Cognitive Dissonance: 50 Years of a Classic Theory, Essay Example

Cognitive dissonance theory, developed by Leon Festinger in 1957, relies on consonant but sometimes dissonant cognitions in explaining decision making and behaviour. It posits that people never like dissonant cognitions; that desire for consonant cognitions (behaviours, actions, thoughts, and etcetera) are as basic as shelter or food (Festinger, 1957). When one experience conflicting thoughts, therefore, s/he attempts as much as possible to dismiss the conflict. To understand why one may steal food for self or family and explain it away, the paradigm of cognitive dissonance must be elaborated in terms of its importance in overcoming conflicts.

The process of eliminating dissonance in cognition takes place in a number of ways. First, one may ignore the dissonant thought and choose to equate the conflicting cognition to nonsense; a process that leads to undertaking an otherwise wrong or inappropriate act (Egan, Santos & Bloom, 2007). Having known that stealing per se is wrong, one may go ahead and steal while contending that all forms of stealing are not wrong (i.e. stealing for self or family). Secondly, one may choose to alter the significance, or lack thereof, of a cognition. This may happen when one decides that a supposedly inappropriate act is extremely good (that stealing when one is hungry and may die as a result is very appropriate) and therefore cannot be done without or that its consequences are not too important (that one may verily be excused) and therefore undertaking it is not so grievous (Cooper, 2007). The mind reduces the bog of having to deal with the dissonance because one dissonance is made weightier than the other and the person undertakes the supposedly inappropriate act without feeling bad about it.

Another way to react to cognitive dissonance is to create and emphasise on a new cognition to lessen the dissonance. This is equal to distributing the effect of each on a scale that lessens the weight of the dissonance. One may equate self to presently “good” people who may have stolen out of hunger and suffered the consequences (or otherwise). Finally, cognitive dissonance is dealt with by preventing it upfront. Information likely to cause dissonance in cognition may simply be ignored, rejected or avoided. Future avoidance of such information will be the formula for avoiding dissonance associated with it. One may choose not to listen to or appreciate any insinuation that stealing food for self or family is bad and reject forthwith any such wrongdoing. Such dissonance is capable of inducing behaviour by forcing people to react on what they think they know versus what they actually did and so find their explanation for an inappropriate act justified in either of the aforementioned alternatives.

References

Cooper, J. (2007). Cognitive dissonance: 50 years of a classic theory. London: Sage Publications.

Egan, L. C., Santos, L. R., & Bloom, P. (2007). The origins of cognitive dissonance: Evidence from children and monkeys. Psychological Science, 18, 978-983.

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.