Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory Analysis

It is made clear that college students are quick to form an opinion which doesn’t expand knowledge and can show unintelligence. Many people, more specifically protesters, believe one side and won’t open up and listen to the other side. Frank Bruni, an Op-Ed Columnist for the New York Times and the author of 3 New York Times best sellers in 2015, 2009, and 2002, tells us that the college protesters are wrong. His argument states that the college students need to be educated more on the whole subject because lacking education can essentially lead to being biased or sticking with the one side you believe in. The students were protesting a guest speaker, Charles Murray, who is identified as anti-gay, racist, and sexist. Although the guest speaker’s beliefs are terrible, the students should hear what he has to say. Frank Bruni’s “The Dangerous Saftey of College” presents an effective logical appeal; however, it lacks clear and concise evidence along with not presenting an emotional appeal to connect with the audience.

In the article “The Coddling of the American Mind,” writers Greg Lukianoff and Jonathon Haidt address today’s college campus culture of oversensitivity and how targeting microaggressions by shielding sensitive topics from students may be modeling cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortion is a way our mind twists words to convince us of something that isn’t true to reinforce negative thinking. Since college administrators changed ways to try and block out microaggressions on campus it is actually teaching students to think in distorted ways. As a result, students are learning lessons that are bad for themselves and their mental health. However, Lukianoff and Haidt believe that cognitive behavioral therapy is the next big thing to teach good

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

In Lukianoff and Haidt’s essay, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” the authors contend today’s college students want to be protected from any words that might harm them. The authors argue doing so harms them in other ways.

The authors examples help explain why trying to control what people do and say has a negative effect. On several college campuses, associations are trying to stop people from being offended by anything that did not make them feel comfortable or welcome. One example was in Florida when an instructor used the phrase “It looks like you guys are being slowly suffocated by these questions” (Lukianoff & Haidt) and students turned in his statement causing him to get suspended. Adults and students are both being affected from these ridiculous rules. This rule is “creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up” (Lukianoff & Haidt), but not everyone is going to agree or like everything people say.

It is always important to think back to the Buddhist and Stoic beliefs about thinking clearly and working through emotions (Lukianoff and Haidt 6). The college students mentioned in “The Coddling of the American Mind,” need to learn these crucial principles in order to live a life where they can positively overcome discomfort and offendedness. People need not be punished for causing minor emotional inconveniences. Once cognitive

“A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense” (Lukianoff and Haidt 44). Colleges are sheltering their students from words and ideas that students do not like or are found to be offensive. Affecting their education and cognitive skills, scientists are warning colleges to refrain from coddling the students and allowing other viewpoints to be spoken. People are speaking their minds, saying their own views; however, some people are over sensitive and take these viewpoints offensively. In the article “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt successfully argues using rhetorical questions, specific examples, and affective visuals that protecting college students from words and ideas deteriorates their education and mental health.

Author Aaron Hanlon gave his version of why "Coddling students aren't the causes of a mental health crisis on campus, they are just paving in the culture war." (Hanlon, 2015). Studies held in Atlantic colleges "Coddling of the American Mind" by Lukianoff and Haidt is what Hanlon counter claims. He finds their article offensive, argumentative and liberal. Hanlon goes on to talk about a movement going on at college campuses is to get rid of the terms or slurs that can be seen as harmful and offensive. He states "campus culture devoted to policy speech and punishing speakers" is saying students on campus might have a higher chance of being depressed or having anxiety while attending college. Hanlon speaks on an academic and professional pressures increasing accessibility and reducing sleep, sexual epidemics, all these and more are factors that

Trigger words are common-throughout anyone’s daily life. Imagine this, an elderly women loses her husband of fifty years. The man kept a four leaf clover in his pocket at all times for good luck. Did the world completely eliminate four leaf clovers from the world to accommodate her loss? No, not at all— the elderly women had to mentally prepare herself to handle the mental distress that could come. Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in wrote an article in September of 2015 titled, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” This article covers overall mental health mostly in American college students. The students demand security from words and ideas that are uncomfortable in the learning environment. Lukianoff and Haidt cover every aspect concerning the views through the students, therapist, professors, and even the general public. There is a serious epidemic of micro-aggressions, trigger words, and an over-use of vindictive protectiveness. The two author’s ideals stated within are realistic, however, getting to the conclusion is a bit hectic and spastically placed throughout.

Some of the most concerning effects of trigger warnings pertain to the well-being of students and the academic freedom of professors. In “The Coddling of the American Mind” from The Atlantic, the authors describe how trigger warnings may affect students’ mental health saying, “A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically” (Lukianoff and Haidt). The implementation of trigger warnings has been seen as a call for censorship in the name of sensitivity. This suggestion of a change in curriculum is alarming college faculty members across the nation. Professors are fearful of offending students and damaging their reputations. In “Survey

Cognitive distortions are said to be the ways in which our brain convinces us of something that is not true. College students experience cognitive distortions more often than none. The cognitive distortions in which college students experience would include the feeling of being a failure per not doing as well as you thought you did on a test, the rules we mentally make for ourselves, or negative global labeling. Cognitive distortions are believed to make us believe that information presented to us is rational and accurate when its goal is to make us continue to feel bad about ourselves. In the article, “The coddling of the American mind”, the authors, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt examines what they believe in the fact that professors are protecting students’ minds through warnings of offensive materials, which they believe encourages students to believe that it is damaging and dangerous to discuss certain aspects of our history (2015). College students endure these and many other cognitive distortions, but we are often made to believe that these distortions are acceptable simply because students’ minds are allowed to become more open to new ideas and new people due to the toning down of the perceptual state of mind to outrage and discomfort (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2015).

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

“A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense” (Lukianoff and Haidt 44). Some colleges shelter their students from words and ideas that students do not like or are offensive to them. However, unless colleges want to affect their education and mental health, colleges need to refrain from cocooning the students and support students to speak and hear different viewpoints freely. Most people speak their minds, saying their views; however, some people are oversensitive and take these viewpoints offensively. In the article “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt successfully persuade their audience

Based on one’s mentality, your mind is the characteristic attitude of the way you think of a person or a group, given this knowledge, your mentality and mindset sets together the things you say about anything, or in this case, towards something. What you say about something is your freedom of speech in America, the first amendment of the constitution, “or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (Madison, 1789). This amendment has it’s aspects where it helps out the fellow people of America livelihood, but instead, people can be deleterious towards what they say to someone and is also faced with hypocrisy.

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.