3 Tips To Apply The Cognitive Dissonance Theory In eLearning

When such desirable outcomes seem possible but uncertain, the extent of support for the person’s current attitude may seem insufficient or tenuous. In these cases, message recipients might seek information that would reassure them and enhance their perceptions that the favorable outcomes may yet come to fruition. Viewed survey response as a voluntary action within a context of reciprocal social obligations, and showed how survey procedures can build a positive social exchange with prospective survey participants.

You could end up denying that the convention is boring and try to convince yourself that you actually learned a lot. You might also cognitive dissonance theory tell yourself that it’s not a big deal that you went to this convention – you weren’t going to do anything this weekend anyway.

Q2: What are cognitive dissonance theory examples?

They might tell themselves that they smoke to calm themselves down or they smoke because their partner does in order to not experience cognitive dissonance. Researchers believe the amount paid influenced how people came to see the peg-turning task. People who were paid a large sum could justify their lie to the other student about how fun the task was; after all, it was a pretty minor lie, and they got $20. It can become problematic if it leads you to justify or rationalize behaviors that could be harmful. Or you may get caught up in trying to rationalize the dissonance to the point of stressing yourself out. Here’s a look at some everyday examples of cognitive dissonance and how you might come to terms with them.

• When running any type of campaign, a public relations person is trying to cause a change in behavior, but before they can even do that they must know whom they are selling to.
• But the amount they were given mattered in terms of how they evaluated the experiment when asked by a new researcher.
• Afterwards, the students are trained to objectively perceive new facts and information to resolve the psychological stress of the conflict between reality and the student’s value system.
• A person may do this by discrediting the person, group, or situation that highlighted the dissonance.
• If patients are provided with the opportunity to co-design aspects of their therapy, they may be more likely to act in line with their choices by reaching their therapeutic goals.

When a situation causes the person to become conscious of their conflicting beliefs, cognitive dissonance occurs and creates an uneasy feeling. The person experiencing the dissonance will work to resolve one of the conflicting beliefs in order to reduce or eliminate the cognitive dissonance so their thoughts are once again linear and rational. The cognitive dissonance theory says that people seek psychological consistency between their beliefs and the real world. In order to function properly, people constantly reduce their cognitive dissonance to align their cognitions with their actions. In this book he posited that all people strive toward internal psychological consistency to be able to function well mentally in the real world. A person experiencing cognitive dissonance becomes uncomfortable and is always focused and motivated to resolve this dissonance.

How common is cognitive dissonance?

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. They might try to convince themselves that if they do stop smoking, they will gain weight, which also presents health risks. You want to be healthy, but you don’t exercise regularly or eat a nutritious diet.

• The theory can also be used to explain reasons for donating to charity.Cognitive dissonance can be applied in social areas such as racism and racial hatred.
• If you realize you are making excuses for a specific action or justifying destructive behaviors, you might be best served by stopping.
• Other critics suggest that researchers need to more thoroughly define critical elements of this theory to bolster its credibility.
• To strengthen the belief, new converts would be needed, which requires proselytizing.
• The researchers use EEG to analyze students before they wrote the essay, as dissonance is at its highest during this time .

Inconsistent or conflicting beliefs lead to disharmony, which people strive to avoid. Sometimes, the ways that people resolve cognitive dissonance contribute to unhealthy behaviors or poor decisions. If a contradiction occurs between how a person feels and how a person acts, one’s perceptions and emotions align to alleviate stress. The Ben Franklin effect refers to that statesman’s observation that the act of performing a favor for a rival leads to increased positive feelings toward that individual. It is also possible that one’s emotions be altered to minimize the regret of irrevocable choices.

Magnitude of dissonance

Hence, the consensus was that people’s behaviors were determined by and matched their values and beliefs. Festinger challenged this notion when he proposed that people may experience a mismatch between their beliefs and behaviors. Moreover, the discomfort caused by this mismatch could be lessened by rationalizing the behavior or adjusting beliefs to match the behavior . The term cognitive dissonance is used to describe the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. People tend to seek consistency in their attitudes and perceptions, so this conflict causes feelings of unease or discomfort.

Sometimes, resolving cognitive dissonance is just a matter of changing your perspective on something or developing new patterns of thinking to help you live according to what’s most important to you. Such a result was observed because the group of people who were paid $1 had no valid justification to claim that the task was interesting. Hence they chose to alter their attitude toward the task to bring them back to a state of equilibrium and not feel that they were making a false claim. Researchers later came to call this phenomenon a “less-leads-to-more effect”. People engage in attitude-discrepant behaviors when the behavior seems good or appealing to them and when the attitude isn’t strong enough to hinder them from engaging in certain behavior. Cognitive dissonance is experienced at a higher intensity when there are very few reasons to justify the behavior. As any relationship matures, we are made the face the reality of differences in the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of our close ones in comparison to what we believed they were.