cognitive dissonance

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a psychological state of discomfort that arises when an individual holds two or more inconsistent beliefs, values, or cognitions simultaneously, or when a person's behaviour conflicts with their attitudes or beliefs; Leon Festinger introduced the concept in 1957, proposing that cognitive dissonance motivates people to reduce the inconsistency through attitude change, behaviour change, addition of new cognitions that reconcile the conflict, or trivialisation of the inconsistency; classic demonstrations include the insufficient justification paradigm — in which people who perform a boring task for little money come to believe the task was more interesting than those paid more, having justified their effort through internal attitude change rather than external reward — and post-decision dissonance — in which people enhance their evaluation of chosen alternatives and denigrate rejected ones after making a choice; cognitive dissonance has been applied to understanding smoking despite health knowledge, attitude change after coerced compliance, the persistence of beliefs following disconfirmation, and rationalisation in moral and political decision-making