Cognitive Dissonance; An Everyday Part of Life

“Dissonance is as fatal in ailments of the mind as it is in those of the body.”
― Georges Rodenbach, Bruges-La-Morte

A cognitive dissonance is a form of dissonance that is experienced by a person when there is a conflict between their beliefs, attitudes or behaviors. The term itself might not be used commonly in circles, but the phenomenon is experienced by almost all human beings every other day. In simple words, if a person acts differently than their beliefs or attitudes, they would feel a certain conflict within themselves that will place them in a state of tension.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

The theory was proposed by Leon Festinger, a psychologist who found out that people have this innate need to have harmony between their beliefs and actions. According to Festinger, the need for this internal consistency is universal and if an imbalance ever occurs, the person strives to restore it through different means; some of which are to change their beliefs, attitudes or behavior. If the action is already performed by them, then there is no way to change it so the only option left to the person would be to view the action in a different light i.e. to change their beliefs and attitudes towards the action so that they can avoid internal conflict. If they are able to form the belief that their action was justified (due to whatever reason they come up with), they would be able to overcome their cognitive dissonance and have internal harmony once again.

Festinger wrote a book named as A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in which he mentioned, “Cognitive dissonance can be seen as an antecedent condition which leads to activity oriented toward dissonance reduction just as hunger leads toward activity oriented toward hunger reduction. It is a very different motivation from what psychologists are used to dealing with but, as we shall see, nonetheless powerful.”

In the words of Festinger, “When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance.” According to this statement, the individual not only learns how to overcome their internal struggle, they learn to recognize it and are able to flag it so that they never have to come across it again in the future. This shows a certain avoidance attitude on the part of the person which indicates that the person’s future beliefs and attitudes suffer a semi-permanent change as a result of overcoming cognitive dissonance once.

First Investigation of Cognitive Dissonance

Leon Festinger came up with this particular theory in the 1950s, when he infiltrated a cult group in order to perform a participant observational study about the cognitive dissonance of cults. The leader of the group, Mrs. Keech had told the group that the planet earth would be destroyed by a massive flood on the 21^st of December and only the members of the cult would be able to survive due to the arrival of an alien race. This increased the devotion of the members of the group, so much so that many of them quit their job and left their homes. Festinger wanted to observe the effect of the members’ dissonance when they would find out that Marian Keech’s predictions were not true. When the night of the arrival of the aliens came, Mrs. Keech had a new vision which was that the planet was saved due to the excessive and the indestructible devotion of the followers. The members who were not avid followers saw sense and left the group once they realized that the whole scenario had been a ruse, but what about the people who were devoted enough that they gave up their whole lives? Their internal conflict was powerful because if they were to come to the reality, they would have had to accept that they had blindly followed a woman without any evidence and the actions performed by them bordered on foolishness and ignorance. In order to completely avoid cognitive dissonance, they believed Mrs. Keech that the only reason that the earth was saved was due to their faith efforts.

Festinger’s theory was supported i.e. humans would adopt all means in order to overcome their dissonance and achieve consonance between their beliefs and actions.

Examples of Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a commonly occurring phenomenon and everyone falls prey to it. A few everyday life examples of it are:

1. A chain smoker realizes that his smoking habit can lead to numerous medical, psychological and social problems, but since they are unable to stop, they would change their beliefs and attitudes towards smoking i.e. they might try to rationalize the habit, explain away that they do it occasionally, etc.
2. A classic example of cognitive dissonance is that when meat eaters who are extreme animal lovers actually think about where the meat comes from. This does not happen to everyone, but for many people, once they start thinking that they are inadvertently hurting animals, an intense cognitive dissonance arises within because there is a strong conflict between their self-image (I love animals) and their actions (I am killing and eating animals). For many people, the only way to overcome the dissonance is to change their actions i.e. they stop eating meat and become vegetarians.
3. People who are on a healthy diet might be tempted to eat ice cream, which would lead to cognitive dissonance, but they can overcome it by believing that they actually do not feel the immense urge to consume the unhealthy food item.

Cognitive dissonance can be felt regarding every area of life and people generally succeed in either overcoming it or avoiding it one way or the other. The determination to overcome the conflict can be seen in every aspect of life and manifests itself in different ways; people supporting their chosen leader despite the leader’s corrupt behavior, continuing on with bad habits with the help of rationalization and much more. The dissonance itself makes a person feel uncomfortable, but dealing with it depends upon the person’s beliefs, options, morals, and the environment.