Dissonance Theory

Cognitive dissonance theory was created by Leon Festinger and to better explain his theory he used the topic of smoking. He showed how “the contradiction is so clear and uncomfortable that something has to give - either the use of cigarettes of the belief that smoking will [harm]” (Griffin et al., 2015, p.201). Cognitive dissonance in a nutshell is a contradiction that causes us stress. It is when we act in ways that go against what we believe and the strong presence we have on the matter the greater the stress we have. Festinger (2015) describe it the distressing mental state one feels when one finds themselves doing things that don’t fit with what we believe or what the public approves of (p.200). An extreme example of this is the high one gets from taking drugs but the disapproval the community might have for it. With dissonance creating a stressful mental state we naturally want to avoid it by either change our behaviors or our beliefs.

Cognitive dissonance theory has been around since the late fifties. It has inspired many psychologists to figure out the murky depths of people’s minds. The theory relates strongly to decision making, social phenomenons and mental angst. Many paradigms exist within cognitive dissonance. Two important paradigms are the Belief Disconfirmation paradigm and the Free Choice paradigm. There are several experiments that have been studied that relate to cognitive dissonance, including the boring tasks experiment. The person who coined the phrase cognitive dissonance is the famous Leon Festinger, and he studied it inside and out. Cognitive dissonance is one of the most important topics

Cognitive dissonance is defined as the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change. Cognitive dissonance occurs most often when a person’s beliefs, morals or feeling are one way but they do not act accordingly. This dissonance may be displayed in numerous ways that may be done outwardly but also there is an internal process that takes place. A use of internal processing involves many different functions, included but not limited to, thinking, perception and problem solving. The driving force of dissonance is that we as humans attempt to align opposing thoughts or ideas and carry on with life in a way that still meets our morals, set standards or way of thinking. In doing so, we are then challenged to find what we believe as appropriate reasoning for making

Topic Background/Introduction: To get a positive response from an individual, one must offer a reward. To stop a particular response from an individual, one must present a punishment. The greater the reward and more severe the punishment, the more likely the individual is to respond to or stop the behavior. To achieve continued compliance, one has to continue to give a reward or punishment. Cognitive dissonance occurs when someone has two or more contradicting attitudes and behaviors. The only way to fix this is to change an attitude to match the behavior or change the behavior

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.

     The theory of Cognitive Dissonance states that when individuals are presented with information that implies we act in a way that contradicts our moral standards, we experience discomfort (Aronson, Wilson, and Akert, 1998, P. 191). This is considered Cognitive Dissonance,

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

“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

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.

The researchers conducted this study to determine if an individual’s perception would change through forced acceptance and pressure on behavior. The researchers were trying to predict how dissonance would effect an individual’s own opinion when they go against their own opinion. Concerning cognitive dissonance theory was used in the experiment. The hypothesis of this study is the amount of reward offered to form a conflicting opinion based on their initial opinion through forced behavior.

It is important to individuals to be able to control cognitive dissonance since it creates confusions between one or more cognition within their personality and ways of making attributions. When individuals’ cognitive ability are affected with conflicting behaviors and beliefs, they become confused and sometimes handicap to produce the right attributions to others. Most of the times, individuals are optimists to what they believe is right without thinking about the negative side of their beliefs. “Mostly, individuals consider themselves to be generally self-aware at any given time” (GCU, 2012). Hence, cognitive dissonance manipulates the self-attributive determination, and drives the person to inability to make the right decisions, attributions,

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

Diversion from normal behavior by an individual, this involves the involuntary change of someone’s usual way of doing things. This is a common scenario when someone is expected to make a choice on something (Reeves, Ch.10). When a person realizes that their actions are not in agreement with what they belief based on a choice they make, then this may be attributed to cognitive dissonance. People usually have strong beliefs on issues such as; religion, family, health, and ways of life. Changing of such beliefs in person would take effort and to some point one may never succeed. Many scholars suggest that cognitive is stronger in cases where someone beliefs something about themselves and then end doing / acting against it.

The cognitive dissonance was a theory proposed by Leon Festinger in 1957. In his theory, Festinger suggests that every person has innate drives to keep an equilibrium within their cognitions ( behaviour and attitudes) and avoid stressful choices. When there is a stressful situation, it creates a feeling of discomfort, leading to a state of tension known as cognitive dissonance. This unpleasant feeling makes the person become motivated to reduce it and achieve consistency between behaviour and attitudes.

Defining who you are is always such an arduous task. I never know what to say and I always draw a blank when I’m put on the spot. I never know what to say because I never really put too much thought into defining myself. It’s usually just something that you don’t think about too much because honestly it’s pretty difficult. Luckily there are theories that propose many ideas that help me define myself. Theories such as the Symbolic Interaction theory, cognitive dissonance theory, expectancy violations theory, and temperament. These four theories are each very different but they can all be used to help define who a person is. They propose reasoning and thought behind the ways we behave, communicate, and feel. What we might think to be