Cognitive Dissonance: The Trump Campaign

When beliefs, ideas, or values you immersed yourself in forced to meet its contradiction, and you perform actions differing from your held position, cognitive dissonance occurs. As previously mentioned, I engrossed myself with an extremely conservative stance and one domestic issue Japan has is North Korea. It has

If one is trying to pull a thought or feeling in closer, or push it away, they may be attempting to manipulate their cognitive dissonance. If one knows that they are not happy with their actions, they can dilute that feeling of cognitive dissonance by decreasing the negative or enhancing the positive attitudes about it (Smith & Mackie, n.d.). One might be a smoker for instance, and know that smoking is bad for them, but continue smoking anyway. A perception of a clash of unsuitable elements is a way to describe the way one feels when their actions and beliefs are at odds (McLeod, 2014). So, if one is unhappy about the things they do because they do not match what they think they should do, they will be said to be experiencing cognitive dissonance.

The media in American society has a major influential impact on the minds and beliefs of millions of people. Whether through the news, television shows, or film, the media acts as a huge database for knowledge and instruction. It is both an auditory and visual database that can press images and ideas into people's minds. Even if the individual has no prior exposure or knowledge to something, the media can project into people's minds and leave a lasting impression. Though obviously people are aware of what they are listening to or watching, thoughts and assumptions can drift into their minds without even realizing it. These thoughts that drift in are extremely influential. The massive impact

Cognitive dissonance theory was created by Leon Festinger and to better explain his theory he used the topic of smoking. He showed how “the contradiction is so clear and uncomfortable that something has to give - either the use of cigarettes of the belief that smoking will [harm]” (Griffin et al., 2015, p.201). Cognitive dissonance in a nutshell is a contradiction that causes us stress. It is when we act in ways that go against what we believe and the strong presence we have on the matter the greater the stress we have. Festinger (2015) describe it the distressing mental state one feels when one finds themselves doing things that don’t fit with what we believe or what the public approves of (p.200). An extreme example of this is the high one gets from taking drugs but the disapproval the community might have for it. With dissonance creating a stressful mental state we naturally want to avoid it by either change our behaviors or our beliefs.

This paper aims at providing a critical analysis of Dane S. Claussen's paper on, and titled, cognitive dissonance, media illiteracy and public opinion on news media. In this paper you will find, first a brief description of the paper being critiqued, followed by a short summary of the paper. Then you will find a brief description of the contextual position and importance of this paper. Following that there will be a critique of the style and structure used by the author, and the arguments and evidences used therein. And finally, in conclusion, a summary of what Claussen's paper has actually meant and how important it is in its field.

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- After our class end I was suppose to write my journal submit it before noon. That did not happen, what happened instead was that I convinced myself that I needed a break and need to catch up Game of Thrones. After the first episode ended, I immediately started watching the next episode and I justified it by saying that I am getting it out of the way and so that when I do end up doing my homework, I would be doing it without any distractions. One episode led to two episodes, few more hours later I ended up watch a whole season of Game of Thrones. What makes this an example of cognitive dissonance, is because cognitive dissonance is often

Consistency, the absence of contradictions, has sometimes been called the hallmark of ethics. Ethics is supposed to provide an individual with a guide for moral living, and to do so it must be rational, and to be rational it must be free of contradictions. When consistency and ethics are compromised, this is known as cognitive dissonance. Leon Festinger shared his brilliance with the world when he created the Cognitive Dissonance theory. Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors (McLeod, 2008). Cognitive dissonance produces an uncomfortable tension of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs,

Cognitive dissonance is having a state of inconsistent thoughts and beliefs that towards decisions and attitudes that can constantly change. Many people tend to engage in cognitive dissonance but don’t realize there doing it. Correspondingly situation arose when someone hurts another feeling, or when temptation becomes a struggle with your beliefs. In the same way it can come in forms of making a decision or trying to achieve a goal that you find not worth the effort after accomplishing it. Given these points I would like to apply my real life examples of cognitive dissonance. My first personal example happened right before spring break. Me and my two best friends jess and Isaiah were sitting on the couch watching TV and making jokes. Isaiah then made a joke towards jess and we all found

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

Thoughts Out of Tune is a social psychology experiment which explores the idea of cognitive dissonance. This idea has a convoluted definition, but more or less means that when given a circumstance one does not believe, it creates stress which one will strenuously attempt to alleviate the tension. The person will come up with a validation to the scenario, and in turn, will accept the new scenario. Previously, it was thought that if one was told do something against his/her belief, the person would have less internal conflict if the reward was high. However, a 1953 study by Kelman disproved this thought and concluded a higher reward actually correlated with a higher dissonance. Thus, Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith set off to revisit this

An attitude describes a reasonably persistent set of opinions, emotional states and behavioral susceptibilities concerning socially noteworthy matters, groups, happenings or symbols. As such, an attitude is an individual’s assessment of an issue, person, group or behavior along with a positive or negative dimension or can also be uncertain at times. Attitudes are not directly observed and in many cases, it is necessary to infer positions from individual’s observable responses (Gil, Dwivedi, & Johnson, 2017). Many social psychologists are interested in opinions that are directed towards essential aspects in the society such as controversial issues, ethnic groups, and consequential behavior. For example, social psychologists may probe on individual’s

. In social psychology, cognitive dissonance is when a person experiences discomfort caused by stress brought on by the simultaneously holding of inconsistent attitudes and thoughts. People have a tendency to try and maintain consistency in their cognition. When there is dissonance in a person’s behavior and their attitudes, the person must change something in order to alleviate the dissonance.. Research has shown when a person’s behaviors are not in line with his/her beliefs at the time cognitive dissonance is created.

Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when people either hold two inconsistent thoughts or a cognition and a behavior that psychologically inconsistent. This was exactly what I felt when I was doing this experiment. The material explained that we can change the cognitions or behaviors to be more compatible, or we can add information to bridge the gap. I told myself that I was doing this for my assignment, and that this was logical.