Cognitive Dissonance In Psychology: Definition and Examples

The subjects were directed to persuade the confederate that the tedious tasks were interesting and engaging. Subjects of one group were paid twenty dollars ($20) for their participation. The third group, the control group, was not asked to speak with the confederate. Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person’s behavior and beliefs do not complement each other or when they hold two contradictory beliefs. It causes a feeling of discomfort that can motivate people to try to feel better. However, cognitive dissonance can also be a tool for personal and social change.

Inconsistent or conflicting beliefs lead to disharmony, which people strive to avoid. Cognitive dissonance was defined by Leon Festinger as an aversive psychological drive state that when experienced we are motivated to reduce (Festinger 1957). Dissonance is the result of inconsistency between two or more cognitions, and these cognitions may represent one’s attitudes, thoughts about one’s behavior, or other stored information.

Ways to Address Cognitive Dissonance

However, Festinger believed that all people are motivated to avoid or resolve cognitive dissonance due to the discomfort it causes. This can prompt people to adopt certain defense mechanisms when they have to confront it. The dissonance https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/cognitive-dissonance-treatment-in-sober-living/ between two contradictory ideas, or between an idea and a behavior, creates discomfort. Festinger argued that cognitive dissonance is more intense when a person holds many dissonant views and those views are important to them.

In fact, it is a psychological mechanism that helps us perceive our world (and our place in it) consistently. It is a mechanism that alerts us when we are not acting in line with our beliefs, attitudes, or plans. Imagine confronting a sunbather with the information that excessive sun exposure is the leading cause of skin cancer.

Aversiveness of Cognitive Dissonance

If the CDS is a negative state, it is difficult to understand how individuals can misattribute it to a positive source. While some data provided support for this conceptualization (e.g., Martinie et al., 2013), most scholars still consider the dissonance state to be aversive https://ecosoberhouse.com/ per nature. Although many studies have focused on a single dissonance reduction strategy (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959; Aronson & Mills, 1959; Brehm, 1956), it is important to note that people may simultaneously adopt multiple strategies to counter the dissonance.

• A smoker who knows that smoking is bad for health will experience dissonance, which causes mental discomfort, because the habit of smoking and the knowledge of how harmful smoking is are conflicting.
• 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.
• Psychologist Joel Cooper recently published a comprehensive update of cognitive dissonance theory after more than 50 years of research.