What Is An Example Of Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Decisions are the basis of human history, advancement, and modern society. Important decisions often cause a conflict within a person as he or she attempts to make a choice based on what he or she believes is right, as well as what he or she believes is wise. Throughout life and society, people find themselves at a crossroads of beliefs or thoughts with the justification of murder. This is due to the dissonance illustrated when they have mixed feelings with the idea that killing another human is wrong, although it seemingly appears unavoidable in certain situations. This inevitability is what justifies murder in the first place. These mixed feelings create a cognitive dissonance that impacts society in a detrimental

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

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

“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 can display themselves outwardly in a certain manner although on the inside be completely different. A person’s attitude and behavior can influence each other; a person’s surrounds will also have an impact on how the person is. An example of this can be seen in a person committing a crime such as shoplifting, the person knows this is illegal and not moral but in the right situation the person may forget his or her moral upbringing and commit the crime any way. Influences on the individual can be overpowering, causing the person to behave or act in an attitude different from the person’s normal action and behavior. People tend to suffer from

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,

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

1. fundamental attribution error - a person that in a given situation evaluates another's person decision or action by some internal characteristics, not taking into consideration exceptional situations that might lead that person in such a decision or action. example: Alice, a driver, is about to pass through an intersection. Her light turns green and she begins to accelerate, but another car drives through the red light and crosses in front of her.

Cognitive dissonance theory is based on several fundamental assumptions. One is that humans are sensitive to the inconsistencies between actions and beliefs. Accordingly, we all recognize when we are acting in a manner that is consistent with our attitudes. Secondly, the recognition will definitely lead to dissonance that will drive the persons involved to resolve the situation (Gladwell, 2005). This dissonance can be solved through change beliefs, change actions and change perception of action. The individual in this case has to be

While in prison, Derek begins to see things in a different way. While in jail he learns some hard truths about life from a fellow inmate and his old high school principal that takes special interest in him. Avery Brooks, the principle ask Derek a powerful question. "Has any thing you've done changed your life?" But, when Derek emerges with a desire to change his attitude, he finds that words are not enough.

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 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

There has been a great deal of research into cognitive dissonance, providing some interesting and sometimes unexpected findings. It is a theory with very broad applications, showing that we aim for a

What are cognitions? It is a way of knowing, believing, judging, and thoughts (West & Turner, 2014, p. 110). Leon Festinger used the theory of Cognitive Dissonance to explain imbalances of cognitions. So Cognitive Dissonance simply is the discomfort that is caused by holding conflicting cognitions. The theory argues that dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling that motivates people to take steps to reduce it (West & Turner, 2014, p. 110). The reason to for wanting to reduce it is because when people are in the state of dissonance and may feel dread, anger, guilt, or embarrassment. As a result, people will often ignore views that oppose their own, change their beliefs to match their actions (or vice versa), and/or seek reassurances after making

The principal assumption of the theory regarding to Hogg and Vaughan (2011, p.214) “is that cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions (bits of information) that are inconsistent or do not fit together. So if people at the same time hold those two cognitions (thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, states of awareness of behaviour), which are psychologically inconsistent, then we experience dissonance. The theory also accounts for discrepancies between behaviour and attitudes. For instance, when people act in a manner that is inconsistent with their attitudes, then they experience tension. And how people can reduce this tension? Festinger (1957) suggested people have to do it by changing their attitudes so that they are in line with their behavior. The main way of reducing dissonance is attitude change. The theory propose that when we are dealing with two conflicting beliefs then we experience tension or an aversive state and a good example is military training. The military teaches and telling soldiers that when they kill the enemy its nothing wrong and killing them is a good thing but those same soldiers have a deeply natural and inborn belief that “thou shalt not kill”(Sturman, 2012) . Another example is about person who smokes cigarettes. Regarding to Stone and Cooper (2001) most people