In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly or subconsciously hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions. Being confronted by situations that create this dissonance or highlight these inconsistencies motivates change in their cognitions or actions to reduce this dissonance, maybe by changing a belief, by explaining something away, or by taking actions that reduce perceived inconsistency.
Relevant items of cognition include people's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance exists without outward sign, but surfaces through psychological stress when psychological discomfort is created due to persons participating in an action that creates conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors, or when new information challenges existing beliefs.
According to this theory, when an action or idea is psychologically inconsistent with the other, people automatically try to resolve the conflict, usually by reframing a side to make the combination congruent. Discomfort is triggered by beliefs clashing with new information or by having to conceptually resolve a matter that involves conflicting sides, whereby the individual tries to find a way to reconcile contradictions to reduce their discomfort. This need to reduce discomfort can be used for applied interventions as a catalyst for attitudinal change, such as in the induced hypocrisy paradigm, shaping pro-social behaviours or disengaging and deradicalising extremists.
In When Prophecy Fails (1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world. Persons who experience internal inconsistency tend to become psychologically uncomfortable and are motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance. They tend to make changes to justify the stressful behavior, by either adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance (rationalization), believing that "people get what they deserve" (just-world fallacy), taking in specific pieces of information while rejecting or ignoring others (selective perception), or avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance (confirmation bias). Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory is still one of the most influential social theories in modern social psychology. Festinger explains avoiding cognitive dissonance as "Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."
Originator Leon Festinger, born in 1919 in New York City, was an American social psychologist whose contributions to psychology include cognitive dissonance theory, social comparison theory, and the proximity effect. In a 2002 American Psychological Association article, Festinger is cited as the fifth most eminent psychologist of the 20th century, just after B.F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Bandura, respectively.
In 1957, Leon Festinger introduced the theory of Cognitive Dissonance, which describes how psychological stress occurs when a person has cognitive inconsistencies, such as conflicting behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs. As mentioned in Persuasion and Influence in American Life, instead of perpetuating a constant state of psychological tension, people often try to reclaim their mental balance by rationalizing the behavior in question or by adjusting their beliefs. The framework of Festinger's theory, as well as his fascination with the way people evaluate their beliefs and internal inconsistencies, was influenced in part by his earlier work on Social Comparison Theory, which is important when trying to explain why the tension arises from dissonance.
Festinger graduated from the City College of New York in 1939; he then received his PhD in Child Psychology from the University of Iowa. He was initially inspired to enter the field of psychology by Kurt Lewin, known as the "father of modern social psychology", and his work in Gestalt psychology. Studying under Kurt Lewin for most of his academic career, Festinger returned to collaborate with Lewin at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Throughout this research, Festinger noticed that people often like to stick to consistent habits and routines to maintain order within their lives. These habits may include everyday activities like preferring a specific seat during their daily commute or eating meals at consistent times. Any disturbance to this order can lead to mental unease, which may manifest in altered thought processes or beliefs. Festinger concluded that the sole means of alleviating this discomfort is by adjusting either their actions or beliefs to restore consistency.
Since his publication of A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in 1957, Festinger's findings have helped to understand peoples' personal biases, how people reframe situations in their heads to maintain a positive self-image, and why one may pursue certain behaviors that misalign with their judgments as they seek out or reject certain information.
Relations among cognitions To function in the reality of society, human beings continually adjust the correspondence of their mental attitudes and personal actions; such continual adjustments, between cognition and action, result in one of three relationships with reality: Consonant relationship: A cognition or action consistent with the other, e.g., not wanting to become drunk when out for dinner and ordering water rather than wine Irrelevant relationship: A cognition or action unrelated to the other, e.g. not wanting to become drunk when out and wearing a blue shirt Dissonant relationship: A cognition or action inconsistent with the other, e.g. not wanting to become drunk when out, but then drinking more wine anyway
Magnitude of dissonance The term "magnitude of dissonance" refers to the level of discomfort caused to the person. This can be caused by the relationship between two different internal beliefs, or an action that is incompatible with the beliefs of the person. Two factors determine the degree of psychological dissonance caused by two conflicting cognitions or by two conflicting actions:
The importance of cognitions: the greater the personal value of the elements, the greater the magnitude of the dissonance in the relation. When the value of the importance of the two dissonant items is high, it is difficult to determine which action or thought is correct. Both have had a place of truth, at least subjectively, in the mind of the person. Therefore, when the ideals or actions now clash, it is difficult for the individual to decide which takes priority. Ratio of cognitions: the proportion of dissonant-to-consonant elements. There is a level of discomfort within each person that is acceptable for living. When a person is within that comfort level, the dissonant factors do not interfere with functioning. However, when dissonant factors are abundant and not enough in line with each other, one goes through a process to regulate and bring the ratio back to an acceptable level. Once a subject chooses to keep one of the dissonant factors, they quickly forget the other to restore peace of mind.
There is always some degree of dissonance within a person as they go about making decisions, due to the changing quantity and quality of knowledge and wisdom that they gain. The magnitude itself is a subjective measurement since the reports are self relayed, and there is no objective way as yet to get a clear measurement of the level of discomfort.
Reduction Cognitive dissonance theory proposes that people seek psychological consistency between their expectations of life and the existential reality of the world. To function by that expectation of existential consistency, people continually reduce their cognitive dissonance in order to align their cognitions (perceptions of the world) with each other and their actions.
The creation and establishment of psychological consistency allows the person affected with cognitive dissonance to lessen mental stress by actions that reduce the magnitude of the dissonance, realized either by changing with or by justifying against or by being indifferent to the existential contradiction that is inducing the mental stress. In practice, people reduce the magnitude of their cognitive dissonance in four ways: Change the behavior or the cognition ("I'll eat no more of this doughnut.") Justify the behavior or the cognition, by changing the conflicting cognition ("I'm allowed to cheat my diet every once in a while.") Justify the behavior or the cognition by adding new behaviors or cognitions ("I'll spend thirty extra minutes at the gymnasium to work off the doughnut.") Ignore or deny information that conflicts with existing beliefs ("This doughnut is not a high-sugar food.")
Three cognitive bias theories are proposed proponents of cognitive dissonance (Note: they are not distinct, they draw from each other): 1. Bias Blind Spot — the tendency to perceive oneself as less susceptible to biases than others, 2. The Better-Than-Average-Effect — the tendency to believe that one is overall superior to others in terms of ability and character, and 3. Confirmation Bias — the tendency to interpret and understand information in a way that supports preexisting beliefs, thoughts, feelings, etc.
Having congruent, or perceived as congruent cognition is required in order to function in the real world according to the results of The Psychology of Prejudice (2006), wherein people facilitate their functioning in the real world by employing human categories (i.e. sex and gender, age and race, etc.) with which they manage their social interactions with other people.
Based on a brief overview of models and theories related to cognitive consistency from many different scientific fields, such as social psychology, perception, neurocognition, learning, motor control, system control, ethology, and stress, it has even been proposed that "all behaviour involving cognitive processing is caused by the activation of inconsistent cognitions and functions to increase perceived consistency"; that is, all behaviour functions to reduce cognitive inconsistency at some level of information processing. Indeed, the involvement of cognitive inconsistency has long been suggested for behaviors related to for instance curiosity, and aggression and fear, while it has also been suggested that the inability to satisfactorily reduce cognitive inconsistency may – dependent on the type and size of the inconsistency – result in stress.
Selective exposure Another means to reduce cognitive dissonance is selective exposure. This theory has been discussed since the early days of Festinger's proposal of cognitive dissonance. He noticed that people would selectively expose themselves to some media over others; specifically, they would avoid dissonant messages and prefer consonant messages. Through selective exposure, people actively (and selectively) choose what to watch, view, or read that fit to their current state of mind, mood or beliefs. In other words, consumers select attitude-consistent information and avoid attitude-challenging information. This can be applied to media, news, music, and any other messaging channel. The idea is, choosing something that is in opposition to how you feel or believe in will increase cognitive dissonance.