Festinger realized that social comparison theory was unnecessarily narrow. Festinger wondered how people would react if they noticed discrepancies with their past experience. In one classic example from his original work, he asked what people would feel if they were out in the rain but were not getting wet.
- Consider if you’re working in a job you hate, suggests Michele Leno, PhD, a Michigan-based licensed psychologist and founder of DML Psychological Services.
- The first corollary, then, is that if responsibility is ambiguous, we are motivated to perceive our actions as being the responsibility of others.
- Admitting it, apologizing if need be, and moving forward can save us a lot of time, mental energy and hurt feelings.
- When we first realized how important free choice was to the dissonance process, we viewed it as a moderating variable that permitted inconsistent cognitions to result in dissonance.
How Attitude Change Takes Place
- Those changes were due to individuals recognizing contradictions between how people viewed women, the environment, and nontraditional relationships and how we acted as a society (or allowed others to act).
- When there are conflicts between cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, and opinions), people will take steps to reduce the dissonance and feelings of discomfort.
- Dr. Stacey Diane Arañez Litam (she, her, siya) is a licensed professional clinical counselor and supervisor, a national certified counselor, a certified clinical mental health counselor, as well as a board-certified diplomate and sexologist.
- They were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell a waiting participant (a confederate) that the tasks were really interesting.
- You didn’t think about it much before, but if you continue to make the same clothing choices, you’ll feel some cognitive dissonance.
At the conclusion of several minutes of the effortful therapy, participants returned to the room in which Oz was lying and were asked to approach the snake a second time. The difference in how close they came to Oz served as our measure of success of the therapy. As predicted by dissonance, participants in the high choice condition came more than 10 feet closer to the snake after the therapy, but in the low choice cognitive dissonance and addiction and test-retest control conditions, there was no improvement. The motivating factor of responsibility is necessary for dissonance to occur.
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This is probably because dissonance would be caused if we spent a great effort to achieve something and then evaluated it negatively. Participants in the high-dissonance condition spread apart the alternatives significantly more than the participants in the other two conditions. 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.
How Cognitive Dissonance Feels
If you’re interested in psychology and human behavior, you’ve probably heard the phrase cognitive dissonance. It’s the term coined by psychologist Leon Festinger in 1954 to describe “the feeling of psychological discomfort produced by the combined presence of two thoughts that do not follow from one another. Festinger proposed that the greater the discomfort, the greater the desire to reduce the dissonance of the two cognitive elements” (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). Dissonance theory suggests that if individuals act in ways that contradict their beliefs, then they typically will change their beliefs to align with their actions (or vice-a-versa).
The theory behind cognitive dissonance
The New Look model also makes children’s learning of dissonance a more plausible aspect of normal development. While he did not label dissonance as a drive, he designed the concept so that it functioned like one. The three important features of his concept were that (1) it is experienced as discomfort, (2) it propels people to take action and (3) people feel more comfortable after the action has been taken. It is not clear whether he thought research would eventually find evidence for the drive or whether he was content to liken dissonance to a drive and use it as a metaphor to predict intriguing outcomes. In the history of science, a theory or perspective can become important because it is bold and controversial. It may not be correct in all of its details, but it upsets the conventional wisdom that came before.
Cognitive Dissonance Examples
- That’s why many people seek to avoid or minimize regret in their lives, and seek “closure” — imposing a definitive end to an event or relationship.
- Moreover, the state of dissonance has drive-like properties, motivating people to seek its reduction.
- Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a person holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time.
- It is not clear whether he thought research would eventually find evidence for the drive or whether he was content to liken dissonance to a drive and use it as a metaphor to predict intriguing outcomes.
So even if the university we didn’t choose was rated higher initially, our choice dictates that more often than not, we’ll rate it higher. Otherwise it wouldn’t make sense why we would choose the lower-rated school. She says that reaching more consistency in your thoughts and behaviors will create a world that’s less harmful, less likely to trigger negative emotions, and therefore, less problematic. It can help to view the situation you’re in from the outside, stepping back so you can see the big picture.
Cognitive Dissonance and the Discomfort of Holding Conflicting Beliefs
By Kendra Cherry, MSEdKendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the “Everything Psychology Book.” According to Festinger, there are a few ways that a person might resolve this dissonance. Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the “Everything Psychology Book.” By Neha KashyapKashyap is a New York-based health journalist with a bachelor’s degree in print journalism from the University of Southern California. “If you’re not able to be genuine about your needs, then that’s going to create more stress and distance in your relationships,” warns Dr. Prewitt.
Cognitive dissonance can have many different causes, including addiction, a desire to meet the expectations of others, fear of change, and trauma. People with cognitive dissonance often try to resolve the feeling either by changing their behavior or beliefs or with other strategies like ignoring or justifying the contradiction. When you do something or behave a certain way that goes against your values, you may experience cognitive dissonance. This clash of beliefs and disruption of thought can also occur if you have two or more conflicting beliefs and you’re torn between them.