Cognitive dissonance
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Introduction
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon where an individual experiences discomfort due to holding conflicting cognitions, such as beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors. This discomfort often leads to efforts to reduce the dissonance through various cognitive and behavioral strategies.
Key Insights
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Nature and Experience of Cognitive Dissonance:
- Cognitive dissonance is the intellectual stress experienced when there is an inconsistency between beliefs or between beliefs and actions .
- It is fundamentally a motivational state characterized by psychological discomfort, which individuals are driven to alleviate .
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Mechanisms of Dissonance Reduction:
- Individuals reduce dissonance by changing one or more dissonant elements, adding new consonant elements, or reducing the importance of the dissonant elements .
- Common strategies include attitude change, confirmational bias, and causal self-justifications .
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Magnitude and Duration of Dissonance:
- The magnitude of dissonance is proportional to the number of conflicting cognitions and inversely proportional to the number of consonant cognitions.
- The dissonant state can last for a few minutes, but its effects can persist for up to two weeks and can be reinstated by reintroducing the original inconsistency.
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Applications and Implications:
- Cognitive dissonance has significant implications in clinical psychology, where it can inform the development and modification of therapeutic interventions.
- It also plays a role in social work, where professionals experience and manage dissonance in their practice.
- The phenomenon extends to group dynamics, where social information can influence the arousal and reduction of dissonance.
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Evolutionary and Developmental Origins:
- Evidence suggests that the mechanisms underlying cognitive dissonance reduction are present in both children and nonhuman primates, indicating that these mechanisms may have evolutionary and developmental origins.
Conclusion
Cognitive dissonance is a well-supported psychological phenomenon characterized by the discomfort arising from conflicting cognitions. Individuals are motivated to reduce this discomfort through various cognitive and behavioral strategies. The magnitude of dissonance depends on the number of conflicting and consonant cognitions, and its effects can be long-lasting. This phenomenon has broad applications in fields such as clinical psychology and social work and is rooted in both evolutionary and developmental processes.
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