Reducing Dissonance

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.

Dissonance is being unsatisfied with how things are and how we want them to be. A feeling of unhappiness with one’s job, wishing it would pay more or be more fulfilling can be described as a dissonance. Unhappiness with how different America’s political landscape is from how we want it to be would also show a dissonance.

In an earlier paper Haidt and Graham(2007) found that for extreme liberals, Harm / Care and Fairness / Reciprocity where almost always relivent, however those who are extremely conservative find that they value all five more equally when making moral choice. This correlates almost perfectly with the earlier paper from Graham, Haidt and Nosek(2009), showing that the findings seem highly reliable. Haidt and Graham(2007) go on to say that the recognition of the final three moral foundations(Ingroup / Loyalty, Authority / Respect and Purity / Sanctity) is key to allowing more fair and even discussions between the two political standpoints.

No campaign in the history of presidential runnings has ever been the same. Yes, past campaigns and presidential candidates have shown their similarities between each other, but none has had the same events occur. The major variable is time. Society has shown a history of changing ideals and appeals. Each year, slowly but surely, society’s view is shaping and shifting. The presidential candidates know this factor and have to change with society to gain their social appeal. Within this time shift, we can analyze past polls and outcomes of primaries that have shown to be somewhat misleading.

When it comes to cultural dissonance. First, we should understand what culture is. Culture is what you are not willing to accept but the rules and knowledge of the past. The benefits of these rules and perceptions in most people in practice may benefit from or believe in. Therefore, these rules and knowledge have become the majority of contemporary people's choice. This constitutes the content of the cultural subject. However, if this rule or understanding has been completely proved by objective practice, it will not adhere to it, and it has the cultural renewal capability. Therefore, the culture is mainly the rules and knowledge which are difficult to give the final verdict (belonging to the value and philosophy level), and have four characteristics of subjectivity, continuity, mass and usefulness. Cultural dissonance is a phenomenon. This refers to the fact that when individuals who are involved in a wide variety of cultures face a conflict between the rules of one culture and the rules of another. That is, when the values of culture conflict with the values of another culture. Cultural dissonance is happen every day. It is easy to imagine a recent group of immigrants from an international setting. Typical conflicts include moral, spiritual, and even identity levels. Such as fashion, entertainment and speech. However, the concept of cultural dissonance may occur even in people with common national backgrounds. There are two examples of cultural differences between

Nosek experiment ‘Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations’, 2009. This study is an American study of moral psychology that examined why American liberals and conservatives view the moral foundations with different ranges of significance for each other using the MFT. By using five sets of moral foundations they conducted four different studies and were able to observe the relationship between political views and moral foundation. Using scales to measure stages of moral reasoning and exploration of the patterns in variation of participants’ moral judgments across a liberal-conservative political spectrum using the MFT. It was found, in all four studies, American liberals displayed a strong pattern in their morality results, that being liberals value moral foundations one (1) and two (2) with most significance (harm / care and fairness / reciprocity), while American conservatives generally demonstrate a more equal distribution of all five moral

These groups of individuals are wired completely different from each other and operate on opposite hemispheres on a day to day basis. Thomas Jefferson figured out early on that “Liberals” and “Conservatives” have existed throughout history, and will continue to exist. America’s political society differs from other societies such as India or Austria, however every society has the same basic skeleton, meaning they share similar problems, such as deciding how leadership will be constructed and how to shape their infrastructure. A major difference between liberals and conservatives can be explained by the “negativity bias”. Research has shown through eye-tracking devices that conservatives tend to focus more on negative stimuli and for a longer a period time, whereas liberals equally split their attention between positive and negative stimuli. One could assume that the liberals would focus on positive stimuli, however that’s not the case. This is one of the reasons people believe that liberals and conservatives see the world in entirely different perspectives, not just in politics, but in all walks of life. This eye study can also point too major

Voting patterns have found that religious identity and political identity are strongly linked, and these studies have shown that belonging to a particular religious institution influences voting for a Republican versus a Democrat. It is no secret that this nation’s politics are heavily influenced by religion. Although you can express and practice any religion you want to, the history of religious Christian symbolism have always been present. The article The Link between Voter Choice and Religious Identity in Contemporary Society: Bringing Classical Theory Back In analyzed the voter choice data from six U.S presidential elections to understand if religious identity was one of the main factors that effected a voter’s choice. The article notes that religion is only one of the main variables taken into account, other important factors include class differentiation, and gender partisanship.

Summary-The title of this article provides the reader with a good idea of what is going to be discussed. The article cautions the reader that they may need to prepare to vote for the least offensive candidate for Presidency. The article provides insight on what persuades a person of a certain political party to vote for a candidate. The majority of voters seek to nominate the ones who have the same ideals as they have. Flaws and voters opinions often lead to the most popular candidate being elected. The end result of the elector’s choice does not necessarily mean that the best person for the position will be elected. In retrospect, these candidates who are running for office know that if they want to be elected they will have to ensure

This study was done with a subsection of data from American National Election Studies (ANES), which included adults that were sampled across the nation. Their responses to the questions were randomly chosen. Multiple analyses were ran on the categorical demographics given: race, political party and gender. We are running all of these tests below to find out if symbolic racism and fondness of Obama are related. There were 191 females and 159 males, for a total of 350 participants. Subjects were represented by 40.9% Democratic party, 20.6 Republican Party and 31.1% Independent party. The participants were broken down into four ethnic groups: 28.0% African American, 56.9% White, 2.0% multiple races, and 12.9% other. Subjects answered questions related to their preference on Obama on a scale from 0-10, 0 being strongly dislike and 10 being strongly like (M = 5.47, SD = 2.78) and questions pertaining to symbolic racism on a scale from 1-5, 1 being strongly agree and 5 being strongly disagree (M = 3.31, SD = .98), these two variables are considered continuous. The questionnaire was reliable at a Cronach’s Alpha level of .72. Which indicates that is has relatively high internal consistency, which is a measure of how well the items on the test measure the same construct or idea. Considering we have high internal consistency it is safer to assume we can trust that our overall test is measuring the concept of interest.

The link between morality and human nature has been a progressive reoccurring theme since ancient times (Prinz, 2008). Moral development is a characteristic of a person’s general development that transpires over the course of a lifetime. Moral development is derived by a wide variety of cultural and demographic factors that appear to influence morally relevant actions. Turiel (2006) defined morality as an individuals “prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other.” Individuals’ moral judgments are frequently considered to be a product of culturally specific controls that provide a framework for behavioral motivations that are sensitive to the effects of gender, education, religion and politics (Banerjee, Huebner & Hauser, 2010). While several approaches have been utilized to examine the interaction of multivariate contributors to fundamental moral differences such as: disputes about family life, sexuality, social fairness, and so on, research has suggested that ideological considerations have provided a potent and diverse explanation for the polarization of contrasting views (Weber & Federico, 2013).

In Singer’s own words inspired by F.H. Bradley’s views on morality, “we can never get people to act morally by providing reasons of self-interest, because if they accept what we say and act on the reasons given, they will be only acting self-interestedly, not morally” (Singer 323).

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,

Leon Festinger 's theory of cognitive dissonance (1957) sets its meaning on the theory that behavior does not support the attitude or vice versa. At many times individuals see themselves experiencing this phenomenon, so in order to reduce this dissonance, either the attitude or the behavior needs to be altered or changed. A perfect example would have to be when a white person says that black and whites are all the same yet he/she would not want to live in a neighborhood with the majority of the population being blacks. This expresses the person’s strong attitude towards the topic, yet their behavior shows otherwise. This paper will focus in deeply understanding what cognitive dissonance is and analyzing well known studies that have conducted extensive research on it.

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.