Cognitive Dissonance

After reading chapter five I noticed cognitive dissonance throughout a large portion of the book. Cognitive dissonance was described in class as being a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. A good example of this was found on page 182 where the author writes about how we all tell our self that African Americans “deserve” all of this even though we know, but do not want to acknowledge that white Americans are less likely to be convicted of the same crime done by blacks. Cognitive dissonance applies here because we know that this mass incarceration is not fair or morally right to do, however, our behavior does not try to stop it from happening. Instead of doing what our beliefs say is right we try to convince ourselves that it is the African Americans fault that they are

Cognitive dissonance is a physiological conflict resulting from out of place beliefs and attitudes held at the same time (Webster, n.d.). In layman’s terms this means having thoughts and attitudes that are not always the same as the general public’s thoughts. In this essay you will be given one example of cognitive dissonance from the media.

Despite the participants’ feelings of being uneasy after hearing screams from the other room, they all continue with the experiment after the conductor instructs them to. Having the conductor of the experiment in the

Neither were they told the true meaning to the experiment. They were informed that they were taking part in a study to reveal if there is any retaining of learning with punishment involved. They were instructed to choose from a draw from a hat on what role they would play in the study. This left them only a choice a role as the learner. They were taken to another area in the lab to execute the exercise. They were then strapped to a chair connected to the high voltage machine. The instructor gave them a list of words to remember as they were spoken from a different room. Afterwards they were instructed to recite the words that were paired together with no relation to each other. The pain was delivered with increasing the voltage if the word pairs were not recited correctly. As the pain increase they ask to stop. This was a sign that they could not respond obediently to the pain and their tolerance was getting weaker. But the teacher explained that they must continue causing a small percentage of accuracy but no greater change. The most obedient took the most voltage in shock and those who quit early were deemed the least obedient. The highest shock level was at three hundred and seventy-five volts and least of three hundred volts. The most obedient remained calm as the levels increase while the least obedient showed anger and discomfort despite being instructed

In the podcast titled Cognitive Dissonance (2011), Dr. Carol Tavris, the author of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, discusses the relationship between psychology and neuroscience, in addition to discussing cognitive dissonance. As Dr. Tavris explains, cognitive dissonance theory is the mental discomfort we feel whenever two ideas are conflicted with one another, causing discomfort that we attempt to reduce cognitively (Campbell & Tavris, 2011). Moreover, dissonance can increase dependent upon, how important the decision is, how strongly the dissonant thoughts conflict, and our ability to rationalize and justify the conflict (Cognitive dissonance, 2016). As a future psychologist,

What is cognitive dissonance? Give some examples of situations that might create dissonance in an individual. What does cognitive dissonance have to do with blocked need satisfaction? (3 points)

The independent variable was the voltage level, while the dependent variable was the participants’ willingness to continue. In addition, since the experimenters, but not the subjects, understood the structure of the test, it could be defined as a single-blind experiment. While the subjects believed that they were being randomly assigned the roles of “teacher” or “learner”, they were really assigned the roles

For the experiment the participants were put in groups, eight subjects were seated around a table, with carefully picked out seating plans to prevent any suspicion. Only one subject was a genuine participant, the rest being confederates (assistants of the experiment), carefully tutored to give pre-selected responses. At first the confederates answered the questions correctly, but eventually began providing incorrect answers. Careful experimental construction placed a varying amount of peer pressure on the individual test subjects.

As people, we often presume that the actions displayed by a person are piloted through their individual thoughts and opinions, however, the cognitive dissonance theory (CDT) shows that this is not always the case. Labeled by some as an action-opinion theory, the theory of cognitive dissonance explains how people are compelled to commit actions contrary to their beliefs. The basic principle behind action-opinion theories is that these

Through a fixed lottery, the subjects were given a role of a teacher and their co-subject, who was an actor, would be the learner. The participants were unaware the roles were fixed until debriefing. The teacher was guided by the experimenter to give the learner a shock each time he answered a question wrong. The teacher was given a sample of a 45

I decided to write about some instances of potential cognitive dissonance concerning inconsistent events. There are many hints surrounding the Pearl Harbor attack that there was a person in authority that had prior knowledge of Japan's plans of attacking the base. Despite knowing that these plans had the potential to be carried out, they made the decision to stand idle on the matter. As a result, they lost 2,403 people that day. Most people are given the same generic information in textbook form. In many cases, people take those same lies for truth. Through the very different change in information people often enter a state of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is partially the media's fault in many cases. Observing the same case from

“Cognitive dissonance plays a key role in people’s behavior when choosing between alternatives, because the selection of an alternative is based in the fact it is more desirable” (Alvarado, Ramirez, 2014). Humans are often faced with the challenge of choosing between two alternatives, and are often faced with discomfort or regret afterwards. When faced with this regret, people often try to justify or rationalize the decision they made, wanting to reduce this feeling of dissonance. “No matter how smart they are, people who are in the midst of reducing dissonance are so involved with convincing themselves that they are right that they frequently end up behaving irrationally and maladaptively (Aronson, Wilson, Akert, & Sommers, 2016). People do not like to admit they are

While they say college is supposed to be the time where you find yourself, and become who you really are, I find that I have still not reached that point. That’s not to say that I haven’t done all of the other important things that you’re supposed to do while you’re in college; I’ve picked a major, a minor, figured out all the best routes to class are, found a flexible job to help pay my rent, and found friends that I can for the most part rely on. The department I have lacked in the most would be finding love. But like all things, there is trial and error. For me it has been mostly error, but in hindsight I can see why.

When we make a fundamental attribution error, we assign characteristics to an individual that do not necessarily apply due to factors of a situation. For instance, a person A may judge person B as unfriendly because person B did not respond when person A said, "hello”. Person B, however, may be very friendly. The reason Person B did not respond is that he cannot hear and Person A was not in his field of view when he said, "hello”. cognitive dissonance - Cognitive dissonance occurs when we perform a particular act, and then feel emotional pain based on our performance of that act.

The focus of this paper is to determine how cognitive dissonance affects our decisions, and how one can reduce the impacts of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a phenomenon which occurs when two cognitions are conflicting. In choosing one option over the other, people tend to question if they made the right decision. There are several strategies to resolve cognitive dissonance. Altering the conflicting cognition, altering the importance of the conflicting cognition and adding additional positive cognitions to outweigh the conflicting ones are ways to resolve cognitive dissonance. The results of these dissonance reduction strategies all typically result in a stronger attribution with the option that was chosen, and the unchosen alternative is more negatively attributed.