Becoming aware of how conflicting beliefs impact the decision-making process is a great way to improve your ability to make faster and more accurate choices. When there are conflicts between cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, and opinions), people will take steps to reduce the dissonance and feelings of discomfort. Because people want to avoid discomfort, cognitive dissonance can have a wide range of effects.

• Cognitive dissonance is the unpleasant mental state that may result if someone really does have certain beliefs but thinks or acts in a way that contradicts them.
• Cognitive dissonance is powerful because we are highly driven to eliminate it.
• You may experience more dissonance if you’re in an indecisive mood or if (in the case of the outfit) you have an important presentation that day.

Alternatively, they may reduce cognitive dissonance by being mindful of their values and pursuing opportunities to live those values. The effects may relate to the discomfort of the dissonance itself or the defense mechanisms a person adopts to deal with it. If that same person believes the COVID-19 pandemic is real but refuses to wear a mask, their values and behaviors would contradict each other.

University: McMaster University

It may be delivered in person or online, through an app or a guidebook, with the support of a therapist or independently. Previous studies have shown that CBT-I can be a beneficial and low-risk option for patients with chronic insomnia. However, as it encompasses a broad range of strategies which can be delivered in different ways, it has been difficult to determine which are most successful and if all are necessary for a patient to experience an improvement.

Before they went on stage, they were told to think of a time when they didn’t exhibit that behavior. The participants felt like hypocrites — but their intention to take the positive action increased. Cognitive dissonance is the psychological tension we feel as we try to reckon with two (or more) opposing pieces of information. We generally try to eliminate this dissonance by taking a new, consonant action or by dismissing the incongruent information. Cognitive dissonance is a little different than its evil twin, hypocrisy.

Inducing Cognitive Dissonance Can Reveal the Truth

We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions. Why is it important to think about how cognitive dissonance relates to your own health and wellness? Because the mental or emotional distress it can cause can definitely affect your health and well-being. Festinger’s cognitive dissonance treatment original premise was that humans prefer to live in a stable world, in which beliefs are consistent with one another and actions align with beliefs. So when you fall out of that perfect harmony and either think or act in opposition to your belief system, tension builds and you become distressed. But that consistency doesn’t always happen, and distress can arise as a result.

• A therapist can help you examine your beliefs and behaviors and help you find effective ways for alleviating the cognitive dissonance you are experiencing.
• People who are flexible enough to adjust their thoughts or live with “gray areas” may not have a strong response when they notice the discrepancies.
• This study was a prospective randomized controlled clinical trial.
• Cognitive dissonance can happen in just about any area of your life and occurs when your current behavior contradicts one of your beliefs.
• This approach works by encouraging people to say things or role-play behaviors that contradict their beliefs about food and body image.

If you find yourself justifying or rationalizing decisions or behaviors that you’re not quite clear you firmly believe in, that might be a sign that cognitive dissonance is at work. If your explanation for something is, “Well, that’s the way I’ve always done it or thought about it,” that may also be a sign. Socrates extolled https://ecosoberhouse.com/ that “An unexamined life is not worth living.” In other words, challenge and be skeptical of such answers if you find yourself falling back on them. Another example can be seen in many people’s continuing to smoke two or three packs of cigarettes a day, even though research shows they are shortening their own lives.