Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation that involves conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. This causes a sense of mental discomfort that leads to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce discomfort and restore balance. 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. Cognitive dissonance is the psychological tension we feel when trying to have two (or more) opposing pieces of information.
Usually, we try to eliminate this dissonance by performing a new consonant action or discarding incongruous information. The degree of cognitive dissonance with respect to meat consumption may vary depending on the attitudes and values of the person involved, since this may affect whether or not they see any moral conflict with their values and what they eat. This type of incongruity called cognitive dissonance can cause serious mental distress. What was not studied were the effects of cognitive dissonance in cases where the person had unfavorable attitudes towards both candidates.
Research by Acharya, Blackwell and Sen shows that people who commit acts of violence against members of another group develop hostile attitudes toward their victims as a way of minimizing cognitive dissonance. When there are conflicts between cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, and opinions), people take steps to reduce dissonance and feelings of discomfort. The researchers, Festinger and Carlsmith, proposed that the subjects experienced a dissonance between conflicting cognitions. 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.
A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to feel psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce cognitive dissonance. The term cognitive dissonance is used to describe mental distress that results from having two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. There are a number of different situations that can create conflicts that lead to cognitive dissonance. 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 (195), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive to achieve internal psychological consistency in order to function mentally in the real world. Talking to a coach can help you develop self-awareness and understand the source of your cognitive dissonance. In psychology, cognitive dissonance occurs when a person has contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values and is generally experienced as psychological stress when they participate in an action that goes against one or more of them.
