Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Cognitive dissonance is defined as the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change. Cognitive dissonance occurs most often when a person’s beliefs, morals or feeling are one way but they do not act accordingly. This dissonance may be displayed in numerous ways that may be done outwardly but also there is an internal process that takes place. A use of internal processing involves many different functions, included but not limited to, thinking, perception and problem solving. The driving force of dissonance is that we as humans attempt to align opposing thoughts or ideas and carry on with life in a way that still meets our morals, set standards or way of thinking. In doing so, we are then challenged to find what we believe as appropriate reasoning for making

This quote summarizes the central idea of this chapter, the importance of cognitive dissonance. It gives the true definition of cognitive dissonance to realize how cognitive dissonance is the engine that drives self-justification. To give a simpler explanation, Tavris and Aronson use an example of smoking to show how dissonance leads you to have different minds of a particular decision.

Cognitive dissonance is defined by Gilovich et all’s textbook as “ A theory that maintains the inconsistencies among a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions create an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency”. While this definition is true it also quite confusing. To understand this first the words that make up the term need to be understood. Cognition is a mental action, it involves gaining knowledge and understanding through use of thoughts, senses, and experiences. This cognition can produce a perception, sensation, notion, or intuition. Dissonance is simply a discrepancy among two things. In the case of cognitive dissonance this discrepancy is between any two of the following; an idea,

Leon Festinger and James M. Carlsmith (1959) were interested in the cognitive dissonance, which can influence a person decision to choose one action or thought over another. The researchers were also interested in forced compliance, where authority can force individuals to say or act in a way that is conflicting to one’s own private opinion, whereas, the individual's attitude is altered through persuasion and authority. “Force” was operationally defined as the amount of reward offered for lying and cognitive dissonance experienced from the participant’s rated enjoyment of the tasks. Therefore, the researchers investigated if cognitive dissonance could be created through forced compliance behavior. Furthermore, Festinger and Carlsmith hypothesized

The idea is applicable in everyday life; we can use cognitive dissonance to help people make better decisions throughout the day. When we finish using the bathroom we often see a sign asking us to wash our hands to prevent disease and infection. When someone thinks to not wash their hands but sees the sign, they will experience cognitive dissonance. To get rid of this discomfort they will probably choose to wash their hands. Small interactions like these help better the world; by placing small changes like these in someone’s environment we can remind people of their morals and values.

First, the magnitude of dissonance experience, second, the importance of the elements involved in order to restore consistency and third, the level of restructuring one’s cognitive system in an attempt at reducing the dissonance. These authors point out that little research has been conducted in relation to the three elements. Furthermore, going against the majority, the authors indicated sufficient research has been conducted on the basis of attitude and beliefs, and in doing so, suggested that change may occur in the individual after being subjected to dissonance arousing situations, for example deciding whether or not to cheat on a college

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

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

Definition: Cognitive dissonance involves three aspects in which INCONSISTENCY in two or more things (thoughts, behavior, emotions, etc.) creates DISSONANCE, which motivates the person to CHANGE one or more things Example: This scene from Friends is a prime example of cognitive dissonance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HkqeORgn_U Application: Ross’s reaction to the disconfirming information that Rachel is pregnant is expressed with shock and disbelief. The scene displays Ross battling two inconsistent thoughts of one- not believing that Rachel could be pregnant because they used a condom and

Taylor Wood COM-201 Response Paper 1: Cognitive Dissonance Theory Life is full of uncomfortable situations. Whether it’s 12:01 on December 21, 2012 or seconds before a drop on a rollercoaster, we rationalize the situation to create a sense of equilibrium. Cognitive Dissonance Theory explains why we experience the mental discomfort called dissonance that arises from “inconsistent attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors” and how we take action or change our thinking to alleviate the discomfort (West & Turner, 2014, pp. 110-111).

When we make a fundamental attribution error, we assign characteristics to an individual that do not necessarily apply due to factors of a situation. For instance, a person A may judge person B as unfriendly because person B did not respond when person A said, "hello”. Person B, however, may be very friendly. The reason Person B did not respond is that he cannot hear and Person A was not in his field of view when he said, "hello”. cognitive dissonance - Cognitive dissonance occurs when we perform a particular act, and then feel emotional pain based on our performance of that act.

Leon Festinger created the cognitive dissonance theory as an attempt to explain why people desire to have consistency between their behaviors and actions. Cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state people feel when they find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold (Festinger, 1957; as cited in Griffin, 2009). Thus, people are motivated to change either their behavior or their belief when feelings of dissonance arise.

she is a jerk, but we cannot be sure whether there is an emergency as taking his pregnant wife to the hospital or is in hurry to catch a flight. Cognitive dissonance is the procedure we use to justify our experiences so that they are meaningful to us. A classical example of cognitive dissonance is one of the most famous Aesopian myths the story of the fox and the sour grapes. The fox, however diligent, was unable to reach the grapes.

Cognitive dissonance impacts attitudes and behavior negatively in the workplace in a variety of ways depending on the position you are employed. Being in management as an administrator you are faced with many challenges and situations that cause cognitive dissonance. For example, if my director asks me to perform a task and the way in which he wants me to perform the task, goes against my beliefs, I am forced to decide whether to follow his directives or risk termination for insubordination. The stress factor is making the correct decision. I can remember an instructor sending a student to me for conduct issues and wanted the student terminated from her program. The documentation that she provided to me was not sufficient to suspend the student,

Cognitive distortions are seen in individuals, specifically in Case Studies, that we have looked through this semester. These distortions can explain a person’s experience with a disorder with the use of frequency, intensity, and duration in criteria. The one case study that I feel as though uses the most diverse range of cognitive distortions include that of the Case of Andrea, whose disorder revolved around an Eating Disorder. The obvious distortions she displays is personalizing, minimizing, generalization, and negative predictions. First of all, personalizing.