Your basketball team is down by two with 6 seconds left and you are going up to the free throw line to shoot some foul shots. There is a lot going through your head. The problem is you are terrible and free throws, and you do not have the mental ability to get over this. Half of you wants to make the free throws and win the game, and the other half of you just wants to get out of the high-pressure situation so you can go home. Your mind is telling you how terrible you are at free throws but you try to convince yourself otherwise cause if you think your going to miss, your going to miss. These contradicting thoughts that affect our behaviors and decision-making is called cognitive dissonance and they happen every day.
Cognitive dissonance appears in virtually all evaluations and decisions and is the central mechanism by which we experience new differences in the world. When we see other people behave differently to our images of them, when we hold any conflicting thoughts, we experience dissonance (Festinger 1957). This is the feeling of uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time.
If something is really important to you like smoking cigarettes, but you know that it is bad for you, you will cognitively convince yourself that smoking cigarettes are not that bad and that you need them to make you feel good.
Cognitive dissonance can change your behavior based on how strongly the dissonant thoughts conflict with one another. For example, if your boss is really getting on your nerves and is telling you about how much you suck at life and at your job, you will cognitively have an inner conflict in your head. Half of you wants to tell your boss to go jump off a tall building, and the other half tells you to keep your mouth shut and do your work. If these thoughts are very strongly conflicting, the harder it will be to tell your boss what he wants to hear.
Dissonance increases with the importance and impact of the decision, along with the difficulty of reversing it. So if you do decide to tell your boss to “go play hide and go screw yourself” or whatever, these actions have immediately triggered more cognitive dissonance. Half of you is saying how much of a bad ass you are for finally standing up to your boss, and the other half of you just realized that you are big trouble because you really needed that job. Thus more cognitive dissonance begins to occur such as you trying to convince yourself that finding a new job will be easy, even though you know that it is very hard to find one in this struggling economy. Then you try to convince yourself that the economy is not that bad, the cognitive dissonance continues.
Cognitive dissonance is a very powerful motivator, which will lead us to change one or other of the conflicting belief or action. The discomfort often feels like a tension between the two opposing thoughts. To release the tension we will either change our behavior or justify our behavior by changing the conflicting cognition (Syque 2002).
Festinger first developed this theory in the 1950s when he infiltrated a cult to explain how members of a cult who were persuaded by their leader. This “leader” said that the earth was going to be destroyed on December 21st and that they alone were going to be rescued by aliens. When December 22nd came along and this obviously nothing happened, somehow the people actually increased their commitment to the cult. The cognitive dissonance of the thought of being so stupid was so great that instead they revised their beliefs to meet with obvious facts, that the aliens had, through their concern for the cult, saved the world instead (Syque 2002). It would be interesting to find some additional studies on this theory.
“Cognitive dissonance is central to many forms of persuasion to change beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviors. The tension can be injected suddenly or allowed to build up over time. People can be moved in many small jumps or one large one. When you start feeling uncomfortable, stop and see if you can find the inner conflict. Then notice how that came about,” (Syque 2002). How will your respond to the inner mind conflict?
Syque. “Cognitive Dissonance”. Changing Minds. Retrieved April 7, 2010 from http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/cognitive_dissonance.htm#References
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