Although people may think cognitive dissonance is a bad thing, it actually helps to keep us mentally healthy and happy. It may make us feel satisfied with our choices—or at least lets us justify them—especially when they cannot be easily reversed. Resolving dissonance may help prevent us from making bad choices or motivate us to make good ones.

Changing Beliefs

However, this mode of dissonance reduction frequently presents problems for people, as it is often difficult for people to change well-learned behavioral responses (e.g., giving up smoking). Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) investigated if making people perform a dull task would create cognitive dissonance through forced compliance behavior. For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance. Sometimes you might find yourself engaging in behaviors that are opposed to your own beliefs due to external expectations at work, school, or in a social situation. This might involve going along with something due to peer pressure or doing something at work to avoid getting fired. In addition to the cognitive dissonance we are experiencing, “True Lies” and “False Truths” are oxymorons that we frequently hear during political and public health conflicts we are experiencing.

Reduce the importance of the cognitions (i.e., beliefs, attitudes).

But you can feel caught off guard when those values and beliefs are shaken by social pressures, the presence of new information or having to make a rushed last-minute decision. Sometimes, we can even get caught up in behaving or reacting a certain way that doesn’t necessarily align with how we really feel — and then we end up feeling lost. A person who feels defensive or unhappy might consider the role cognitive dissonance might play in these feelings.

How We Tend to Deal With the Cognitive Dissonance That Happens to Us

Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and behavior in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance). Sometimes, the ways that people resolve cognitive dissonance contribute to unhealthy behaviors or poor decisions. Cognitive dissonance can often have a powerful influence on our behaviors and actions.

• Think of the types of decisions that cause you to make a list of pros and cons.
• The theory of cognitive dissonance has been widely researched in a number of situations to develop the basic idea in more detail, and various factors have been identified which may be important in attitude change.
• Cognitive dissonance is a normal occurrence that can affect anyone.
• Here’s a look at some everyday examples of cognitive dissonance and how you might come to terms with them.

Induce effort

Individuals in the low-dissonance group chose between a desirable product and one rated 3 points lower on an 8-pointscale. Being paid only $1 is not sufficient incentive for lying and so those who were paid $1 experienced dissonance. They could only overcome that dissonance by coming to believe that the tasks really were interesting and enjoyable. Being paid $20 provides a reason for turning pegs, and there is, therefore, no dissonance. When the participants were asked to evaluate the experiment, the participants who were paid only $1 rated the tedious task as more fun and enjoyable than the participants who were paid $20 to lie.

Effects of Cognitive Dissonance

• Cognitive dissonance is powerful because we are highly driven to eliminate it.
• Highly anxious people are the most likely to feel discomfort, guilt, shame, stress, or anxiety in these situations.
• We, scientists love to praise ourselves that we do not discard contradictions, that we enjoy contradictions because they give us food for thoughts, for creating theories overcoming contradictions.
• Recently my colleagues and I demonstrated a causal link between pMFC activity and the attitude change required to reduce dissonance.

Roehrig and colleagues conducted a study to determine if the dissonance-induction techniques alone were sufficient to produce the changes observed in the full intervention (which included both the dissonance techniques and the behavioral techniques). They found that the dissonance-induction techniques did indeed produce significant reductions in thin-ideal internalization and bulimic pathology that were equivalent to those produced in the full intervention. Stice and colleagues found that reductions in thin-ideal internalization often preceded reductions in the negative outcome variables (i.e., cognitive dissonance addiction body dissatisfaction, eating pathology) but only in the DBI group. From these results, we can conclude that DBIs work by changing thin-ideal internalization and that it is the change in internalization that leads to reductions in the other outcome variables. These results are significant because they provide support for the tripartite influence model in which internalization is a necessary component for the development of body dissatisfaction and subsequent bulimic pathology. To deal with the feelings of discomfort then, they might find some way of rationalizing the conflicting cognition.

Cognitive Dissonance: Festinger’s Theory

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