Cognitive Dissonance

Fritz Heider (1958) focuses on the internal and external attribution, which suggests why people behave a certain way according to their character or attitudes (external attribution) or the implication as to why an individual behaves a certain way due to the situation there in. “When we explain our own behavior, we are sensitive to how behavior changes with the situation” (Idson & Mischel, 2001). The significances of making a conclusion, gives direction and probability, which may help determine why a person may or may not act a certain way based on what the evidence shows. The implication of a certain behavior depends on the source to which it is attributed. For example: If Pat assumes that growing up isolated from her surroundings is normal, she won’t perceive it as non-normal. “The way we explain others’ actions, attributing them to the person or the situation, can have important real-life effects” (Fincham & Bradbury, 1993; Fletcher et., 1990). “A person must decide whether to attribute another’s friendliness to romantic interest “ (Myers, D. G.

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,

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.

The phenomenon of cognitive dissonance is recognised as a feeling of discomfort, initially aroused by two inconsistent cognitions created by performing an action that contradict ones typically self-concept (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2010). The drive to view ourselves as

In “A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance,” (1957) social psychologist Leon Festinger proposes that all humans share an inherent drive to keep behaviors and principles in harmony and avoid disharmony between opposing attitudes. When a person feels a clash of their views they attempt to counteract or explain away their discomfort. In more severe cases of misalignments of an individual’s beliefs they may behave irrationally or maladaptively due to the instinctive urge to rebalance themselves. Cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state caused by people’s awareness of inconsistency among important beliefs, attitudes, or actions.

Cognitive Dissonance is a tense discomfort that we get when we realize that we have made a mistake or have committed hypocrisy. There are several different ways that we get rid of cognitive dissonance, some of them include a change in behavior, denial, and excuse making. In this essay I will discuss cognitive dissonance, its consequences, and how to solve the problem of excuse making in our society.

Leon Festinger and James M. Carlsmith (1959) were interested in the cognitive dissonance experienced when a person is forced to say or do something that is conflicting to one’s private opinion of the matter. Cognitive dissonance is most persuasive when it comes to feelings and thoughts about oneself and can motivate or influence us to choose one action or thought over another. The researchers were also interested in forced compliance theory, which is the idea that authority or some other perceived higher-ranking person can force a lower-ranked individual to make statements or perform acts that violate their better judgment. The focus is the goal of altering an individual's attitude through persuasion and authority. Thus, the study conducted

Leon Festinger and James M. Carlsmith (1959) were interested in the cognitive dissonance, which can influence a person decision to choose one action or thought over another. The researchers were also interested in forced compliance, where authority can force individuals to say or act in a way that is conflicting to one’s own private opinion, whereas, the individual's attitude is altered through persuasion and authority. “Force” was operationally defined as the amount of reward offered for lying and cognitive dissonance experienced from the participant’s rated enjoyment of the tasks. Therefore, the researchers investigated if cognitive dissonance could be created through forced compliance behavior. Furthermore, Festinger and Carlsmith hypothesized

When it comes to cognitive dissonance and how it creates attitude change it all comes about because of cognitive dissonance having a lot to do with emotional turbulences, with this it causes people to change their attitudes. This happens because people change their attitudes just to get over the conflict that results from cognitive dissonance. The fact of the matter is that if someone has a negative attitude about something, his or her attitude about the given situation and sometime even feels that he or she enjoys it just so they can feel good. At the end of the day cognitive dissonance is a very powerful motivation tool and in turn it can be used to change someone attitude. It is not used in mass advertising because cognitive dissonance can

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE- After our class end I was suppose to write my journal submit it before noon. That did not happen, what happened instead was that I convinced myself that I needed a break and need to catch up Game of Thrones. After the first episode ended, I immediately started watching the next episode and I justified it by saying that I am getting it out of the way and so that when I do end up doing my homework, I would be doing it without any distractions. One episode led to two episodes, few more hours later I ended up watch a whole season of Game of Thrones. What makes this an example of cognitive dissonance, is because cognitive dissonance is often

Consistency, the absence of contradictions, has sometimes been called the hallmark of ethics. Ethics is supposed to provide an individual with a guide for moral living, and to do so it must be rational, and to be rational it must be free of contradictions. When consistency and ethics are compromised, this is known as cognitive dissonance. Leon Festinger shared his brilliance with the world when he created the Cognitive Dissonance theory. Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors (McLeod, 2008). Cognitive dissonance produces an uncomfortable tension of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs,

Another crucial component to the cognitive dissonance theory is how it affects one’s attitude after making a decision. The decision could be of any

Cognitive Dissonance is refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance etc. The research on cognitive dissonance was done by Festinger and Carlsmith in 1959. It gives a background history of the time when Cognitive Dissonance was investigated by Leon Festinger. However, In the case being discussed in this paper, participants are given a boring task to start with. After the experiment, participants are paid different amounts to pursue other participates who are waiting to start with task. The participants who are done with the task feel dissonance when they were asked to pursue someone that the task was fun. There can many other ways and situations were one can experience dissonance. Also in the discussion there is inclusion for how to reduce cognitive dissonance which could help one to make better decisions.

People experience cognitive dissonance when they perceive that there is a mismatch between their attitudes and behaviors. Because we are motivated to keep our cognitions consistent, the inconsistency brought about by dissonance becomes a drive that must be reduced. This is done by changing either the attitude or the behavior such that they may accurately align with each other. Eventually, the New Look model to dissonance will shift the causal path to an explanation using avoidance of aversive consequences, but still resulting in the same need to reduce cognitive inconsistency. Finally, addressing the limitations of the former, the Self-Standards approach operationalizes the nature of aversive consequences as violations of societal or

Throughout an individual’s life, one will go through experiences which make them gain certain values and standards that one will always believe in and abide by. Although one’s beliefs are held to a certain standard, it is hard in everyday life to always strictly commit to these beliefs. But, at many times it’s hard for an individual to always act accordingly with their beliefs, this is when a conflict arises. The cognitive dissonance theory can be explained by the first concept of dissonance and three hypotheses to then reduce the dissonance. This theory begins with first recognizing the dissonance between one’s certain behavior and one’s certain belief. Within the cognitive dissonance theory, Festinger hypothesized three mental mechanisms