Cognitive Dissonance Examples: 5 Ways It Pops Up In Everyday Life

We therefore have to be cautious about how we generalize the results of such studies. Several studies suggest that cognitive dissonance can improve compliance with health-related messages. Most of these studies focus on arousing dissonance through hypocrisy. For example, in one study by Stone and his colleagues , college students were asked to give a speech advocating safe-sex practices and were then asked to think about times when they failed to engage in safe sex. The hypocrisy of advocating practices which they themselves do not always engage in led to dissonance on their part. At the end of the study, these students were more likely to purchase condoms than the other participants in whom dissonance had not been induced. In other studies, similar processes have been used to encourage people to donate to charity, to conserve water, to support anti-littering and anti-speeding campaigns, and to reduce prejudiced responses.

You will therefore have very little need to justify your behavior. When our behavior deviates from a chosen standard , dissonance is aroused. The model suggests that people will then seek to reduce dissonance, but the method they choose to reduce the tension they feel will depend on the thoughts about the self that are accessible at the time. Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most studied, debated and influential theories in social psychology. Over the years, several revisions of the theory have been proposed, including Self-Consistency Theory, Self-Affirmation Theory, The “New Look” at Dissonance Theory, and the Self-Standards Model.

Dealing With Cognitive Dissonance

To accomplish this, the villagers apparently changed one of their beliefs, convincing themselves that there really was something to fear. This initial idea that people may change their beliefs to justify how they feel is what later blossomed into cognitive dissonance theory. Conflicting beliefs can be held at the same time, often without a person realizing it.

Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons 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 all in their power to change them until they become consistent.

Brain, Learning, and Hopfield Networks

It’s hard at first, but instead of feeling guilty when you see the gym keychain, you feel proud of yourself. This incompatibility can happen when you do something that goes against one of your values. Or maybe you learn a new piece of information that disagrees with a long-standing belief or opinion. In the study we discussed earlier by Patrice Buzzanell and Lynn Turner concerning family communication and job loss, we could conceive of the strategies the families adopted as employing impression management rather than reducing dissonance.

American psychologist Leon Festinger first developed the concept in the 1950s. Are they really willing to look someone else in the eye and tell them this peg-turning task was fun and therefore lie to them for only a dollar?

Cognitive Dissonance Theory – Real Life Examples

In the variable group, classical music played in the background while the children played alone. In the second group, the children did not later devalue the forbidden toy. The researchers, Nobuo Masataka and Leonid Perlovsky, concluded that music might inhibit cognitions https://ecosoberhouse.com/ that induce cognitive dissonance. Alternatively, people may take steps to try to resolve the inconsistency. It is possible to resolve cognitive dissonance by either changing one’s behavior or changing one’s beliefs so they are consistent with each other.

For instance, you may believe social media is a waste of time, but you may also believe that social media is an excellent way to keep up with your friends and family. Finally, many of the studies supporting the theory of cognitive dissonance have low ecological validity. For example, turning pegs (as in Festinger’s experiment) is an artificial task that doesn’t happen in everyday life. cognitive dissonance theory There is also some ambiguity (i.e., vagueness) about the term ‘dissonance’ itself. Is it a perception (as ‘cognitive’ suggests), or a feeling, or a feeling about a perception? Aronson’s Revision of the idea of dissonance as an inconsistency between a person’s self-concept and a cognition about their behavior makes it seem likely that dissonance is really nothing more than guilt.

Tips for Dealing With Cognitive Dissonance

You may think you’re an expert at math only to be stumped by a fifth grade math question. Or you may spend a huge sum of money on an item you thought was great only to find out its actually trash.

However, in the experimental groups, they had the participants inform the next participants about the experiment. Since your attitudes and behaviors aren’t lining up, you are going to feel uncomfortable and conflicted and are going to act in ways to try to relieve that discomfort.

Environmental Science

According to his theory, dissonance arose because lying to someone for no good reason ($1 did not seem like adequate justification) goes against the very image that most people have of themselves—that they are good and honest human beings. By convincing themselves that the tasks really were fun, the participants in the $1 condition would no longer have to feel as if they had lied, and their positive self-image would be restored. Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that if an expected disaster does not occur, people who were convinced that it would occur would experience dissonance or uneasiness. Once aroused, this dissonance would need to be resolved in the minds of the individuals. Festinger predicted that they would add new beliefs to explain away the inconsistency. For example, they may convince themselves that their strong belief in God or their fervent prayers caused disaster to be averted. Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent.