According to the book, cognitive dissonance is defined as “the psychological discomfort a person experiences when his/her attitudes or beliefs are incompatible with his/her behavior. This topic interested me because the topic was brought up in my marketing principles class. There are three ways to reduce cognitive dissonance, the first once is to change your attitude or you behavior, or both. The second is to belittle the importance of the inconsistent behavior. And the third is to find consonant elements that out weight the dissonant ones. An example of this would be a Christian supporting gay marriage, even when their church clearly is against it. The change in their attitude and behavior would be that they voted no on Prop 8 even though that person’s church preaches of a one man one woman marriage only. Although they previously agreed with the church, that person now sympathizes with same sex couples and the troubles they go through for equality. They belittle this behavior by saying that everyone deserves equality, even people who don’t agree with that person’s beliefs. In order to justify their act, the persons rationalizes that if they were ever in situations like same sex couples are, they would want someone to sympathize with them enough to agree with their point of view.
According to Grohol (2008), that the greater discomfort a person feels, the greater desire that they have to reduce the cognitive dissonance. If someone’s actions contradict their beliefs, then they will typically change their beliefs to align with their actions or vice versa. Levels of dissonance vary from people to people; people who favor higher levels of consistency in their lives are more affected than those who need less consistency in their lives. The author also calls cognitive dissonance as a type of lie because it can possibly reinforce future bad decisions. This article helped me to better understand some of the affects of cognitive dissonance, and that levels of cognitive dissonance depends greatly on the person, their personality, and their level of self-awareness.
Works Cited
Grohol, John M. "Fighting Cognitive Dissoanace & The Lies We Tell Ourselves." 19 October 2008. PsychCentral. 12 February 2010
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Your example with religion was a perfect way to describe cognitive dissonance. I think most of us experience cognitive dissonance in one form or another. I'll give you an example of my own. I think that Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series is the most ridiculous thing in the world. But for some reason, I went and saw the movie anyway. This caused me severe psychological and physical discomfort for an hour and a half. I have now learned that it was simply cognitive dissonance I was experiencing.
ReplyDeleteHANK, I FIND THIS INTERESTING, AS MANY OF MY MALE FRIENDS EXPERIENCED THE SAME THING. I HAVE HEARD SIMILAR RESULTS IN REVIEWS AND FORUMS ACROSS THE COUNTRY. IT IS INTERESTING TO KNOW THAT IT IS COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SO RELEVANT TO THE READING.
ReplyDeleteALSO
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