About Cognitive Dissonance

The phenomenon of cognitive dissonance represents a state of psychological tension which is the result of a conflict between two or more opposite ideas or decisions. The psychologist who firstly talked about this concept was Leon Festinger and after him this phenomenon became seriously discussed and analyzed.

There is a mechanism that explains how and why the cognitive dissonance takes place. In order to answer the first question, another two concepts need to be taken into account. The first one is the so-called "self schema". The self schema can be defined as the way one perceives and represents himself inside his mind. This means that every person sees himself as having certain opinions, feelings and ways of handling situations or making decisions. The cognitive dissonance appears when an individual has a thought, makes a decision or acts in a certain way that is opposite to his own self schema. This is where the second term appears: inconsistency. When there is an inconsistency between one's self schema and his outputs the cognitive dissonance takes place.

The question "why" can be easily answered because it is well-known that the human beings like consistency and like things to be logical and to make sense that's why when things begin to be chaotic there's an inner alarm system that warns: "something needs to be done!" This is exactly what happens when one person's feelings become inconsistent with his own cognitive schema: there starts an inner tension that makes the person try to solve the problem. Furthermore, there are some means to reduce or eliminate the cognitive dissonance when it takes place. One of them consists of admitting the decision or the behavior was wrong and it is important to emphasize the non-repeatability of the event. For example, if a child lies to his parents but he considers himself honest, he might reduce the tension by admitting it was wrong thing to do and by saying he will not do it again.

Another way of reducing or eliminate the conflict is by changing the self schema. For example, if a student always dreamed to study architecture, but because he was lazy ended studying mechanics he might begin to say that may be he never liked architecture deep inside. Other way would be to bring information in order to sustain the chosen idea and to ignore the information that sustains the neglected or the opposite idea.

This strategy has two forms. This first form is when the information is valid and logical and the second form is when the information has no solid basis, such as stereotypes. There are a lot of cruel examples in history when people's cognitive dissonance was reduced by using these thinking shortcuts. German soldiers could easily kill Hebrews because they were told that Hebrews are not human, Christians killed lots of people during the crusades because they were told that Muslims are the devil's worriers and a lot of racial hatred is excused by using these kinds of stereotypes. In addition, the cognitive dissonance appears not only when there is an inconsistency between the way one person perceives herself and the actions or thought, but also when there are too many choices to make and they are opposite to one another. This is such a common situation for the modern world, characterized by a great variety of choices. Because every situation has a wide range of solutions and some of the options are totally opposite, the inner tension can end up in stress. Such an example could be the numerous options for a student who wants to apply to university, especially if the student has various talents.

In conclusion, cognitive dissonance is a concept that might sound strange for some people but which is encountered very often in daily life. It is expressed as a psychological tension which represents the result of a conflict between two or more opposite choices or between the way a person sees himself and the contradictory way he thinks, talks or acts. Because the generated tension is unpleasant, people try to reduce or eliminate it and for this they use different conscious or unconscious strategies. In some occasions, the solving of the dissonance brings objective benefits, but sometimes it only shuts off the conscience and further leads to objective disadvantages.