Cognitive Dissonance: Why Your Brain Fights Against Change

Cognitive dissonance refers to the sense of unease and discomfort people experience when there is an inconsistency between what they think or how they act and what they perceive in the world.

People tend to prefer it when their attitudes align with their perceptions. After all, it feels comfortable and reassuring when what we think matches up with what we see. But when these beliefs don’t match up to what we experience, it can leave us feeling uncomfortable and unsure.

Cognitive dissonance is discomfort or distress caused by conflicting beliefs, behaviors, feelings, ideas, or values. It is an uncomfortable psychological state that people experience when they have an inconsistency between how they think and how they act. This feeling of dissonance may be experienced as anxiety, stress, or discomfort.

To relieve the discomfort caused by cognitive dissonance, people can either change their behaviors or their attitudes. Let’s learn more about how to reduce cognitive dissonance. We’ll start by taking a closer look at this psychological phenomenon so we can understand what causes it—and what we can do to minimize it.

Signs of Cognitive Dissonance

Before we can learn how to reduce cognitive dissonance, we have to know how to recognize it. These feelings are not always easy to identify, even though we all experience them occasionally. Some signs you might be feeling dissonance include:

• Doing things you don’t want to do because you think that others will judge you if you don’t do them
• Seeking reassurance or affirmations to avoid having to change your beliefs or actions
• Feeling discomfort or anxiety that doesn’t have an identifiable source
• Having conflicting feelings about a subject
• Feeling uneasy about a decision
• Experiencing shame or embarrassment about your actions
• Engaging in hypocritical behavior, which involves doing or saying things that go against your known beliefs
• Avoiding facts about a situation to avoid having to face a lie
• Acting defensive when people point out a mismatch between your beliefs and actions
• You always feel like you have to spend a lot of time trying to justify your actions
• You tend to avoid conversations that will bring up feelings of discomfort

Sometimes, you might be aware that your beliefs and behaviors are out of step with one another. While you perceive this conflict, you might not understand what to do or how to change the situation.

Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

It was a psychologist named Leon Festinger who first described cognitive dissonance and the role it played in attitude and behavior change. He described his theory in his 1957 book, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.

Festinger had studied members of a cult who believed that a flood would destroy the world. Many cult members had given up their homes and jobs to prepare for what they believed was the world’s end.

Festinger was interested in what happened to cult members, particularly the most devoted believers, when the world-ending event they predicted didn’t happen.

He found that the less devoted cult members could recognize they had been wrong and moved on from the group. Those most dedicated and committed to the belief instead reinterpreted what had happened.

Rather than changing their beliefs, they suggested that they had been right all along and that their faith had been so steadfast that their devotion had saved the earth.

Festinger suggested that people strive to maintain a state of internal consistency. When things are psychologically unbalanced, it creates discomfort and distress.

As a result, people are motivated to relieve this discomfort in some way. Festinger referred to this need to reduce dissonance as the principle of cognitive consistency.

Examples of Cognitive Dissonance

Many everyday situations might cause a person to experience feelings of cognitive dissonance:

Even though you value your health and generally try to follow a healthy lifestyle, you consistently stay up late and rarely get the recommended 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night. As a result, you find yourself feeling guilty about your poor sleep habits.

You love animals and care about their welfare, but you continue to eat meat and feel guilty about not following a vegetarian or vegan diet.

While your religion requires you to hold certain beliefs and take certain actions, you engage in behaviors that are in direct opposition to your religious beliefs, which results in feelings of guilt or shame.

What Causes Cognitive Dissonance?

Before we tackle how to reduce cognitive dissonance, we need to understand what exactly causes it. Several different factors can play a role. In most cases, a mismatch between a person’s beliefs and behaviors induces these uncomfortable feelings.

However, Festinger and other researchers suggested a few common situations could trigger cognitive dissonance. These causes include:

• Decision-making
• Forced compliance
• Conflicting information
• Effort justification

Decision-Making

Choosing between two similar things can contribute to feelings of dissonance. After you make a choice, you might wonder if the option you didn’t choose might have been better.

This conflict between your attitude (liking the item you didn’t choose) and your actions (choosing the item you did pick) results in cognitive dissonance.

Forced Compliance

You can also experience dissonance if you are pressured to engage in an action that goes against something you believe in. For example, you might modify your behavior to fit in socially or to meet expectations at school or work. 

To reduce dissonance, you might justify your actions by reminding yourself that you didn’t have a choice. In other cases, however, you might even alter your own attitudes. You may convince yourself that you actually wanted to engage in those actions.

Festinger’s Study on Forced Compliance

One of Festinger’s experiments revealed how forced compliance could lead to cognitive dissonance. In the study, participants were asked to complete a boring task that involved turning pegs on a peg board for an hour.

Next, the participants were paid to tell another participant (who was actually a confederate in the experiment) that the tasks were interesting. The catch, however, was that some participants were paid $20 to convince another participant that the tasks were fun, while others were only paid $1.

The results found that people who were paid only $1 rated the tasks as more fun and interesting than those paid $20. Why did getting paid less result in rating the boring task more highly?

Because the $1 was not enough incentive for the task, the participants had to convince themselves that the tasks were actually fun in order to overcome their feelings of cognitive dissonance.

Conflicting Information

Discovering new information that conflicts with something that you already believe can create feelings of discomfort. For example, people who believe in doomsday prophecies may feel confused and upset when the predictions fail.  

To resolve this discomfort, people often either look for information that supports their existing beliefs or seek out ways to undermine or discredit the new information they have learned.

Effort Justification

When you work hard for something, you want to believe all that effort is worth it. But when the results don’t meet your expectations, you will likely experience feelings of cognitive dissonance. 

To deal with this, you might convince yourself that the outcome or results were better than they really were. This allows you to justify the required efforts to reach the goal.

To cope with this discomfort, you may look for things that justify your choice. Or you might focus on the negative features of the item that you didn’t choose to convince yourself that your decision was the right one.

Factors That Influence Cognitive Dissonance

It is important to note that people only experience discomfort when they are aware of the conflict between their attitudes and reality. And some people have a higher tolerance for inconsistency and distress.

In fact, Festinger suggested that in some cases, people cope with inconsistency by disregarding it entirely and simply blindly believing whatever they want. In other words, they reduce cognitive dissonance by ignoring things that contradict their beliefs.

Factors that can play a role in how people experience cognitive dissonance include:

The Nature of the Belief

When the inconsistency involves a personal core belief central to a person’s identity, they are more likely to experience discomfort to a higher degree.

The Degree of Disparity

A small inconsistency is less likely to trigger uneasy feelings than a substantial conflict.

The Importance of the Belief

If the disparity involves a belief that is important to the individual, they will experience stronger feelings of dissonance. That’s why people often struggle when encountering information contradicting their deeply held beliefs and values.

In such cases, people often reduce cognitive dissonance by only seeking out information that confirms the things that they already believe (a phenomenon known as the confirmation bias).

Other Factors That Play a Role

However, there are also other influences that can play a part in whether a person experiences cognitive dissonance. Other influences can include:

• Past trauma
• The need to maintain social relationships
• Benefits gained by not challenging beliefs or behaviors
• Fear of change
• Mental health conditions
• Addiction

Effects of Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance can motivate people to take steps to reduce the discomfort or distress that they feel. The more dissonance people feel, the more likely they will do something about it. In such cases, they need to know how to reduce cognitive dissonance in order to minimize the discomfort that they feel.

Dissonance affects a person’s:

• Attitudes
• Behaviors
• Emotions
• Mental health
• Stress levels
• Thoughts

If you are experiencing dissonance, you might grapple with feelings of anxiety, shame, regret, or sadness. You might worry that other people will see you as a hypocrite. It might even affect your sense of self or self-esteem.

Learning How to Reduce Cognitive Dissonance

There are several tactics that people use to try to reduce dissonance. Some of these include:

Rationalization

One way to reduce discomfort is to look for ways to justify the actions that are creating distress.

Avoidance

People also often simply try to avoid information that contradicts their beliefs or behaviors. This is an example of a cognitive bias known as the confirmation bias.

People will seek out information that confirms what they already believe to be true while avoiding things that conflict with their beliefs.

Blaming

Another tactic to reduce cognitive dissonance often involves blaming other people for the behavior that created the conflict. Instead of changing a belief or altering a behavior, people simply blame someone else.

Hiding

The fear of others noticing the disparity may cause people to hide their true beliefs or actions. For some, this might mean not sharing how they actually think or act.

Discounting

This tactic involves reducing the importance of the belief, attitude, or behavior that is creating conflict. If it causes feelings of discomfort, we will deem it less important so it reduces the feelings of cognitive dissonance.

Compensating

People may also try to engage in certain actions that compensate for the behaviors that go against what they believe. For example, a person who cares about the environment but drives a vehicle that isn’t fuel efficient might recycle or volunteer for environmental causes to compensate.

Unhealthy Ways to Reduce Dissonance

Ultimately, changing the belief that is out of step with reality is also an effective way to reduce dissonance. It is also often the most difficult. This is particularly true if it is a deeply held conviction central to an individual’s sense of self.

Unfortunately, how people cope with these conflicts is not always healthy.

Festinger noted that when people realize that behavior is unhealthy, they often find ways to reduce the tension to continue engaging in the behavior.

For example, a person might recognize that smoking has negative health consequences. To avoid kicking the habit:

• They might decide that indulgence is worth the risk.
• Or they might engage in other healthy behaviors to try to “make up” for their smoking habit.
• In other cases, they might simply discount the risk and choose to believe that they won’t be affected by adverse health outcomes.

Common Questions

What is an example of cognitive dissonance?

An example of cognitive dissonance is maintaining a sedentary lifestyle even after learning about how damaging it is to a person’s health. A person might look for ways to rationalize their behavior, such as believing that since they engage in other health-oriented behaviors, their sedentary lifestyle won’t be as damaging.

What are 7 signs of cognitive dissonance?

Seven common signs of cognitive dissonance include:

• Discomfort about holding conflicting beliefs
• Embarrassment about current or past beliefs/behaviors
• Shame about actions a person may have engaged in
• Guilt for doing things that conflict with beliefs or new information
• Regret about past beliefs or behaviors
• Uneasiness about decisions, choices, or behaviors
• Excuses to try to justify your behaviors

What is the opposite of cognitive dissonance?

The opposite of cognitive dissonance is cognitive consonance. It refers to a state of congruence between a persons beliefs and behaviors. When an individual’s values are well-aligned and consistent with their actions, they are more likely to experience cognitive consonance.

Summary

Cognitive dissonance can have an important influence on your behavior, decisions, and even your well-being. You can try to recognize these uncomfortable feelings when they arise and then look for effective and healthy ways to reduce conflict. Analyzing the information, making an informed decision, and sometimes even changing your belief or behavior are strategies that can help you make the right choices.

Sources:

American Psychological Association. Cognitive dissonance.

Cancino-Montecinos, S., Björklund, F., & Lindholm, T. (2020). A general model of dissonance reduction: Unifying past accounts via an emotion regulation perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 540081. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.540081

Cooper, J. Cognitive Dissonance: 50 Years of a Classic Theory. London: Sage Publications; 2007.

Dilakshini VL, Kumar SM. Cognitive dissonance: A psychological unrest. CJAST. Published online October 1, 2020:54-60. doi:10.9734/CJAST/2020/v39i3030970

Festinger L. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press; 1957.

Festinger L. Some attitudinal consequences of forced decisions. Acta Psychologica. 1959;15: 389-390. doi:10.1016/S0001-6918(59)80203-1

Festinger L, Carlsmith JM. Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. 1959;58(2):203-210. doi:10.1037/h0041593

Vaidis DC, Bran A. Respectable challenges to respectable theory: Cognitive dissonance theory requires conceptualization clarification and operational tools. Front Psychol. 2019;10:1189. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01189