In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental cost of it. Relevant information elements include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is generally experienced as psychological stress when people participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do everything in their power to change them until they become consistent.
Discomfort is triggered when the person's beliefs collide with the new perceived information, so the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort. This type of cognitive dissonance occurs in a person who is faced with a difficult decision and when the rejected option may still have desirable characteristics for the person who chooses it. This cognitive dissonance has definitely caused me to cross ocean waves of emotions, balancing up and down in a sea that I couldn't control. Sometimes, the ways in which people resolve cognitive dissonance contribute to unhealthy behaviors or poor choices.
You haven't thought much about it before, but if you keep choosing the same clothes, you'll feel a certain cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance can interfere with their perceptions of themselves and their abilities, which is why it can often be so uncomfortable and unpleasant. Learning what cognitive dissonance is, why it's so powerful, and how managing it can get you back to taking charge. In A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Leon Festinger (the psychologist who first described this phenomenon) offers an example of how a person can address dissonance related to health behavior by talking about people who continue to smoke, even though they know that it is harmful to their health.
The brain will try to resolve cognitive dissonance on its own, but that doesn't mean you can't have a say in the process. Undoubtedly, feeling apprehensive: The uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach is a sure sign that you may be dealing with cognitive dissonance. Acharya from Stanford, Blackwell and Sen from Harvard state that cognitive dissonance increases when a person commits an act of violence against someone from a different ethnic or racial group and decreases when the person does not commit any act of violence of this type. Cognitive dissonance may be due to feeling compelled to do something, when learning new information, or when faced with a decision between two similar options.
This can attest that they feel alone and experience cognitive dissonance when they see someone their age feel happy and successful. Everyone experiences cognitive dissonance to some degree, but that doesn't mean it's always easy to recognize. Cognitive dissonance may be something you don't even notice because your brain resolves it quickly, such as when someone bumps into you on the way to work and you spill your coffee. That's because if you're not aware of yourself, cognitive dissonance can cause you to act and feel quite out of place.
