By: Aisha Siyal
Abstract
Cognitive dissonance can be caused by feeling forced to do something, learning new information, or when faced with a decision between two similar choices.
When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. Cognitive dissonance can often have a powerful influence on our behaviors and actions. It doesn't just influence how you feel; it also motivates you to take action to reduce feelings of discomfort. Cognitive dissonance plays a role in many value judgments, decisions, and evaluations. Becoming aware of how conflicting beliefs impact the decision-making process is a great way to improve your ability to make faster and more accurate choices
Keywords: cognitive dissonance, inconsistency, behaviors, discomfort.
Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance theory, proposed by Leon Festinger, posits that individuals experience discomfort when holding to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. 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. People tend to seek consistency in their attitudes and perceptions, so this conflict causes unpleasant feelings of unease. The inconsistency between what people believe and how they behave motivates them to engage in actions that will help minimize feelings of discomfort. People attempt to relieve this tension in different ways, such as by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding new information.
How Attitude Change Takes Place
Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and behavior in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance). This is known as the principle of cognitive consistency. Notice that dissonance theory does not state that these modes of dissonance reduction will work, only that individuals who are in a state of cognitive dissonance will take steps to reduce the extent of their dissonance. The theory of cognitive dissonance has been widely researched in several situations to develop the basic idea in more detail, and various factors have been identified that may be important in attitude change.
Signs of Cognitive Dissonance
Everyone experiences cognitive dissonance to some degree but that doesn't mean that it is always easy to recognize. Some signs that what you are feeling might be related to dissonance include:
● Feeling uncomfortable before doing something or making a decision.
● Trying to justify or rationalize a decision you've made or action you have taken.
● Feeling embarrassed or ashamed about something you've done and trying to hide your actions from other people.
● Experiencing guilt or regret about something you've done in the past.
● Doing things because of social pressure or a fear of missing out, even if it wasn't
something you wanted to do
What Influences Cognitive Dissonance?
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. The overall strength of the dissonance can also be influenced by several factors, including The importance attached to each belief. Cognitions that are more personal, such as beliefs about the self, and highly valued tend to result in greater dissonance. The number of dissonant beliefs. The more dissonant (clashing) thoughts you have, the greater the strength of the dissonance.
How Cognitive Dissonance Feels
This discomfort can manifest itself in a variety of ways. Someone with cognitive dissonance may feel:
● Anxiety
● Embarrassment
● Regret
● Sadness
● Shame
● Stress
Cognitive dissonance can even influence how people feel about and view themselves, leading to negative feelings of self-esteem and self-worth.
What Causes Cognitive Dissonance?
What Causes Cognitive Dissonance?
● Forced Compliance Behavior,
● Decision Making,
● Effort.
● New information.
Forced Compliance Behavior
When someone is forced to do (publicly) something they (privately) don’t want to do, dissonance is created between their cognition (I didn’t want to do this) and their behavior (I did it). Sometimes you might find yourself engaging in behaviors that are opposed to your own beliefs due to external expectations at work, school, or in a social situation. This might involve going along with something due to peer pressure or doing something at work to avoid getting fired. Forced compliance occurs when an individual performs an action that is inconsistent with
beliefs. The behavior can’t be changed since it was already in the past, so dissonance will need to be reduced by re-evaluating their attitude toward what they have done. This prediction has been tested experimentally:
In an intriguing experiment, Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) asked participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a peg board for an hour). As you can imagine, participant’s attitudes toward this task were highly negative.
Decision making
Life is filled with decisions, and decisions (as a general rule) arouse dissonance. People make decisions, both large and small, daily. When faced with two similar choices, we are often left with feelings of dissonance because both options are equally appealing. For example, suppose you had to decide whether to accept a job in an absolutely beautiful area of the country or turn down the job so you could be near your friends and family. Either way, you would experience dissonance. If you took the job you would miss your loved ones; if you turned the job down, you would pine for the beautiful streams, mountains, and valleys. Both alternatives have their good points and bad points. The rub is that making a decision cuts off the possibility that you can enjoy the advantages of the unchosen alternative, yet it assures you that you must accept the disadvantages of the chosen alternative.
Once a choice has been made, however, people need to find a way to reduce these feelings of discomfort. We accomplish this by justifying why our choice was the best option so we can believe that we made the right decision.This is probably because dissonance would be caused if we spent a great effort to achieve something and then evaluated it negatively.
Effort
It also seems to be the case that we value most highly those goals or items which have required considerable effort to achieve. We could, of course, spend years of effort into achieving something that turns out to be a load of rubbish and then, to avoid the dissonance that produces, try to convince ourselves that we didn’t spend years of effort or that the effort was quite enjoyable, or that it wasn’t a lot of effort. However it seems we find it easier to persuade ourselves that what we have achieved is worthwhile, and that’s what most of us do.
This method of reducing dissonance is known as “effort justification.”
If we put effort into a task that we have chosen to carry out, and the task turns out badly, we experience dissonance. To reduce this dissonance, we are motivated to try to think that the task turned out well.
New Information
Sometimes learning new information can lead to feelings of cognitive dissonance. For example, if you engage in a behavior that you later learn is harmful, it can lead to feelings of discomfort. People sometimes deal with this by finding ways to justify their behaviors or finding ways to discredit or ignore new information.
Reducing Dissonance
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. Adding More Beliefs to Outweigh Dissonant Beliefs; To deal with the feelings of discomfort then, they might find some way of rationalizing the conflicting cognition. Changing beliefs or 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. And lastly Reducing the importance of the beliefs, A common way to reduce dissonance is to increase the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and decrease the attractiveness of the rejected alternative.
References
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Festinger, L. (Ed.). (1964). Conflict, decision, and dissonance (Vol. 3) . Stanford University Press.
By Kendra Cherry, MSEdhttps://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-cognitive-dissonance-2795012
Cognitive Dissonance and the Discomfort of Holding Conflicting Beliefs
/cognitive-dissonance?amp=&_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM
%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17273401082958&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.
google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.psychologytoday.com%2Fus%2Fbasics%2Fcognitive-dissonance
Comments