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For instance, every time you eat meat while trying to uphold a vegan diet produces more or less the same magnitude of dissonance, but the more often you do it the easier it might be to handle the cognitive conflict. Lastly, if the magnitude of dissonance is rather small and the situation is highly familiar, the reduction will be rather implicit (e.g., an automated distraction response). Note that the novel-familiar assessment in our model occurs at a higher-level of processing and is related to the regulatory process rather than the initial appraisal of the situation (i.e., the detection of dissonance). Similar to the process model (cf. Gross, 2014), we suggest that in the early part of the emotion-generation process, typical strategies are avoidance, escape (i.e., modification of the situation), or distraction. Furthermore, we argue that these dissonance-reduction strategies are most likely related to fear/anxiety reactions or anticipation of fear/anxiety (cf. LaBar, 2016), but also reactions related to anger (cf. Harmon-Jones and Harmon-Jones, 2016).
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 their actions. Leon Festinger first proposed the theory of cognitive dissonance, centered on how people try to reach internal consistency.
What Causes Cognitive Dissonance?
Cognitive dissonance is a little different than its evil twin, hypocrisy. But because we want the benefits of presenting ourselves a certain way, we don’t mind the inconsistency in our behavior. When you smoke, you may feel guilt because you know smoking can cause cancer and that you cognitive dissonance treatment should stop. In sum, these simple re-analyses demonstrate the danger in over-emphasizing general trends in typical dissonance studies. They also show that conceptualizing dissonance reduction in the broader terms of emotion-regulation could be a viable approach moving forward.
You make your decision and are asked to rate the two universities once again. People will usually rate the chosen university as better and the rejected option as worse after having made their decision. Importantly, the word “follow” in the phrase not only literally means move in the same direction as, but also lag behind a bit. Because the more complex parts of the brain that govern thinking and emotion require more time to unlearn old patterns and learn new ones than the motor regions that tend to respond and learn more quickly. It’s giving you the information you need to be at peace with your decisions and to understand why you made them. Developing the self-awareness to notice and question the dissonance often resolves it.
What Influences Cognitive Dissonance?
However, there are fortunate individuals who see how their substance abuse is causing not only destruction in their lives but also with those who love them. They hold onto the belief that they will see better days and that recovery is needed to change their life. At Granite Mountain Behavioral Healthcare, our team aims to help our clients with addiction and mental illness recover. This is done by learning how to change their thought patterns and remove their dissonance through various methods of therapies such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).
- Among them are how highly a particular belief is valued and the degree to which the beliefs are inconsistent.
- A fascinating aspect of this truth—that behavior strongly determines thoughts, emotions, and attitudes—is the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance; the mental discomfort experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.
- Cognitive dissonance and the way we cope with it regularly affect our relationships, too, both positively and negatively.
- Similarly, if dissonance reduction is used as a rationalization of past behavior, or to lessen aversive consequences, it is the emotional reaction to the cognitive conflict that initiates these processes.
- Guilt and shame are likely at the top of that list because you know what you are doing goes against your belief system.
- Cognitive dissonance isn’t always something bad — it has been successfully used to help people change their unhealthy attitudes and behaviors.
Thus, if the headline is a character-assassination of your favorite politician, you might not read the article because you suspect that the content might be too emotionally arousing. However, Sheppes argues further that when individuals believe that they will encounter certain emotional stimuli again (i.e., stimuli related to long-term goals), they will rather reappraise the stimuli than use distraction. The opposite seems to be true for emotional stimuli encountered only once or seldomly (i.e., stimuli not related to specific goals), where distraction is more likely. Note that Sheppes’ model deals with situations in which people make more or less conscious cost-benefit analyses when deciding how to regulate emotions (see also Sheppes et al., 2011).