Cognitive Dissonance research

The goal of this project was to discover where Christians are experiencing cognitive dissonance in their faith. We hypothesized that there would be new product opportunities within the answer. To find out, a survey was sent to local pastors and congregations asking about their goals, pains and gains and interviews were conducted with recovery coaches to identify possible themes that repeatedly came up in spiritual spaces and porn recovery. 

Margin: "Not having enough time" and "too busy" were predominant reasons respondents gave for why they didn't engage more often in the spiritual activities they deeply valued. However, most respondents spoke of that "busyness" as an external issue where they had little control to fix it.

Relationship: Humans are built for relationship. Loneliness, even amongst respondents who are regularly involved in their local church, was a recurring pain point.  

Reward: Seeing progress was a crucial component of all the recovery programs we interviewed. The mode of reward varied but it was unanimously recognized that tracking progress over time was vital.

From these themes, the team honed our research problem: Christians in the US don't know how to slow down and rest or how to invest in relationships. 

The Hypothesis: We believe that practicing a few minutes of silence, solitude, and reflection over three weeks will help our participants feel less frazzled in their daily lives and increase their internal sense of self-awareness and peace. To verify that, we will compare their survey responses at the beginning and end of the study. We are right if they end the study more self-aware of their feelings and more centered and in control of their day and mind.

The Measurements: How do participants self-report their sense of hurriedness, ability to identify emotions, and comfort being away from their phone at the beginning versus the end of the study?

The Research Methods: 

• 21 day diary study where users would complete one entry per day. 
• Daily check-in survey with identical questions for each day. This asked if they completed that day's entry and what was helpful/unhelpful if they did or what prohibited them if they didn't. Answers provided insight into potential roadblocks and issues with the prototype's user flow.
• Welcome and exit surveys that were more in-depth and asked a variety of questions about their current reflection routines, spiritual practices, and ability to identify and process their own emotions. The results of the welcome and exit survey answers were compared per user to identify any reduction in cognitive dissonance baselines as well as across users to identify potential themes/key findings.
• Exit interviews were conducted with all participants to get a more in-depth understanding of their experience with the prototype. We asked questions such as what was most helpful and challenging, how they would describe the prototype to a friend, and one thing they might change. 

I recruited 8 participants out of 150 respondents from our preliminary research. Their demographic criteria included:

• male & female 
• age range of 18 - 65
• working professionals, part-time employees & students, and stay-at-home parents
• single & married with and without children

The selected 8 were chosen by a group of researchers including myself to ensure as much diversity and lack of researcher bias as possible in the respondent set.

Finding 1: Silence and Grounding Practices Reduce Stress

• 7 out of 8 participants showed signs of decreased stress after they completed the focusing and response exercises.
• 6 out of 8 participants found spending a minute in silence helpful in reducing stress. 
• The value of increasing margin in their daily/weekly schedule was also present but only in 3 out of 8 participants. 21 days is the minimum to build such a habit so more testing over longer periods of time would be required to see if that value increased.

Finding 2: Daily Reflection Increased Self-Awareness

• 6 out of 8 participants had some form of reflection habit prior to the study but only 25% regularly journaled.
• 5 out of 8 of participants showed increased self-awareness after the study.

Finding 3: Journaling Deepened Accountability

• 4 out of 8 participants identified value in this type of journal to help first-time reflectors/strugglers understand themselves. This would then allow them to have more articulate conversations with allies.
• A Lone Wolf participant highly valued the self-awareness and accountability a daily journal provided.

Quote: This was really helpful to get in touch with why I do what I do…writing your thoughts shows you the contradictions and connections in your feelings.

These findings showed that as little as 5 to 15 minutes a day spent in silence, centering your body, and reflecting on content designed to help you explore your inner self can drastically increase self-awareness and reduce stress. This type of practice could be revolutionary to the struggler/ally relationship within porn recovery and in particular, it could help the company's Lone Wolf persona start to seek help. We already know there is a lot of shame surrounded porn recovery, especially when a struggler confesses out loud for the first time. If first admission is to themselves on paper, it will help them be more articulate and honest with an ally or spouse in the future. 

The primary limitation was the length of the study. Reducing busyness and stress in our very hurried culture is a big task and 21 days is barely enough time to see results. 

I recommended that we conduct longer periods of testing as well as testing artifacts that are assimilated into the company's current app ecosystem to identify what the offline/online relationship of this research might look like. Learning from this research has been implemented into several educational courses on the company's app.