Reflection on Cognitive Dissonance
Stacy Flores
17/FA PSY-705-17FA2
Fielding Graduate University
Dr. Gillum
October 8, 2017
If you have ever told a lie and had this overwhelming feeling of being uncomfortable and see yourself as meticulously honest then you have personally experienced cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance occurs when your beliefs, your behaviors and/or your beliefs contradict one another and how we chose to resolve the dissonance is a good reflection of the state of our mental health and open up the doors for opportunities for growth. Some good examples of cognitive dissonance are getting an abortion when you believe that abortions are immoral or cheating on your spouse when you believe marital infidelity is a sin. These variations to the attitudes and beliefs that make us, well us, allow us to experience an aversive state of mental tension or cognitive dissonance. Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory states that human beings have an inner drive to hold all their approaches and views in agreement and evade disagreement; and reality is that attitudes change because of factors within the individual (Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. , 1959). One important concept in regards to this theory is taking into account the value of cognitive regularity which is the idea that people seek reliability and dependability in their beliefs and attitudes in any situation where two perceptions vary (McLeod, 2008). Festinger reasoned that if a person is induced to make an overt statement that contradicts their own personal opinion or belief because they were offered some type of reward for doing so that the greater the reward offered the more apt they are to change their opinion or belief (Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. , 1959).
Gilbert and Ebert state that individuals select to make changeable decisions rather than unchangeable decisions for the simple reason that they do not comprehend that they may be more content with the latter (Gilbert, D. T. & Ebert, J. E. J., 2002). People hunger for information about their futures and in turn their fortunes, but knowing what the future holds is not exactly the same as knowing how much you will like it. People often times mispredict how they will feel after completing a task similar to breaking up with someone, losing, or being promoted at work. It’s a talent that people possess when they restructure their beliefs or views about any particular outcome so that it seems more positive. This is something that we have seen with almost every presidential election when we realize that even if the candidate that we voted for lost, the one that won does have certain strengths and positive qualities. People, in general, seek out, interpret, and remember information in ways where they can feel satisfied with themselves and their decisions. This phenomenon has been studied countless times and the same conclusion occurs, people are adept at subjectively optimizing the outcomes of their decisions or situations. These optimizations are seem to fall into the category of some type of psychological immune system offering protection from emotional consequences of less than optimal outcomes (Gilbert, D. T. & Ebert, J. E. J., 2002). The operation of the psychological immune system is thought to be prone to compromise when considering that people, often times, taking unintentional actions weakening its process and endangering the possibilities for gratification and satisfaction.
In some instances, dissonance is reduced in one of three ways which are altering one or more beliefs, attain new info, and /or decrease the prominence of the perceptions. We often times reduce dissonance of any voluntary experience that goes bad as interesting which automatically justifies the effort that was made initially. Intelligent people do foolish things at times and these foolish things tend to surround short term pleasures for long term pains (Gilbert, D. T. & Ebert, J. E. J., 2002). Nothing holds truer in society involving cognitive dissonance and Gilbert and Ebert made that clear when they stated that people behave as though their experiences are solely a reaction to and reflection of the intrinsic properties of objects and events. This belief that people have leads them to be self-confident in the fact that what they are seeing is as they see it, that what they are remembering happened as they remember it and that what they are imagining will be as they are imagining it (Gilbert, D. T. & Ebert, J. E. J., 2002). Most of society believes that their futures are unsure and that which we do predict and what does come true they are often wrong about their feelings towards that prediction.
In another article, Tesser stated that a threat to self via cognitive dissonance might be decreased by an encouraging social comparison outcome (Tesser, 2000). Cognitive dissonance can be described as a discomfort of self-image that collides with reality. Self-values often times revolve around short term comfort, pleasure and utilitarian goals. Resolution of cognitive dissonance aids in determining a person’s health and well-being. The self-growth industry and the research surrounding it is developing and interest in increasing. Self-related research is set on the basis of maintaining, augmenting, protecting and repairing. In Tesser’s article, he makes the statement that a danger to self-esteem via social comparison may be confronted by augmented self-affirmation or encouraging self-esteem through promising social comparison which, in turn, may decrease ensuing dissonance decline (Tesser, 2000).