Cognitive dissonance theory was first presented by Leon Festinger in 1957 in order to explain the relationships

between the motivation, perceptions and cognitions of an individual (Festinger, 1962).

Cognitive dissonance is 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 unpleasant
feelings of unease or discomfort. The inconsistency between what people believe and how they behave
motivates them to engage in actions that will help minimize feelings of discomfort. People attempt to relieve
this tension in different ways, such as by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding new information.

The basics:

Cognitive Dissonance theory has two basic underlying hypotheses:

1. The existence of a dissonance will cause mental discomfort and motivate the individual to reduce the
dissonance and restore consonance

2. To reduce the dissonance, the individual will try to reduce it as well as avoid situations or information
that are likely to increase the dissonance

In simple terms, a dissonance is an inconsistency in cognitive elements, which can be knowledge, opinions,
beliefs, or the behaviours of an individual. The existence of such inconsistency causes mental discomfort and
motivates the individual to take some actions to reduce or eliminate it.

Examples of Cognitive Dissonance:

 You want to be healthy, but you don't exercise regularly or eat a nutritious diet. You feel guilty as a
result.

 You know that smoking (or drinking too much) is harmful to your health, but you do it anyway. You
rationalize this action by pointing to your high stress levels.

 You'd like to build up your savings but tend to spend extra cash as soon as you get it. You regret this
decision later, such as when facing an unexpected expense that you don't have the money to cover.

Causes of Cognitive Dissonance

Forced Compliance

Sometimes you might find yourself engaging in behaviors that are opposed to your own beliefs due to external
expectations at work, school, or in a social situation.2 This might involve going along with something due
to peer pressure or doing something at work to avoid getting fired.

New Information
Sometimes learning new information can lead to feelings of cognitive dissonance. For example, if you engage in
a behavior that you later learn is harmful, it can lead to feelings of discomfort. People sometimes deal with this
by finding ways to justify their behaviors or findings ways to discredit or ignore new information.

Decisions

People make decisions, both large and small, on a daily basis. When faced with two similar choices, we are
often left with feelings of dissonance because both options are equally appealing.

Once a choice has been made, however, people need to find a way to reduce these feelings of discomfort. We
accomplish this by justifying why our choice was the best option so we can believe that we made the right
decision.

Recap

Cognitive dissonance can be caused by feeling forced to do something, learning new information, or when faced
with a decision between two similar choices.

What Influences Cognitive Dissonance?

 The importance attached to each belief. Cognitions that are more personal, such as beliefs about the
self, and highly valued tend to result in greater dissonance.

 The number of dissonant beliefs. The more dissonant (clashing) thoughts you have, the greater the
strength of the dissonance.

How to reduce cognitive dissonance:

Attitude change: The changing of one’s attitude is the strategy that has received the most empirical
attention. Attitudes are recognised as more fluid and flexible when compared to other elements, and thus
easier to change.

Distraction and forgetting: A diversion of attention away from the dissonance and its negative effects
helps individuals to reduce psychological discomfort. Zanna and Aziza (Zanna & Aziza, 1976) were the
first to propose distraction as a dissonance reduction method. The results suggested that distraction is a
more efficient strategy than attitudinal change because the latter could still remind the individuals about
the dissonance.

Denial of responsibility: A sense of responsibility for one’s cognitions triggers the experience of
dissonance (McGrath, 2017). Gosling, Denizeau and Oberlé (Gosling, Denizeau & Oberlé, 2006)
empirically investigated this mode of dissonance reduction and confirmed its effectiveness. The results
of the study suggested that denial of responsibility could even be more efficient than trivialisation in
dealing with dissonance, especially when it is associated with feelings of shame and guilt.

Decision Justification: Dissonance that is aroused when evaluating a decision can be reduced by
viewing the selected choice as more attractive or the rejected alternatives as less attractive. Brehm also
suggested that the degree of dissonance is more severe with a difficult decision when choices are close
in attractiveness. An individual is more likely to change his or her attitude to be more negative towards
the rejected alternatives after a difficult decision, while being unlikely to change the attitude if the
attractiveness of the options is not comparable.

Effort Justification: Dissonance arises when an individual invests a great amount of effort into a task,
but gets an undesirable outcome. The more undesirable the outcome, the higher the degree of
dissonance. The classic experimental design in effort justification was undertaken by Aronson and Mills
(Aronson & Mills, 1959). In this study, the researchers divided the participants into groups and set them
to undergo different levels of embarrassment to examine how they would deal with the experiment. The
results showed that the participants who experienced mild embarrassment perceived the activity to be
dull and boring, while the others who underwent a severely embarrassing moment thought the activity
was interesting. The experiment demonstrated that an individual could reduce the psychological
discomfort by convincing him or herself that the task is interesting and the outcome is worthwhile to
eliminate dissonance and achieve consonance.