological discomfort a peasant feels when presented with information that PC outperforms consoles in virtually any criteria which is contradictory to his/her dearly held cognition which is that consoles are state of the art technology with no equal short of NASA super computers.)

Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance focuses on how humans strive for internal consistency. An individual who experiences inconsistency (dissonance) tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and is motivated to try to reduce this dissonance—as well as actively avoid situations and information likely to increase it. (e.g. A peasant ignoring, disregarding or completely avoiding any information to not experience any psychological discomfort from receiving the information (dissonance) that PCs are subjectively superior to consoles.) This is inconsistent with their cognitions and there are methods of coping with the stress which I will mention later.

First you should know there is a relationship between the amount of dissonance and the lengths an individual will go to reduce the discomfort experienced from cognitive dissonance. This relationship is based on 2 factors, the first being

• the importance of cognitions: The more elements that are personally valued, the greater the magnitude of the dissonant relationship, a dissonant relationship being 2 cognitions/actions that are inconsistent with one another (e.g. claiming that the Xbox One runs all games at 1080p/60FPS, then actually playing most games on the Xbox One at 900p and 30FPS.)

The second factor being;

• The ratio of cognitions: The proportion of dissonant and consonant elements. Consonants are cognitions/actions that are consistent with one another, the opposite of dissonant.

To reiterate, there is a correlation between the lengths an individual/peasant will go to reduce the stress of cognitive dissonance based on the magnitude of the 2 factors mentioned above this process is also called dissonance reduction or put simply the more a peasant believes that consoles are better the harder he/she will try to reduce the stress arising from dissonance. (e.g. consoles can’t do 4k or can’t do, for the most part, 60FPS gameplay but PCs can)

Cognitive dissonance theory is based on the assumption that individuals seek consistency between their expectations and their reality. People constantly try to bring their cognitions and actions in line with one another to avoid cognitive dissonance because whether an individual is aware of it or not, it’s a very stressful state of mind to be in and some people will go to incredible lengths to relieve or alleviate their selves from this condition.

Everyone experiences dissonance at some point in their life and according to Festinger, dissonance reduction can be achieved in four ways.

As an example I will be using a “peasant” who thinks that consoles perform better than PCs and for the sake of explanation let's say he's playing a game available on both platforms but the PC he is on is running the game at 1080p 60FPS and the game on console runs at 720p 30fps. Now he can deal with the dissonance by:

• Changing behavior or cognition (Accepting that the PC performs better than the console)

• Justify behavior or cognition by changing the conflicting cognition. (30 FPS is more cinematic)

• Justify behavior or cognition by adding new cognitions (Console has better exclusives)

• Ignore or deny any information that conflicts with existing beliefs/cognitions. (The console does run at 1080p 60 FPS)

The ladder 3 methods of dissonance reduction is where all peasants stem from, although the last 2 methods in a manner accept the superiority of PC but add cognitions to protect their beliefs rendering PCs still undesirable to them.

An illustration of this is in Aesop's fable The Fox and the Grapes. In the story, a fox sees some high-hanging grapes and wishes to eat them. When the fox realizes he can't reach them, he decides that the grapes are probably not worth eating, with the justification the grapes are not ripe or that they are sour. To put it in PCmasterace terms the peasant will see 1080p 60 FPS on PC and will try to achieve the same results on console but when they realize they can't they will conclude that 1080p doesn't look good and 60FPS sucks.

The final method of reduction is where the most outlandish and ridiculous of peasants come from. These are the people who claim “an update will unlock system resources making consoles more powerful than PCs” or “The human eye can’t see more than 30FPS).

I could say more but I think my point has become clear which is…

TL:DR A peasant is someone who truly believes that consoles are better than PCs even when presented with empirical evidence to the contrary, this individual is experiencing cognitive dissonance, a psychological state of mind that produces great discomfort and stress based on how much he/she truly believes or refuses to believe something else other than their own cognitions.

This is an individual whose experiencing dissonance, a cognition that is inconsistent to what he/she believes in.

A peasant as defined by PCmasterrace is an individual who is so disillusioned by the thought of consoles being inferior to PCs that they make claims such as consoles can achieve 4k and so on but imagine something you wholeheartedly believe in torn down in front of you by a stranger, are you going to take his word for it, maybe some people would but depending on how much you believe, the harder it’s going to be to let go sometimes to the point that you might refuse to accept that what you believe could be wrong.

A peasant isn’t someone who should be treated as an idiot or someone you should get mad at; they are someone under massive stress whose beliefs are brought down to its knees and shoved in the dirt. A peasant is someone who should be pitied and given a glimpse of the light instead of shoved in the fire and mocked for what they believe.

Hopefully you now have an understanding of the thought process a peasant, so that next time you see one in the wild and hear them spout ridiculous “facts” about consoles you will know that this person is trying to prevent the “world” around him from falling apart by staying in the dark, cold comfort of the cave as opposed to stepping into the vast world that the light shines upon because the cave is all he/she knows. Believing otherwise would mean that they have been wrong their entire life and some people just can't accept that.

Submitted by Escalade213 Xbox 720 Release Date 2015