Cognitive Dissonance: Theory, Examples & How to Reduce It

We may feel as if the effort was a waste or that we were cheated out of our payoff. Dissonance as a result of inconsistencies of attitudes and behavior occurs when there are discrepancies between what we believe and what we do. In the Effect of the Severity of Threat on the Devaluation of Forbidden Behavior (1963), children were left in a room with toys, including a greatly desirable steam shovel, the forbidden toy. Upon leaving the room, the experimenter told half the children that there would be severe punishment if they played with the steam-shovel toy.

Culture and Cognitive Dissonance

Dissonance theory revolutionized social psychology by emphasizing the role of cognition in social behavior. More importantly, it also provided the first testable framework in which to conceptualize how cognition could be motivated and how the motivated cognition could yield some intriguing forms of social behavior. The theory enabled us, both in and outside of social psychology, to reflect on potentially unflattering aspects of the human mind. Indeed, the influence of dissonance theory went far beyond the field of social psychology.

By bringing attention to the inconsistencies in our minds, cognitive dissonance may present an opportunity for growth.
In response to the limitations of the theory, three revisions of cognitive dissonance theory have been proposed.
This offers opportunities to discuss the discrepancies, deepen the relationship, and re-align values.
In that sense, the experience of cognitive dissonance is an opportunity to learn and grow, as long as we deal with it constructively and respond in a way that we choose and is beneficial.
There are plenty of sources, mostly scientific articles and books, that provide a wide overview of the literature on cognitive dissonance.

Theories of Understanding: Gestalt and Cognitive Theories

Next, participants define and label the thin ideal, and discuss the origins of the thin ideal and other standards of beauty that have been held through history, and how messages of the thin ideal are conveyed (e.g., through the media) and maintained. Each DBI may include several combinations of these activities performed over one or more sessions. People’s core social motive to hold a coherent, socially shared understanding has inspired theories that account for various social cognitive processes. Gestalt theories in social psychology emphasize harmonious fit among elements that constitute a coherent whole, hence their influence on consistency theories of attitudes and on schema theories of social perception (see Sect. 3.1). Their descendants, modern social cognition theories, most often focus on dual processes, one automatic and based on superficial, peripheral heuristics or categories, the other controlled and based on systematic, central, deliberation or individuation (see Chaiken and Trope 1999).

How Cognitive Dissonance Feels

In simple terms, a dissonance is an inconsistency in cognitive elements, which can be knowledge, opinions, beliefs, or the behaviours of an individual.
The reasons for this enhancement include increased motivation on the part of the client and a more positive view about the likelihood of therapeutic success.
Some of the ways people reduce discomfort from cognitive dissonance include seeking information that aligns with and supports current beliefs, reducing the conflicting belief’s importance, and changing beliefs to reduce the feelings of conflict.
Research from Acharya, Blackwell and Sen shows that individuals committing violence against members of another group develop hostile attitudes towards their victims as a way of minimizing cognitive dissonance.

As a speaker, if you want to increase cognitive dissonance, you need to make sure that your audience doesn’t feel coerced or manipulated, but rather that they can clearly see that they have a choice of whether to be persuaded. Cognitive dissonance plays a role in many value judgments, decisions, and evaluations. Becoming aware of how conflicting beliefs impact the decision-making cognitive dissonance addiction process is a great way to improve your ability to make faster and more accurate choices. People who learn that greenhouse emissions result in global warming might experience feelings of dissonance if they drive a gas-guzzling vehicle. To reduce this dissonance, they may seek out new information that overrides the belief that greenhouse gasses contribute to global warming.

A man who learns that his eating habits raise his risk of illness feels the tension between his preferred behavior and the idea that he could be in danger. He might ease this feeling by telling himself that the health warning is exaggerated or, more productively, by deciding to take action to change his behavior. If a woman reads that her favorite politician has done something immoral, she could conclude that the charges have been invented by his enemies—or, instead, rethink her support. When someone tells a lie and feels uncomfortable about it because he fundamentally sees himself as an honest person, he may be experiencing cognitive dissonance. That is, there is mental discord related to a contradiction between one thought (in this case, knowing he did something wrong) and another (thinking that he is honest).

The Theory of Animal Mind: Evidence of Influencing Psychological Theories

Cognitive dissonance refers to the internal psychological process in which an individual experiences conflicting knowledge elements and makes an effort to reduce the resulting dissonance. It involves the simultaneous existence of conflicting beliefs or ideas and the individual’s attempt to align them. DBIs have been criticized on theoretical grounds for using a variety of mechanisms to produce outcome changes and not solely dissonance-induction techniques. For example, DBI also includes behavioral exposure and positive body affirmations, components of Cash’s cognitive behavioral therapy for body image disturbance, in addition to counter-attitudinal dissonance techniques. Roehrig and colleagues conducted a study to determine if the dissonance-induction techniques alone were sufficient to produce the changes observed in the full intervention (which included both the dissonance techniques and the behavioral techniques). They found that the dissonance-induction techniques did indeed produce significant reductions in thin-ideal internalization and bulimic pathology that were equivalent to those produced in the full intervention.

Eating meat

Inconsistent or conflicting beliefs lead to disharmony, which people strive to avoid.
However, new information such as “research has not proved definitely that smoking causes lung cancer” may reduce the dissonance.
In ethical therapy, the client is always encouraged to develop an internal locus of control within their authentic — or autonomous — personality.
In other words, consumers select attitude-consistent information and avoid attitude-challenging information.