Can someone explain to me what cognitive dissonance is?

Question

i really don't get my psych professor.

Answer 1

a state of psychological conflict or anxiety resulting from a contradiction between a person's simultaneously held beliefs or attitudes

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=1861687922

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=cognitive+dissonance

a conflict or anxiety resulting from inconsistencies between one's beliefs and one's actions or other beliefs.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

A condition of conflict or anxiety resulting from inconsistency between one's beliefs and one's actions, such as opposing the slaughter of animals and eating meat.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/14/C0461400.html

....as when one likes a person but disapproves strongly of one of his or her habits.

http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/cognitive+dissonance

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cognitive+dissonance&r=66

Anxiety an individual experiences when making a major purchase.

http://www.moneyglossary.com/?w=Cognitive+Dissonance

Motivational state produced by inconsistencies between simultaneously held cognitions or between a cognition and behaviour; e.g., smoking enjoyment and believing smoking is harmful are dissonant.

http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?cognitive+dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a theory of human motivation that asserts that it is psychologically uncomfortable to hold contradictory cognitions. The theory is that dissonance, being unpleasant, motivates a person to change his cognition, attitude, or behavior.....

http://skepdic.com/cognitivedissonance.html

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term describing the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs, or from experiencing apparently conflicting phenomena.

In simple terms, it can be the filtering of information that conflicts with what you already believe, in an effort to ignore that information and reinforce your beliefs. In detailed terms, it is the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, where "cognition" is defined as any element of knowledge, including attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance states that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to reduce the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions. Experiments have attempted to quantify this hypothetical drive. Some of these have examined how beliefs often change to match behavior when beliefs and behavior are in conflict.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Answer 2

Cognitive dissonance is the state of mental or cognitive "discomfort" (if you will) when experiences and the thoughts about those experiences do not match. It presupposes that people tend to want consistency in their thoughts and beliefs. If I remember correctly from my Intro to Psych days, a famous study by Festinger involves cognitive dissonance. Basically, people were more willing say that a boring task was exciting for NO money as compared to saying that a boring task was exciting after they had been paid to do it... This is counterintuitive, but Festinger posited that people felt compelled to say that the boring task was exciting... because why else would they have participated in a boring task? Whereas the people that had been paid to do the boring task said that it was boring... and were able to reason and rationalize with themselves that they did it because of the money. Or something along those lines.

So, as a "modern" example... if you go see a movie that is boring, the theory says that you will rationalize to yourself and tell other people that the movie was better than it was because why else would you have sat through it (and paid for it)? However... if you are paid to go see a boring movie as part of an experiment... and it's boring, you'll be more likely to TELL people that it's boring because you can rationalize to yourself and others that you sat through it because you got paid. Does this make sense?

Answer 3

the other answerers have already explained its technical aspects. well, i don't want to be the same as your professor so why don't we make this really simple, ne? the simple line of from Shakespeare's hamlet (if I'm not mistaken) "to be or not to be" is one perfect example of cognitive dissonance. allow me to give you a simple and concrete example of this. for example, you graduated from college with the highest honors, are you going to tell your father about it when you know that your father doesn't really care about you? or are you going to tell it to prove to him that you don't need him in your life? or you really want to tell him, but you already promised to yourself that you would never talk to him ever. "to be or not to be" "to tell or not to tell" this is cognitive dissonance. sounds simple ne? hope i helped you. ^_^

Answer 4

What thedrisin said!