Cognitive dissonance describes the discomfort experienced when two cognitions are incompatible with each other. A cognition is a piece of knowledge, such as a:
This incompatibility (dissonance) could happen when you do something that goes against a value that’s important to you. Or maybe you learn a new piece of information that disagrees with a long-standing belief or opinion. As humans, we generally prefer for our world to make sense, so cognitive dissonance can be distressing. That’s why we often respond to cognitive dissonance by doing mental gymnastics to feel like things make sense again. Here’s a look at some common examples of cognitive dissonance and how you might come to terms with them. Let’s say you have a dog that you take for daily walks around your neighborhood. Like any responsible dog owner, you carry plastic bags and always clean up after your dog. One day, you realize you forgot the bags while halfway through the walk. And your dog chooses that moment to do his business. You take a quick look along the street. No one’s around, so you call your dog and hustle away. Once home, you begin to feel guilty. You know it’s not right to leave your dog’s mess. What if someone steps in it or it ruins your neighbor’s lovely garden? “But it’s just the one time,” you tell yourself. You ran out of bags. You’ll replace them and always pick up after your dog in the future. Besides, it’s not like you’re the only one who does it. You’ve seen other dog’s messes in the neighborhood. If other people don’t pick up after their dogs, why should you have to? Chances are, you value your health. You make a conscious effort to choose nutritious foods, try to avoid processed foods and soda, and shoot for eight hours of sleep every night. But you spend most of your day sitting at your desk. You tell yourself it’s OK since you’re taking care of your health in other ways. You still feel guilty, though, because you know it’s important to be active. You even joined a gym a while back, but you never go. Every time you see the membership tag on your keychain, it reminds you of that pesky truth — that exercise is part of a healthy lifestyle. Finally, you decide to go to the gym. You start going to bed earlier and get up with enough time to work out. It’s hard at first, but instead of feeling guilty when you see the gym keychain, you feel proud of yourself. You and your partner live in a large city. You love city life and can’t imagine living anywhere else. One day, your partner comes home from work with some news. They’ve received a promotion — in a small town four hours away. You’ll have to move. You feel unhappy. You don’t want to move, but your partner is excited about the promotion, and you want them to be happy. Little by little, you begin to consider the pros of living in a small town. You even read some articles on small-town living. Small towns are safer, you think. There won’t be city traffic. The cost of living will be lower. You might even be able to get around town without having a car. Finally, you remind yourself that four hours isn’t so far, after all. You’ll be able to visit your friends and family often. At work, you have a fairly private cubicle. Your computer use isn’t monitored, and you often find yourself browsing the internet or even catching up on TV shows instead of working. Sure, you eventually get your work done, but you know you could be doing more. You might feel guilty, knowing you’d be in trouble if anyone found out. But whenever you get bored, you find yourself online again. You read an article about workplace productivity that says people are more productive when they work in short bursts and take frequent breaks. “I’m just increasing my productivity,” you tell yourself. After all, you rarely take time off. And when you do work, you work hard. You should get to relax, too. You consider yourself an animal lover. You’ve always had pets and, whenever possible, purchase products that aren’t tested on animals. But you also enjoy eating meat, though you know some animals are kept in inhumane conditions before being butchered. You feel guilty but can’t afford to buy meat from pasture-raised or grass-fed animals. And a meat-free diet isn’t realistic for you. In the end, you decide to start buying cage-free eggs and plan to replace one of your meat purchases each shopping trip with humanely raised meat or a meat substitute, like tofu or tempeh. This reduces your guilt and helps you bridge the gap between your love of animals and your diet. Cognitive dissonance isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can prompt you to make positive changes when you realize your beliefs and actions are at odds. It can be problematic if it leads you to justify or rationalize behaviors that could be harmful. Or maybe you get caught up in trying to rationalize the dissonance to the point of stressing yourself out. The next time you find yourself in a moment of cognitive dissonance, take a moment to ask yourself a few questions:
Simply being more aware of how your thoughts and actions fit together can help you develop greater understanding of what’s important to you, even if you don’t completely eliminate the dissonance. Everyone experiences cognitive dissonance in some form in their life. It’s more common to feel discomfort, and like you need to resolve the dissonance, when cognitions are important to you or they conflict heavily with each other. Resolving cognitive dissonance can often lead to positive changes. It doesn’t always involve making sweeping changes. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of changing your perspective on something or developing new patterns of thinking. To get a clear picture of what cognitive dissonance is, it helps to first grasp what happens when that tension (or “dissonance”) occurs. Corrine Leikam, PsyD, an associate director at Sober College, an addiction and counseling program in Los Angeles, says our instinctive reaction is to try to resolve the conflict and bring stability back to our lives. Oftentimes, this happens in your mind without needing to actively think about it. “Once we become aware of the mental and emotional discomfort cognitive dissonance causes, it’s often a quick and instantaneous next step to reduce the dissonance in some manner,” Noulas says. You may simply adjust the importance of one idea, belief, or attitude so it’s less dissonant, she says. In the spilled coffee example, you quickly talk yourself out of the anger you initially feel by telling yourself there’s no practical reason to be angry because you can quickly replace the coffee at little cost to you. Stability achieved. Other times, you may try to rationalize the inconsistent thought or behavior so it appears to be more consistent with your beliefs. “In order to resolve the conflict, you may change your behavior or you may even change your attitude to be more flexible,” Dr. Leikam says. In other words, you’ll rationalize what you did and talk yourself into believing the behavior wasn’t all that different from your usual beliefs. In the dieting example, you justify that doughnut by telling yourself you didn’t actually intend to be that strict about the diet or that the diet is only part of your weight loss plan. You’re exercising later, so cheating a little bit now is okay. You may not be familiar with the term “cognitive dissonance,” but it’s the word psychologists use to describe a phenomenon that you likely encounter regularly, if not daily. We humans probably always have, though it wasn’t until the 1950s that the social psychologist Leon Festinger outlined its theory and named it. Since then it’s become one of the most influential theories in psychology. (1,2) “Cognitive dissonance is basically this phenomenon whereby we have a natural drive for consistency, in that our belief system must be consistent with itself and it must be consistent with our actions,” says Matt Johnson, PhD, a professor and associate dean at Hult International Business School in San Francisco. But that consistency doesn’t always happen, and distress can arise as a result. Festinger's original premise was that humans prefer to live in a stable world, in which beliefs are consistent with one another and actions align with beliefs. So when you fall out of that perfect harmony and either think or act in opposition to your belief system, tension builds and you become distressed. That distress is called dissonance. The theory further suggests that present actions can influence subsequent beliefs and values, a conundrum psychologists have noted when studying cognitive dissonance. Our beliefs and values should determine our actions, not the other way around — right? But if we accept that our beliefs or values can influence our actions and that our actions can influence our beliefs or values, that helps explain a lot of very common human tendencies: like our tendency to rationalize or justify behavior, or the way our beliefs and values change as we navigate different situations in life, and that common human pitfall, hypocrisy. (3) It’s a universal feeling that all humans have to deal with. “Cognitive dissonance is common to everyone as we encounter different decisions and experiences in our lives that may challenge our existing belief systems or contradict some of our current behaviors,” says Corrine Leikam, PsychD, an associate director at Sober College, an addiction treatment facility in Los Angeles. RELATED: Cognitive Dissonance Happens in Real Life All the Time Why is it important to think about how cognitive dissonance relates to your own health and wellness? Because the mental or emotional distress it can cause can definitely affect your health and well-being. The intensity of the discomfort that comes from cognitive dissonance depends somewhat on personality. People who are flexible enough to adjust their thoughts or live with “gray areas” may not have a strong response when they notice the discrepancies. “Some people may experience it more intensely or frequently if they have a high need for consistency in their lives,” Dr. Leikam says. And recognizing and addressing those negative thoughts or emotions is important. |