Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary(2005), 11th Edition defines cognitive

dissonance as “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes

held simultaneously”. Cognitive dissonance is that "feelings of unpleasantness" that one

has when for a desired outcome, an untested or unproven method is proposed or used to

achieve that outcome.(Chow and Thompson, 2003) This is the same “feeling” one gets

with, for the same desired outcome, multiple proven methods that are outside of one’s

competence are proposed or used. The stronger these “feelings” become the more

resistant to change one is, because it hurts. What reduces the resistant to change and

cognitive dissonance is the relationships of, the perceived competency and leadership or

followship skills of all the actors involved.(1992; Kerfoot, 2002; McEntire, 2002)

Belardo and Harrald(1992) made similar observations about the “stranger” groups that

are formed at emergencies and disasters. These “stranger” groups or emergent groups are

formed as result of the diverse disciplines of the scholars, practitioners and leaders and

differing levels of competency involved in the Disaster and Emergency Management

field.(Drabek and McEntire, 2003; McEntire et al., 2002) In a disaster or emergency

these “feelings” and scope and depth of “situational awareness” have profound effects on

the decisions or lack of decisions made and the actions taken by these “stranger” groups

and decision and policy makers involved.(Belardo and Harrald, 1992; Bigley and

Roberts, 2001) Additionally, within the “stranger” group, if the cognitive dissonance and

resistant to change are high, “group think” may take hold of the group or a sub group of

participants with catastrophic results.(Olson, 2002)

To add the chaos that always accompanies an emergency and a disaster, there is recent

the guidance, to the Mitigation, Prevention, Preparedness, Response, Protection,

Recovery, and Reconstruction communities, which each claims primacy and

reorganization of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Emergency

Management Agency (FEMA)(DHS, 2005a; DHS, 2005b; DHS, 2005c; DHS, 2006;

FEMA, 2005b; Perrow, 2005)

Competency-Difficulty Gap

We must add the “Competency-Difficulty Gap” found by Hosseini that can be applied by inference to many states and local jurisdictions in this country.(Hosseini, 2001) Since few state and local decision and

policy makers are even specialists, let along experts in the Disaster and Emergency

Management field, they must rely on an advisor or advisors who sure be at least a

specialist in the field or a subject matter expert in one of the phase. These high-level

advisors rely on input from the “specialists”, “experts” and “subject matter experts” in the

Mitigation, Prevention, Preparedness, Response, Protection, Recovery, and

Reconstruction communities of their jurisdictions. However, during the chaos of the

emergency stage of the response phase of an emergency and a disaster , when these

“stranger” group emergent groups are formed and uncertainty and need for immediacy is

high and the decision and policy makers and high-level advisors lose the comfort of

debate and contemplation.(Belardo and Harrald, 1992; Drabek and McEntire, 2003;

McEntire, 2002; McEntire et al., 2002) This is when “cognitive dissonance” may set in

for them. Aggravated by the lack of the scope and depth needed for full “situational

awareness” and by the competency-difficulty gap or the C-D gap.