The Cognitive Dissonance Theory

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

Cognitive dissonance is a physiological conflict resulting from out of place beliefs and attitudes held at the same time (Webster, n.d.). In layman’s terms this means having thoughts and attitudes that are not always the same as the general public’s thoughts. In this essay you will be given one example of cognitive dissonance from the media.

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,

Leon Festinger shared his brilliance with the world when he, opposing all previous psychological behaviorist work, created the Cognitive Dissonance Theory. In his own words, he quickly sums up this quite complex theory: "If you change a person’s behavior, his thoughts and feelings will change to minimize the dissonance" (Groenveld, 1999, p.1). In order to decode this dense statement, we must first be aware that Festinger held to be true that humans have a deep abiding need in their psyche to be consistent in our attitudes and behaviors; we want to feel in agreement and unified in thought and action. Inner harmony sounds good to everyone, and so it was Festinger’s view that when we feel a disharmony, or

There can be many explanations for why an employee would call in sick to work when he or she is not really sick. One reason could be explained through the attribution theory. The attribution theory explains the behavior like this can be explained by attributing it to either the employee’s internal disposition or to an external situation. The employee’s internal disposition could be that the employee always seems to have a bad attitude to his or her job duties and that his or her personality is pessimistic or lazy. The employee’s external situation could be that he or she has a manager who is constantly micro-managing them, which makes them unhappy at work, or the employee has a coworker who is their counterpart who is slacking at work. The employee may have to work harder at the job than the other employee to get their collective tasks completed. This may lead to the employee calling out sick because of his or her internal disposition – they are just lazy and do

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.

When determining a course of action regarding the topic of my choosing for this paper, the ideals behind cognitive dissonance allowed for me to put to paper for the very first time, a topic that I believe fulfills the requirements of the assignment, and one that bears great presence in my life. As some may have gathered throughout our tenure in this course, I am mother to my nine beautiful children. Though I despise the formalities attached to assignment of titles, attention must be paid toward the fact that I have two stepsons, Dominick & Zachary – ages seven and six. I have always harbored an oppositional stance toward the idea of referring to them, or parenting them in a fashion as though they are

The show, ChoreoProject, was presented by sjDanceco and presented various types of dance performances from classical to contemporary works. The piece that I enjoyed from this show was Cognitive Dissonance. In this dance piece, Erwin Columbus both choreographed and was the dancer. Erwin Columbus used music from Kerry Muzzey for his piece. In Cognitive Dissonance, he told a story of himself having negative, inconsistent thoughts and his journey of fighting off those thoughts from his mind. With fast and dramatic movements along with intense music, Columbus was able to grasp my attention and teach me how it feels to have negative, inconsistent thoughts that can negatively control one's body.

According to Cooper (2011), confirmation biases have set in with the US tending to ignore engagement with the conflicting information. Instead, the US has chosen to instead look upon other factors to update in terms of the information that conforms its pre-existing attitudes. Accordingly, the nation has resulted in motivated reasoning where it views new evidence as consistent with their pre-existing views. This is all the more indicative of the nation avoiding cognitive dissonance. The Obama administration has tried to avoid the regional battle in the Middle East where Iran is poised to become a central player. So the US surreptitiously supports Iran in fighting the common enemy in Isis while also working to contain Iran’s efforts to expand their influence in the area that seems contradictory. What the situation

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

First, let me explain what cognitive dissonance means. This happens when a person has inconsistent thoughts, actions, and or attitudes. It usually happens when 2 or more ideas in your head contradict each other, causing an uncomfortable reaction within ones self. People then either ignore things that oppose this mental stress or engage it by changing their actions to confirm with their thoughts, or just the exact opposite. This is done in order to gain reassurance. Cognitive dissonance happens quite often within the minds of people.

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.

Furthermore, Mike continues show his overbearing and disrespectfulness towards Becky. Mike underestimates the ability of Becky based on her education background and working experience. Besides, Mike expresses disrespectfulness by ridiculing Becky’s appearance. Mike laughs at her bangs ironically. Mike’s irresponsible attitude and behavior make the ratings of the DayBreak show drop drastically.

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 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,