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 easiest way to describe the concept is by a quick example. Say you’re a student looking to choose between two different universities you’d like to attend. After being accepted to each, you’re asked to freely rate the universities after considering each college’s pros and cons. 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.
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. This is cognitive dissonance at work.
Another example can be seen in many people’s continuing to smoke two or three packs of cigarettes a day, even though research shows they are shortening their own lives. They answer this cognitive dissonance with thoughts like, “Well, I’ve tried to quit and it’s just too hard,” or “It’s not as bad as they say and besides, I really enjoy smoking.” Daily smokers justify their behaviors through rationalizations or denial, just as most people do when faced with cognitive dissonance.
Not everyone feels cognitive dissonance to the same degree. People with a higher need for consistency and certainty in their lives usually feel the effects of cognitive dissonance more than those who have a lesser need for such consistency.
Cognitive-dissonance is just one of many biases that work in our everyday lives. We don’t like to believe that we may be wrong, so we may limit our intake of new information or thinking about things in ways that don’t fit within our pre-existing beliefs. Psychologists call this “confirmation bias.”
We also don’t like to second-guess our choices, even if later they are proven wrong or unwise. By second-guessing ourselves, we suggest we may not be as wise or as right as we’ve led ourselves to believe. This may lead us to commit to a particular course of action and become insensitive to and reject alternative, perhaps better, courses that come to light. 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. It reduces the possibility of future cognitive dissonance.
So What Do I Do About Cognitive Dissonance?
But for all of the writing about cognitive dissonance, little has been written about what to do about it (or whether you should even care). If our brains were made to think this way to help protect our own view of the world or sense of self or follow through on a commitment, is this a bad thing that we should try and undo?
People may run into problems with cognitive dissonance because it can be, in its most basic form, a sort of lie to oneself. As with all lies, it depends on the size of the lie and whether it’s more likely to hurt you in some way in the long run. We tell “little white lies” everyday in our social lives (”Oh yes, that’s a great color on you!”) that bring little harm to either side and help smooth over otherwise awkward situations. So while cognitive dissonance resolves the internal anxiety we face over two opposing beliefs or behaviors, it may also inadvertently reinforce future bad decisions.
Matz and his colleagues (2008) showed that our personality can help mediate the effects of cognitive dissonance. They found that people who were extraverted were less likely to feel the negative impact of cognitive dissonance and were also less likely to change their mind. Introverts, on the other hand, experienced increased dissonance discomfort and were more likely to change their attitude to match the majority of others in the experiment.
What if you can’t change your personality?
Self-awareness seems to be a key to understanding how and when cognitive dissonance may play a role in your life. If you find yourself justifying or rationalizing decisions or behaviors that you’re not quite clear you firmly believe in, that might be a sign that cognitive dissonance is at work. If your explanation for something is, “Well, that’s the way I’ve always done it or thought about it,” that may also be a sign. Socrates extolled that “An unexamined life is not worth living.” In other words, challenge and be skeptical of such answers if you find yourself falling back on them.
A part of that self awareness that may help in dealing with cognitive dissonance is to examine the commitments and decisions we make in our lives. If the resolution of cognitive dissonance means that we move forward with a commitment and spring into action, making us feel better, maybe the dissonance was trying to tell us something. Maybe the decision or commitment wasn’t as right for us as we initially thought, even if it means overcoming our “no second-guessing” bias and making a different decision. Sometimes we’re just plain wrong. Admitting it, apologizing if need be, and moving forward can save us a lot of time, mental energy and hurt feelings.
Cognitive Dissonance as Therapy Technique
Cognitive dissonance isn’t always something bad — it has been successfully used to help people change their unhealthy attitudes and behaviors. For instance, if a woman holds the belief that women should be super-thin and not eat in a healthy manner, cognitive dissonance can be used to successfully change those kinds of beliefs and the resulting eating-disordered behavior (Becker et al., 2008). It’s also been successfully employed to change an over reliance on online gaming, road rage, and many other negative behaviors.
In these kinds of interventions, the model most often used is to try and get people to understand their current attitudes and behaviors, the costs involved in holding these particular attitudes or engaging in the negative behaviors, role playing, exercises and homework design to help a person to become more aware and constantly challenge the attitudes and behaviors, and self-affirmation exercises. Most of these techniques share a common grounding and background in traditional cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy techniques.
In better understanding cognitive dissonance and the role it plays in most of our lives, we can be on the lookout for it and its sometimes-negative effects.
References:
Becker, C.B, Bull, S., Schaumberg, K., Cauble, A., & Franco, A. (2008). Effectiveness of peer-led eating disorders prevention: A replication trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76(2), 347-354.
Harmon-Jones, E. & Mills, J. (Eds.)(1999). Cognitive Dissonance: Progress on a Pivotal Theory in Social Psychology. American Psychological Association: Washington, DC.
Matz, D.C. Hofstedt, P.M. & Wood, W. (2008). Extraversion as a moderator of the cognitive dissonance associated with disagreement. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(5), 401-405.
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9 Comments to
“Fighting Cognitive Dissonance & The Lies We Tell Ourselves”
Cheers John for the clear and helpful article.
As a long term survivor of depression I have been struggling with my ideas and choices for a long time. The “depressed me” is characterised by words such as Frightened, useless, needy, failure, stupid etc., while the “well enough me” knows I’m ambitious, courageous, self reliant, creative, intelligent etc. I have not worked for two years and cannot pursue my normal work because of back pain. In considering choices for an alternative career I have to endure the extreme discomfort (physical and psychological) of the cognitive dissonance between my well and unwell “selves”. I am finding that making a list of my positive attributes as I become aware of them day to day is helping me to choose to see myself as capable of making a new healthy future.
My father a scientist taught me very young some basic rules which keep this from happening.
1) Use what rules you hold to prove what you have reasoned or observed.
2) If the rules allow a contradiction to be derived, then you must reassess your rules and remove and/or revise those which allow this contradiction. In any complex system this will be a constant effort.
3) It does not matter who you are, what degrees you have, or how nice the ideas involved in the contradiction are. Reality wins in the end.
4) This is why ideals never hold true, and always cause problems. Even Newton could not hold reality to ideal laws. And he was the smartest person so far.
We start training people to accept cognitive dissonance as a normal functional thought process as children. We do this with Santa and other imaginary beings which supposedly watch them 24/7 judging them. They then have to reconcile this with the complete lack of evidence, and others behaviour which is contrary to being watched and judged. Like catholic clergy hiding paedophiles from people and allowing them to move to greener pastures, but not worrying about God knowing, if they believed in God would they do that?
We need to teach people that constant confirmation of evidence, IE scientific method is a healthy and useful thought process. It works and self corrects mistakes.
When I was 6 we had moved to the country and had a fireplace, my father had cut wood for it, first in three foot lengths then after bringing it closer to the house into usable lengths. He came out of the house one day as I was dragging a narrow three foot section up to the house. He naturally questioned me about it. I said I was going to build a deadfall, I had been reading stories about boys in the 1800’s like Laura Ingles Wilder’s husbands book. He was obviously concerned and asked why. I reminded him it was Dec 24th, I was setting it up in case of Santa. I had been told there was no Santa which he reminded me of.
Yes I told him but I have no experimental evidence, just your word. I remember how proud he looked, till he realised that I was prepared to kill Santa. Santa was a spook, a spy who watched people so fair game right?
So he asked “,if it works you will have a dead body in the living room, what would you propose we do with it?” “Give it to the Smithsonian, they can stuff him, and the sleigh and reindeer can go to NASA,” which my father was working for.
Lying to children does not help their thought process, telling them the truth helps them build a logical thought process. Remember the look on that kid in third grade who still believed in Santa? Confused and ashamed, I think that explains the visceral reaction the religious have toward Atheists.
I was sent home early in third grade for asking in home room who still believed in Santa the Tooth Fairy or God. It was worth it seeing the other kids look around the room and start thinking.
I believe this is the essence of good psychotherapy: understanding what is true about yourself and how to live that truth. To live with cognitive dissonance about oneself contributes to unsatisfactory relationships, depression, and anxiety. This can happen when you minimize what is important to you, what has hurt you, or how something impacts you. This is denial of a part of oneself in the service of “not rocking the boat.” But it is dissonant with one’s person and is not a viable strategy for living.
For RMH:
Very nicely put. It must have been great to grow up with a Dad like yours, teaching you to think, rather than to mimic the irrationalities of other irrational mimickers.
My sentiments go alongside Jonathans.
You know how you get these aha moments. All my life I have been feeling like a kid in a toy store wanting it all. I was accepting ideas ideas right and left. Depression, frustration, and anger were often the result. I am not smart enough to be able to decide between two ideas concerning their Truth, but just realizing that there are two incompatible ideas fighting in my mind is causing my frustration etc. I can live with that and move forward, simply by making a decision, and coming back to it later if I am having trouble with it and reevaluating my decision.
I have to say that as a scientist, I am very skeptical of much of RHM’s post. Seems a moderated angst expressed as rational thoughts. Judging others as he/she hates to be judged. Basing the merits of a philosophy or idea from their abuses instead of their premise and conclusions. Confirmation bias as opposed to rational self-examination.
All in all pointless in dealing with cognitive dissonance. The first post was useful, and encouraged, RHM’s post was nothing if not …full of sound and fury…..
I kind of agreed with Phys. But I should point out that the first post was helpful, the rest, really got off the topic of trying to help people.
Phys referred to “RMH” as “RHM”. I think that this demonstrates that perhaps Phys felt some cognitive dissonance after reading his post. Switching the letters was a subconscious way of dealing with the dissonance.
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 19 Oct 2008
