Participants in the high-dissonance condition spread apart the alternatives significantly more than the participants in the other two conditions. Participants in the high-dissonance condition chose between a highly desirable product and one rated just 1 point lower on the 8-point scale. After reading the reports about the various products, individuals rated the products again. They were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell a waiting participant (a confederate) that the tasks were really interesting. Almost all of the participants agreed to walk into the waiting room and persuade the confederate that the boring experiment would be fun. In their laboratory experiment, they used 71 male students as participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a peg board for an hour).
Changing Behavior
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 happens when you hold two conflicting thoughts in your mind at the same time — like loving both hamburgers and cows. Bizarre and toxic conspiracy theories flourish in this particular soil of frustration, dissatisfaction, and anger. Elaborate interpretations are concocted and believed by zealots, and their preconceived beliefs and biases give them a new sense of meaning in their lives. In the case of the spilled coffee, returning to that state of mental harmony isn’t too difficult.
Eating meat
Female participants were informed they would be helping out in a study funded by several manufacturers. Participants were also told that they would receive one of the products at the end of the experiment to compensate for their time and effort. In an intriguing experiment, Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) asked participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a peg board for an hour).
Cognitive Dissonance-Based Interventions for Internalization
Or maybe you learn a new piece of information that disagrees with a long-standing belief or opinion. According to psychologists, our actions are likely to produce a higher amount of dissonance if they involve the way that we see ourselves and we subsequently have trouble justifying why our actions didn’t match our beliefs. Cognitive consonance – when your actions or behaviors agree with your values or beliefs.
The Result of Cognitive Dissonance
We do not offer individual medical advice, diagnosis or treatment plans. Here’s what you need to know about cognitive dissonance, and how to seek the proper care. These 17 Positive CBT & Cognitive Therapy Exercises [PDF] include our top-rated, ready-made templates for helping others develop more helpful thoughts and behaviors in response to challenges, while broadening the scope of traditional CBT. Cognitive dissonance and the way we cope with it regularly affect our relationships, too, both positively and negatively. The Positive Psychology Toolkit© is a groundbreaking practitioner resource containing over 500 science-based exercises, activities, interventions, questionnaires, and assessments created by experts using the latest positive psychology research.
Bastian and Loughnan (2017) convincingly argued that people rarely consciously reflect on the moral implications of eating meat because societal mechanisms keep people’s cognitive dissonance addiction in place. People often partake in rituals and traditions without reflecting on their rationale or consequences. Hence, rituals help by embedding behavior, which people otherwise would have had conflicting feelings about, in social norms and institutions. Though a person may not always resolve cognitive dissonance, the response to it may range from ignoring the source of it to changing one’s beliefs or behavior to eliminate the conflict. Mismatches between your beliefs and actions can lead to feelings of discomfort (and, sometimes, coping choices that have negative impacts), but such feelings can also sometimes lead to change and growth.
- Read on to learn more about cognitive dissonance, including examples, signs a person might be experiencing it, causes, and how to resolve it.
- This can be a difficult and uncomfortable process and involves getting additional information.
- Your psychologist or licensed professional counselor can help you understand your thought process, identify where the feelings are coming from, as well as find ways to change your bias, reduce conflicting beliefs or add new ones.
- Cognitive dissonance occurs frequently and to all of us (Harmon-Jones, 2019).
- Cognitive dissonance is the uneasiness you feel when you have conflicting beliefs.
Social behavior
