Cognitive Dissonance Theory, developed by Leon Festinger in 1957,
states that our behavior is governed by a tendency to seek consistency
in our cognitions. It is important to know about because it explains so
many of our everyday behaviors. Cognitive dissonance appears in
seemingly all decision making and problem solving and is the central
means by which we experience new information.
A
cognition is a belief, opinion, attitude, value or emotion. Knowing
your favorite color is a cognition, so is whether you believe in a
greater power or have a religious affiliation, that George Washington
was the first president of the U.S., or that you love your children.
Everyone holds a bunch of cognitions all the time. These cognitions will
either have a relationship to each other or not.
If they agree
with each other, they are consonant or consistent. We prefer consonance
among our cognitions. Another possibility is cognitive irrelevance. This
means that two cognitions don't have anything to do with each other.
This is true of most cognitions. It doesn't cause us a problem. Our
cognitions don't have to all agree, they just can't disagree.
Whenever
you have two cognitions that don't agree you experience cognitive
dissonance. For instance that you are trying to lose weight but you like
ice cream, or that you are a good student yet fail to study. It seems
that we humans need to have stability, consistency and order in the way
we see the world. When our cognitions don't agree we experience
psychological dissonance which we experience as an unpleasant sensation
of physical tension. This tension motivates us to act to seek relief
from this instability in our thoughts. The drive to do this seems to be
as strong in us as the need to eat when hungry or drink when thirsty. So
when we experience it we want to do away with the dissonance as quickly
as possible.
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