Cognitive Dissonance Examples and Effects

Cognitive Dissonance Examples and Effects

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“It’s important to be in touch with your own value system and know when your thinking is being driven by emotions,” says clinical psychologist Corrine Leikam, PsyD, an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. It’s giving you the information you need to be at peace with your decisions and to understand why you made them. Developing the self-awareness to notice and question the dissonance often resolves it.

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How Attitude Change Takes Place

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Changing the conflicting cognition is one of the most effective ways of dealing with dissonance but it is also one of the most difficult—particularly in the case of deeply held values and beliefs, such as religious or political leanings. A person who cares about their health might be disturbed to learn that sitting for long periods during the day is linked to a shortened lifespan. Since they work all day in an office and spend a great deal of time sitting, it is difficult to change their behavior.

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How to reduce cognitive dissonance

The observer was a member of the same social group as the writer and we predicted that the observer would experience cognitive dissonance. We predicted the observer would become more favorable to increased fees. I raised the rhetorical question of why we have a drive to reduce dissonance. One answer to that question was provided by Harmon-Jones (1999) in his action orientation model, described earlier. In that view, people need to take an unconflicted stance toward action, which is made difficult by indecision and ambivalence.

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On the other hand, exclusive interest in theory building risks an indulgence on nuance while missing the opportunity to demonstrate the usefulness of our theoretical understanding. To live an authentic life, you need to be able to recognize when you’re compensating for incongruence. From there, you can make positive changes that help you live according to your true values. One thirty-second social media video can totally shift our perspective.

Being forced into a decision

Our brains rely on patterns, past experiences, and mental shortcuts to process information quickly. That means that when we take in new information, we don’t interpret it objectively. In one study, researchers asked participants to give speeches that would encourage the audience to take a certain positive action. When the effort doesn’t seem to be “worth it,” we often make up reasons why it was better than the alternative. This process of effort justification validates the benefits of the choices we’ve made. We consider ourselves to be truthful, hard-working, health-conscious, and in control.

Maybe you always expect your friends to be prompt when you have dinner plans, but you’re usually 10 minutes late yourself. Adjusting your behavior or your expectations of your friends might help lessen conflict down the line. You can use that self-awareness to guide your future actions and decisions. Some of that dissonance can be a good thing, but too much (or too much unresolved tension) means we’re constantly at conflict with ourselves.

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  • For example, someone who agrees to write an essay favoring a position with which they privately disagree will not experience dissonance if they thought no one would read it.
  • For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance.
  • By aversive, Fazio and I meant that a consequence of our behavior is unwanted.
  • Because the task wasn’t validated by a sufficient monetary reward, they made up an internal motivation that justified the lie.
  • It’s the tension that arises when we think one way but act another way, or when we hold two opposing views at the same time.
  • Say you’re a student looking to choose between two different universities you’d like to attend.

Festinger used the term “cognitive” to precede dissonance, arguing that all types of thoughts, behaviors and perceptions were cognitive dissonance and addiction represented in people’s thinking by way of their cognitive representations. Social psychological theories of attitudes and attitude change generally involved people comparing their own attitudes to the attitudes of others, or comparing the basis for certain attitudes with information that a communicator might offer. With Festinger’s use of the concept of cognitive representations, attitudes, behaviors, social mores, communications – that is, virtually any phenomenon that people can perceive – all are grist for the mill of cognitive dissonance.

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A person who feels defensive or unhappy might consider the role cognitive dissonance might play in these feelings. If they are part of a wider problem that is causing distress, people may benefit from speaking with a therapist. Avoiding, delegitimizing, and limiting the impact of cognitive dissonance may result in a person not acknowledging their behavior and thus not taking steps to resolve the dissonance. There is also some ambiguity (i.e., vagueness) about the term “dissonance” itself. Is it a perception (as “cognitive” suggests), a feeling, or a feeling about a perception? Aronson’s Revision of the idea of dissonance as an inconsistency between a person’s self-concept and a cognition about their behavior makes it seem likely that dissonance is really nothing more than guilt.

  • While cognitive dissonance is often described as something widely and regularly experienced, efforts to capture it in studies don’t always work, so it could be less common than has been assumed.
  • Festinger wondered how people would react if they noticed discrepancies with their past experience.
  • You realize that you were making a decision that was out of step with what you said you wanted to do.
  • Anyone can experience this uneasiness when their feelings don’t align with their actions, says Rachelle Scott, M.D., a psychiatrist and ​​medical director of Mental Health at Eden Health in New York.
  • And it can be troubling and mentally exhausting to deal with, Curry says.
  • A person who feels defensive or unhappy might consider the role cognitive dissonance might play in these feelings.

For example, turning pegs (as in Festinger’s experiment) is an artificial task that doesn’t happen in everyday life. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance. Study participants who complete an uninteresting task have been found to rate the task as more enjoyable if they were first asked to tell someone else it was enjoyable—an effect attributed to cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. Cognitive dissonance can even influence how people feel about and view themselves, leading to negative feelings of self-esteem and self-worth. This is particularly true if the disparity between their beliefs and behaviors involves something that is central to their sense of self. When faced with two similar choices, we are often left with feelings of dissonance because both options are equally appealing.

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