Cognitive Dissonance In Friends

Not only is Friends a comedy, it includes multiple plot twists. One of these plot twists is when Monica and Chandler start to date. Throughout the show up until this point, Monica spends time to tell Chandler that she is not interested which is especially outlined in an episode set at the beach, where Chandler tries to find any way to make Monica say she’d date him. An example of this is that he says “Okay, there’s an apocalypse and we are the last two people on Earth…” and Monica still responds with “eh.” This is what caused the decision for them to start dating to be a shock to everyone watching. Another plot twist was when Rachel got pregnant. This was clever writing because the show had been more focused on Monica and Chandler at that point, and when the pregnancy test was

If one is trying to pull a thought or feeling in closer, or push it away, they may be attempting to manipulate their cognitive dissonance. If one knows that they are not happy with their actions, they can dilute that feeling of cognitive dissonance by decreasing the negative or enhancing the positive attitudes about it (Smith & Mackie, n.d.). One might be a smoker for instance, and know that smoking is bad for them, but continue smoking anyway. A perception of a clash of unsuitable elements is a way to describe the way one feels when their actions and beliefs are at odds (McLeod, 2014). So, if one is unhappy about the things they do because they do not match what they think they should do, they will be said to be experiencing cognitive dissonance.

What is cognitive dissonance? Give an example of cognitive dissonance. Also, explain how one would adjust behaviors to become more consistent with attitudes. Cognitive dissonance is when you have conflicting/contradictory beliefs or views on something that can cause you to feel some sort of guilt or “discomfort.” A prime example of cognitive dissonance is smoking.

Hot new sitcoms were on every TV. There are many shows that came out in the 1990s, but two of the most popular are Friends, and Full House. Friends is a popular sitcom set in New York, where the six characters live in the same apartment complex. The characters are Monica and Ross Geller, Rachel Green, Phoebe Buffay, Joey Tribbiani, and Chandler Bing. The show depicts the friends’ dating lives, comedic adventures, and career issues. Friends ran for 10 seasons, from 1994 to 2004, and won many awards. During the ten seasons the most recurring storyline is the relationship of Ross and Rachel, the two break up and get back together numerous times, and have a child together. Despite being a show set in the 90s, Friends, is still popular today, and the entire series can be found on Netflix, or DVD. Full House is an American sitcom that ran from 1987 to 1995. The show takes place in the San Francisco household of Danny Tanner. After Danny's wife passes away, his brother-in-law, Jesse Katsopolis, and Danny's friend, Joey Gladstone move in to help him raise his three daughters, D.J Tanner, Stephanie Tanner, and Michelle Tanner. The show deals with many topics like relationships, fighting, bullying, and many other social problems. Full House ran for eight seasons, from 1987 to 1995, and has recently acquired a spin- off show on Netflix, called Fuller House (Dyball

Cognitive dissonance is defined by Gilovich et all’s textbook as “ A theory that maintains the inconsistencies among a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions create an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency”. While this definition is true it also quite confusing. To understand this first the words that make up the term need to be understood. Cognition is a mental action, it involves gaining knowledge and understanding through use of thoughts, senses, and experiences. This cognition can produce a perception, sensation, notion, or intuition. Dissonance is simply a discrepancy among two things. In the case of cognitive dissonance this discrepancy is between any two of the following; an idea,

Cognitive Dissonance Overview the topic and define relevant terms in your own words.   When someone makes a decision or takes an action that goes against their personal beliefs, they experience a sense of discomfort; this discomfort felt is due to cognitive dissonance. People may values and beliefs that they live by. A person who believes that smoking cigarettes are bad is unlikely to smoke a cigarette; if they do smoke a cigarette than they will experience some discomfort. The action of smoking is conflicting with their idea that smoking is bad; this creates cognitive dissonance.

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,

When Friends first aired in 1994, five years into the original run of Seinfeld, it was criticized for being a “knock-off Seinfeld.” Although there were significant similarities between the two shows, there were also vast differences. Seinfeld and Friends were targeted to two very different audiences, and they represented the relatively new idea of “friendship comedies” in different ways. Despite their differences, both Friends and Seinfeld portrayed friendship and humanity in relatable ways, and molded “friendship comedies” of the future.

The television series Friends follows the professional as well as personal life of six 20-30 year olds airing of NBC written by David Crane, Marta Kauffman, Andrew Reich, Alexa Junge, Jeff Strauss, and Jeff Greenstein. The group of friends go by the names Rachel Green, Ross Geller, Monica Geller, Joey Tribbiani, Chandler Bing and Phoebe Buffay who are all in their twenties. They live together in the heart of New York, Manhattan. Throughout the show over the course of ten years we follow the groups family trouble, past and future romances, fights, laughs, tears and surprises as they learn and experience what it means to be a friend. The show Friends is a great example of social organization and groups.

According to Darity (2008), the theory of cognitive dissonance refers to an individual’s conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors, the resulting feeling of discomfort within the individual and the individual’s inevitable desire to reduce the discomfort by changing their attitude, belief or behavior in order to create cognitive consonance and harmony (Fox, 2006; Cognitive Dissonance, 2008; Hershey, Blanchard and Johnson, 2012). A cigarette smoker is a commonly used example of a cognitively dissonant individual. For example, Sarah, smoker may feel the need to quit do to the dangers of smoking but Sarah may also want to smoke because they like the feeling of smoking. Sarah’s attitudes are conflicting and to ease her discomfort she will adjust their attitude to fit the behavior by convincing her that there isn’t enough evidence of the dangers of smoking. Another example is when an individual decides that they don’t want to eat fatty foods in order to lose weight but the individual eats a donut after dinner and convinces themselves that the donut isn’t that fatty.

Such circumstances occur very regularly in life and often cause people to change the way they think and behave. Social psychologists have shown that such situations create what they call “cognitive dissonance, a situation experienced by individuals who are asked, or need, to behave or think in a way that conflicts with their opinions or attitudes” (Festinger, 1957). In other words, “cognitive dissonance relates to the mental tension that arises when an individual has to deal with incompatible cognitions” (Festinger, 1957).

Cognitive dissonance impacts attitudes and behavior negatively in the workplace in a variety of ways depending on the position you are employed. Being in management as an administrator you are faced with many challenges and situations that cause cognitive dissonance. For example, if my director asks me to perform a task and the way in which he wants me to perform the task, goes against my beliefs, I am forced to decide whether to follow his directives or risk termination for insubordination. The stress factor is making the correct decision. I can remember an instructor sending a student to me for conduct issues and wanted the student terminated from her program. The documentation that she provided to me was not sufficient to suspend the student,

Cognitive conflict is the discomfort one feels when his beliefs, values or behaviours contradict one another. When an individual believes very strongly in something that proves to be false, he/she will experience conflict. A person feels cognitive conflict when the results of a behaviour don’t measure up to a standard to which they are measured. This can be seen through Erin where she remained quiet and complied with the husband’s treatment and behaviour towards her, thus, abandoning her own emotion and the consequences that could happen to her children due to her husband’s violent behaviour. She was supposed to seek out for help earlier as she had been treated badly for many years but didn’t take any action to do so.

Leon Festinger created the cognitive dissonance theory as an attempt to explain why people desire to have consistency between their behaviors and actions. Cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state people feel when they find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold (Festinger, 1957; as cited in Griffin, 2009). Thus, people are motivated to change either their behavior or their belief when feelings of dissonance arise.

The principal assumption of the theory regarding to Hogg and Vaughan (2011, p.214) “is that cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions (bits of information) that are inconsistent or do not fit together. So if people at the same time hold those two cognitions (thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, states of awareness of behaviour), which are psychologically inconsistent, then we experience dissonance. The theory also accounts for discrepancies between behaviour and attitudes. For instance, when people act in a manner that is inconsistent with their attitudes, then they experience tension. And how people can reduce this tension? Festinger (1957) suggested people have to do it by changing their attitudes so that they are in line with their behavior. The main way of reducing dissonance is attitude change. The theory propose that when we are dealing with two conflicting beliefs then we experience tension or an aversive state and a good example is military training. The military teaches and telling soldiers that when they kill the enemy its nothing wrong and killing them is a good thing but those same soldiers have a deeply natural and inborn belief that “thou shalt not kill”(Sturman, 2012) . Another example is about person who smokes cigarettes. Regarding to Stone and Cooper (2001) most people