Cognitive Dissonance: Signs, Symptoms And Triggers
Content
Cognitive dissonance is the psychological conflict a person experiences when they hold simultaneous conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. If left unchecked, it could lead to anxiety and mental tension, and you might even try to rationalize harmful actions. It’s that feeling you get when you do something like buy a case of plastic water bottles with lots of packaging while simultaneously being fully aware of how much damage plastic wreaks on the environment. Though a person may not always resolve cognitive dissonance, the response to it may range from ignoring the source of it to changing one’s beliefs or behavior to eliminate the conflict.
However, cognitive dissonance can also be a tool for personal and social change. Drawing a person’s attention to the dissonance between their behavior and their values may increase their awareness of the inconsistency and empower them to act. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort a person feels when their behavior does not align with their values or beliefs. Change, in both thought and behavior, comes from choices, which can either create or resolve cognitive dissonance.
Is cognitive dissonance a bad thing?
Ask students to share what they learned about animals’ senses and behavior. Then, ask them to give examples proving that animals’ needs are not being met when they’re kept in pens and cages, citing evidence from the video. In the end, you decide to start buying cage-free eggs and plan to replace one of your meat purchases each shopping trip with humanely raised meat or a meat substitute, like tofu or tempeh.
What can cognitive dissonance be reduced with?
Festinger assumed three major manners in which an individual could reduce dissonance: (1) change one of the dissonant cognitions (e.g., attitude change); (2) add consonant cognitions so that the overall inconsistency decreases (e.g., seeking information that explains one's inconsistent behavior); and (3) decrease the …
Sometimes just having a professional outside the situation to bounce your ideas and feelings off of, can help you see with more clarity how to rectify the situation. Perhaps the most common example of cognitive dissonance is a person who smokes. At this point, almost all of us are in agreement that smoking is cognitive dissonance treatment bad for our health. So if you smoke regularly, your actions likely misalign with your belief system. You know smoking is bad for your health, but you continue to do it anyway. The term “cognitive dissonance” was first coined by psychologist Leon Festinger in his 1957 book, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.
Belief disconfirmation
To ease the psychological pain of rejecting one choice (FOMO, anyone?) we often start justifying our decision. When we do this by thinking up positives for our choice and negatives for the other option, it’s called the “spreading of alternatives.” Your brain feels better when you can align your behavior with your values. On a big-picture level, we have cognitive dissonance to thank for huge advancements within society.
By Neha Kashyap
Neha is a New York-based health journalist who has written for WebMD, ADDitude, HuffPost Life, and dailyRx News. Neha enjoys writing about mental health, elder care, innovative health care technologies, paying for health care, and simple https://ecosoberhouse.com/ measures that we all can take to work toward better health. This article discusses the signs of cognitive dissonance along with how to cope with it. Confirmation bias is when you interpret new information in a way that fits your existing beliefs.
Decision-making
When you become more aware of how you’re thinking and feeling, it makes it easier to identify when cognitive dissonance is happening. This way, you can address the dissonance head-on and resolve it quickly. It’s important that before making any decisions or coming to any conclusions about something, that you take the time to think it through. This will help you avoid feeling like your actions were out of line with what you want deep down inside. Affective dissonance occurs when someone’s feelings/emotions do not match up with their behavior or thoughts.
School is another catalyst for tension as people are acclimating to a new environment, meeting others and learning new information. Cognitive dissonance is the uneasiness you feel when you have conflicting beliefs. For example, people may feel cognitive dissonance if they enjoy drinking alcohol, despite knowing too much may be bad for their health.
Download 3 Free Positive Psychology Tools Pack (PDF)
By using these types of explanations, the smoker is able to reduce the dissonance and continue the unhealthy behavior. People like to believe that they are logical, consistent, and good at making decisions. Cognitive dissonance can interfere with the perceptions they hold about themselves and their abilities, which is why it can often feel so uncomfortable and unpleasant. The degree of dissonance experienced can depend on a few different factors. Among them are how highly a particular belief is valued and the degree to which the beliefs are inconsistent.
- We consider ourselves to be truthful, hard-working, health-conscious, and in control.
- Conversely, we may justify or trivialize negative behavior or even end the relationship.
- Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort a person feels when their behavior does not align with their values or beliefs.