Cognitive Dissonance And Its Effect On Behavior

However, we find this commandment hard to obey because it goes against our fallen sense of justice. People hold competing motives, focus on competing virtue orientations, experience competing emotions, and find themselves in a variety of situations that make different (often competing) behaviors normative. Transformations of motivations and emotions can occur. Injustices, offenses, and transgressions stimulate a set of emotions, motivations, virtue orientation, and social norms that are skewed toward self-interest, self-protection, and

A number of studies do, in fact, find that young people do seek justification before engaging in delinquent behavior (Siegel and Welsh, 2015). But Ronald Akers (1997) asserts that adherence to neutralizing attitudes has been found to be moderately related to delinquent and criminal behavior. Akers suggests that while there is support for the theory it may be because neutralization attitudes dispose individuals to violating the law – instead of offering rationalizations for committing delinquent acts.

Suddenly, an insect is caught in a spider's web, unaware of the spider the insect has a special defiance weapon. The spider making a fatal mistake, miss judged the insect's character, and in return had nothing to show for its hard work. This is similar to what one does when they miss interoperating another's feelings and personality causing pain and no gain for the observer. New stereotypes, 'boxes', assumptions, etc. all have encroached on a person's worldview. One comes to see others in a whole new way by theories like the Attribution theory and its Fundamental Attribution error, along with Cognitive Dissonance theory all of which involve one's actions and attitudes.

No one enjoys being told what they are doing is wrong, and in this specific case that they are stealing. Peter explains to Joanna that his business has been rounding certain amounts to take “fractions of a penny” from compounded interests and then they placed the “dropped remainder” in an account they own. By using the Cognitive Dissonance Theory, I will analyze this artifact and incorporate how this theory is intertwined within the conversation between the characters Joanna and Peter. I will show how Peter uses selective exposure, post-decision dissonance, and two of the three parts of the state-of-the-art revisions to reduce his dissonance.

American psychologist, Rollo May, once said, “the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.” This philosophy is supported by Solomon E.Asch’s in his article, “The Opinions and Social Pressure.” In the article, Asch conducts a series of experiments that centralize on the influences of social pressure and the extent to which an individual, when confronted by the differing opinions of a majority, will surrender their perceptions to others. Asch argues that although humans believe they’re independent in their decision-making, they tend to pay heed to the majority because they fear the scrutiny of others and being an outcast in the group.

“If I chose to do it or say it, I must believe in it.” asserts the psychologist Leon Festinger (as cited in Psychology: Eighth Edition in Modules, 2007, p.731). When we become aware that our actions contradict our attitudes, we tend to revise our attitudes. This statement fits Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory that asserts that we act to reduce discomfort or dissonance, an unpleasant tension, we experience when two of our thoughts or cognitions are inconsistent. Mkimmie, et al. (2003) investigated the impact of social support on cognitive dissonance arousal in their experiment, “I’m a Hypocrite, but So Is Everyone Else: Group Support and the Reduction of Cognitive Dissonance.” The psychologists aimed to test the impact of social

What happens when a person is faced with the conflict of studying for versus cheating on a college exam when eighty-percent of their grade is dependent upon the outcome of said exam? For the college student there may be a number of self-justifiable factors. The conflicted student may find themselves in a position of emotional and moralistic conflict over choice; situation, morality, personality trait, personal beliefs, and attitude are a fraction of the elements in a slew of factors that potentially play a role in the final outcome. When preparing for or taking a college exam, ethics, behavior and attitude may very well change dependent upon the level of importance of the college exam, overall grade,

In a practical sense, cognitive dissonance reactions generally originate from the peoples' perspective of themselves, especially as intelligent and nice people. Generally, the concept or theory of cognitive dissonance helps to understand how people attempt to make sense of the world they live in. However, the theory does not precisely forecast what a person will do minimize or get rid of disagreement. This theory mainly states that a person will be stimulated to do something in order to bring attitudes and behaviors into balance. As a result of its basic focus, cognitive dissonance has significant effects on various fields, especially in risk taking at a place of employment or specific industry.

Milgram found that people will believe what they’re told and frequently do not pay attention to the underlying aspects of a situation. The people were told that they were in a learning experiment so that is what they believed, where as in reality Milgram was testing to see if they would shock the learners, and they did.

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

In the 1950s, Leon Festinger had come up with this theory of Cognitive Dissonance when a cult leader had persuaded his followers to believe that life on earth was going to end, and that those who were believers would be rescued by aliens. When this did not occur, they rationalized their beliefs by instead coming to the conclusion that aliens, rather, had saved the entire world. Cognitive Dissonance occurs when we hold a strong belief about something and then do something else that contradicts that belief. Look at a person who smokes cigarettes, but knows that the nicotine and all that goes inside one cigarette are bad. The tension they feel is “dissonance,” and to ease that tension they can do one of three things: change their behavior, justify their behavior by changing their conflicting thoughts, or justify their behavior by adding on new thoughts. This paper will use research articles that were previously written, to explain the relationship between dissonance and moral/non-moral

Cognitive Dissonance Theory, or CDT for short, is an objective communication theory that was developed by Leon Festinger. Cognitive Dissonance is defined as “The distressing mental state caused by inconsistency between a person’s two beliefs or a belief and an action.” (Griffin, Ledbetter, et al). An example of cognitive dissonance would be a health conscious smoker, this person knows that smoking is bad for them, but they still smoke because they enjoy it. Their desire to be healthy conflicts with their smoking, this conflict places them in a distressing mental state, a state of cognitive dissonance. Festinger provides three hypotheses for CDT: 1.) Selective exposure prevents dissonance. 2.) Post decision dissonance creates need for reassurance. and 3.) Minimal justification for action induces attitude change.

In case smoking, the dissonance cognitive theory could be associated when a smoker have trust that smoking harmful to health and do they change their belief after receiving effect on their health or still continue smoking because they have different beliefs which reduces cognitive dissonance .A person who smoke will become addicted until smoking become habit and enable person getting cancer. Moffatt and Whip (2004) based on their study many dead people due to smoking. Although this smokers know smoking habit harmful to health but they still choose to continue to smoke (Pirie, Murray and Luepker 1991). It is important to know why they still choose to smoke to reduce smoking rates among young adults. Therefore, this study was to investigate

This chapter focuses on the scientists Leon Festinger and his theory of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is when an individual adjusts their beliefs to fit with another person’s actions. Festinger performed multiple experiments to demonstrate cognitive dissonance. One of his experiments involved a group of people who believed that the world was going to end due to a huge flood on December 21st. 1954. Festinger infiltrated this group and pretended to be a believer of the theory. This cult group was based on the end-of world messages from a god named Sananda, who sent messages to the group leader Marion Keech. When the flood did not occur, instead of accepting that their beliefs were wrong, many of the cult members tried to rationalize

Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory fixates itself on how humans strive for internal consistency. Cognitive dissonance means to describe the feelings of discomfort which is a result of two conflicting beliefs or behaviour. The theory claims that people seek internal balance by changing something in belief or behaviour in order to reduce the imbalance. There are different forms of cognitive dissonance. For example, when someone makes one of the dissonant factors less important: “Oh, one small bite doesn’t matter”.