Prison Break : Cognitive Dissonance And The Power Elite

Each person is in control of their actions in life. Although conscience may make each individuals actions seem honorable, the truth is they might be.

Miles Roby works at the restaurant, Empire Grill, spending his days flipping burgers and counting change. He is the epitome of the Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Cognitive Dissonance is used to describe people who are having a conflict between their personal beliefs and own reality. For example, Miles is in a dead-end job in a dying town. He knows

Actions and inactions all have moral implications; they are either right or wrong depending on the individual and what s/he believes or feels is right or wrong. Each person’s conduct can and does have implications and ramifications. For every action there is an equal and/or opposite reaction not only for the average person but also for professionals; especially in the area of law enforcement, criminal justice, and criminal procedure. Just discussed is known as moral philosophy.

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

what they do creates a type of tension known as cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance can

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

“The engine that drives self-justification, the energy that produces the need to justify our actions and decisions—especially the wrong ones—is an unpleasant feeling the Festinger called “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when ever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent, such as “Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me” and “I smoke two packs a day.” Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish.” (p.13)

People are faced with moral issues all throughout their life, and have to make the

Whenever someone does something wrong there is always that voice in their head saying, Is this right? Should I be doing this? That shows that even though one might be doing something completely immoral they have that hint of humanity inside of them prompting them to consider their actions, and that is known as our guilty conscience. Someone once said “Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.” Guilt is something no one can escape no matter how evil of a person they are. It will make it hard for an individual to move on with their life without invading their thoughts. Guilt will make a person hard to live with themselves until it consistently reminds them of what they have

Often, unethical human behavior is not intentional, but is coincidentally based on boundaries such as individual knowledge, organizational unanimity, and societal acceptance of policy. On an individual level, although unbeknownst to the individual, humans make decisions based on the best outcomes for themselves, which may result in unintentional and unethical degradation of a fellow human. Further, an organizational setting will compound individual ethical dilemmas as internal groups working together seek acceptance through groupthink, which is the tendency of a work group to come to an agreement

Belief in inherent morality- Professionally expert people alleged what they know was ethically wrong, they ignored their own sense of responsibility by trusting their fellow members who allowed misconduct was right. The pressure of groupthink is very powerful in corporate organization, and it forces people toward uniformity of norms, often at the expense of their own personal values.

“Orange is the New Black” is Netflix’s hit new original series. Currently in its second season, OINTB has received critical acclaim (Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes) for its unusual subject matter as well as its varied and multi-dimensional portrayal of race, gender, class, queer and trans issues. However, while it excels specifically with issues of gender and sexuality, the show falters a bit more on issues of race and class.

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.

From the reading, I understand that people think and act differently when faced with ethical issues. For one to make a rational decision, an extensive process of judgment is required (Bandura, Caprara, & Zsolnai, 2000). For an individual to be responsible, he or she should put into consideration the magnitude of the consequences of the actions, social

Individual factors helps to understand the reason for some people perceive specific action to be unethical whiles others do not. However, the decision-making cannot simply be explained in terms of these individual factors, because after all several people seems to have ‘multiple ethical selves’ (Trevino and Nelson 2007:180) – that is, they make different decisions in different situations. Situational factors accepted to be the most important.