Cognitive Dissonance: Case Study

Cognitive dissonance is defined by Gilovich et all’s textbook as “ A theory that maintains the inconsistencies among a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions create an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency”. While this definition is true it also quite confusing. To understand this first the words that make up the term need to be understood. Cognition is a mental action, it involves gaining knowledge and understanding through use of thoughts, senses, and experiences. This cognition can produce a perception, sensation, notion, or intuition. Dissonance is simply a discrepancy among two things. In the case of cognitive dissonance this discrepancy is between any two of the following; an idea,

In the podcast titled Cognitive Dissonance (2011), Dr. Carol Tavris, the author of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, discusses the relationship between psychology and neuroscience, in addition to discussing cognitive dissonance. As Dr. Tavris explains, cognitive dissonance theory is the mental discomfort we feel whenever two ideas are conflicted with one another, causing discomfort that we attempt to reduce cognitively (Campbell & Tavris, 2011). Moreover, dissonance can increase dependent upon, how important the decision is, how strongly the dissonant thoughts conflict, and our ability to rationalize and justify the conflict (Cognitive dissonance, 2016). As a future psychologist,

Cognitive dissonance is a physiological conflict resulting from out of place beliefs and attitudes held at the same time (Webster, n.d.). In layman’s terms this means having thoughts and attitudes that are not always the same as the general public’s thoughts. In this essay you will be given one example of cognitive dissonance from the media.

An employee’s health should be the most important factor for an employer. When an employee calls out sick it directly affects the operation and growth of the company.

Leon Festinger and James M. Carlsmith (1959) were interested in the cognitive dissonance, which can influence a person decision to choose one action or thought over another. The researchers were also interested in forced compliance, where authority can force individuals to say or act in a way that is conflicting to one’s own private opinion, whereas, the individual's attitude is altered through persuasion and authority. “Force” was operationally defined as the amount of reward offered for lying and cognitive dissonance experienced from the participant’s rated enjoyment of the tasks. Therefore, the researchers investigated if cognitive dissonance could be created through forced compliance behavior. Furthermore, Festinger and Carlsmith hypothesized

There can be many explanations for why an employee would call in sick to work when he or she is not really sick. One reason could be explained through the attribution theory. The attribution theory explains the behavior like this can be explained by attributing it to either the employee’s internal disposition or to an external situation. The employee’s internal disposition could be that the employee always seems to have a bad attitude to his or her job duties and that his or her personality is pessimistic or lazy. The employee’s external situation could be that he or she has a manager who is constantly micro-managing them, which makes them unhappy at work, or the employee has a coworker who is their counterpart who is slacking at work. The employee may have to work harder at the job than the other employee to get their collective tasks completed. This may lead to the employee calling out sick because of his or her internal disposition – they are just lazy and do

If one is trying to pull a thought or feeling in closer, or push it away, they may be attempting to manipulate their cognitive dissonance. If one knows that they are not happy with their actions, they can dilute that feeling of cognitive dissonance by decreasing the negative or enhancing the positive attitudes about it (Smith & Mackie, n.d.). One might be a smoker for instance, and know that smoking is bad for them, but continue smoking anyway. A perception of a clash of unsuitable elements is a way to describe the way one feels when their actions and beliefs are at odds (McLeod, 2014). So, if one is unhappy about the things they do because they do not match what they think they should do, they will be said to be experiencing cognitive dissonance.

Leon Festinger shared his brilliance with the world when he, opposing all previous psychological behaviorist work, created the Cognitive Dissonance Theory. In his own words, he quickly sums up this quite complex theory: "If you change a person’s behavior, his thoughts and feelings will change to minimize the dissonance" (Groenveld, 1999, p.1). In order to decode this dense statement, we must first be aware that Festinger held to be true that humans have a deep abiding need in their psyche to be consistent in our attitudes and behaviors; we want to feel in agreement and unified in thought and action. Inner harmony sounds good to everyone, and so it was Festinger’s view that when we feel a disharmony, or

Cognitive Dissonance Overview the topic and define relevant terms in your own words.   When someone makes a decision or takes an action that goes against their personal beliefs, they experience a sense of discomfort; this discomfort felt is due to cognitive dissonance. People may values and beliefs that they live by. A person who believes that smoking cigarettes are bad is unlikely to smoke a cigarette; if they do smoke a cigarette than they will experience some discomfort. The action of smoking is conflicting with their idea that smoking is bad; this creates cognitive dissonance.

What is cognitive dissonance? Give some examples of situations that might create dissonance in an individual. What does cognitive dissonance have to do with blocked need satisfaction? (3 points)

Everyday individuals are faced with issues associated with ethical dilemmas. Ethical dilemmas involve an individual’s behavior toward a moral standard, which may have been established from previous generations and passed along. In upholding the standards taught individual may be forced to take a particular action involving a decision when a behavior is considered non-ethical is when an ethical dilemma occurs. It can become difficult at times in making the correct decisions or solutions to the situation, which is why a code of ethics is established in the workplace. The code of ethics in the

After reading chapter five I noticed cognitive dissonance throughout a large portion of the book. Cognitive dissonance was described in class as being a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. A good example of this was found on page 182 where the author writes about how we all tell our self that African Americans “deserve” all of this even though we know, but do not want to acknowledge that white Americans are less likely to be convicted of the same crime done by blacks. Cognitive dissonance applies here because we know that this mass incarceration is not fair or morally right to do, however, our behavior does not try to stop it from happening. Instead of doing what our beliefs say is right we try to convince ourselves that it is the African Americans fault that they are

There is something that troubles me. I have been influenced to trust that “not everything that can be invented has been invented”, yet I have already begun to believe that we are coming close to this limit of technological progress. The result of this most likely stems from my laziness. In other words, I am losing my hunger for challenges. My easygoing life has become so natural, that my craving for a fun and easy route in life continues to increases. Now, how this connects UC Berkeley’s MET program was actually quite predictable.

Leon Festinger created the cognitive dissonance theory as an attempt to explain why people desire to have consistency between their behaviors and actions. Cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state people feel when they find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold (Festinger, 1957; as cited in Griffin, 2009). Thus, people are motivated to change either their behavior or their belief when feelings of dissonance arise.

Cognitive dissonance impacts attitudes and behavior negatively in the workplace in a variety of ways depending on the position you are employed. Being in management as an administrator you are faced with many challenges and situations that cause cognitive dissonance. For example, if my director asks me to perform a task and the way in which he wants me to perform the task, goes against my beliefs, I am forced to decide whether to follow his directives or risk termination for insubordination. The stress factor is making the correct decision. I can remember an instructor sending a student to me for conduct issues and wanted the student terminated from her program. The documentation that she provided to me was not sufficient to suspend the student,