cognitive dissonance

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

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 .
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 .
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.
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.
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.

Cognitive dissonance

Summary

Introduction

Key Insights

Conclusion

Sources and full results

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance is a real phenomenon that leads to irrational actions like confirmation bias and causal self justifications, as individuals seek to reduce the inconsistency between their beliefs and actions.

On the motivational nature of cognitive dissonance: Dissonance as psychological discomfort.

Cognitive dissonance is experienced as psychological discomfort, which is alleviated by implementing attitude change strategies, supporting Festinger's concept of dissonance as a motivational state.

A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

Dissonance is experienced when a person holds contradictory cognitions, with its magnitude influenced by the number of discrepant cognitions and the importance of each discrepant or consonant element.

Cognitive dissonance. 1: An overview of the literature and its integration into theory and practice in clinical psychology.

Cognitive dissonance is a well-researched phenomenon that can provide insights into therapy conduct and guide modifications or development of alternative interventions in clinical psychology.

Cognitive Dissonance in Social Work

Social workers who facilitate transracial adoption plans for Aboriginal children experience cognitive dissonance and find ways to reconcile it, negatively impacting their work.

Cognitive Dissonance in Groups

Group-based models of cognitive dissonance reveal contradictory predictions about the role of social information on arousal and reduction, suggesting a need for research to integrate these various perspectives.

The Origins of Cognitive Dissonance

Decision rationalization occurs in children and nonhuman primates, suggesting that cognitive-dissonance reduction mechanisms may have originated earlier than previously thought.

A structural model of emotions of cognitive dissonances

The Circumplex model of affect can effectively describe the emotions of cognitive dissonance, which arise when people are faced with conflicting choices between two motivations.

The political economy of dissonance

Cognitive dissonance can be used to analyze public sector decisions and private choices involving market failure, revealing unseen elements of rent-seeking.

Cognitive dissonance, knowledge instinct and musical emotions.

Music can help reduce cognitive dissonance and promote the acquisition of differentiated knowledge by reconciling contradictions in consciousness.

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