Cognitive Dissonance

CORE DEFINITION

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological concept describing the mental discomfort or anxiety experienced when a person holds contradictory cognitions—such as behaviors, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, values, faith, or perceptions of external events—that are inconsistent with one another. According to Leon Festinger's theory, to alleviate the pressure and discomfort of dissonance, people strive to change the conflicting cognitions to make them consistent. For example, when someone is dieting but eats a cake, they might reconcile the dissonance by changing their perception of the behavior ("I didn't eat much"), adding a consistent cognition ("The cake is nutritious"), reducing the importance of the conflict ("Life is short, I don't really care about being overweight"), denying the link between the two cognitions ("No experiment proves that cake causes obesity"), reducing perceived control ("His mother forced me to eat it; refusing would insult her cooking"), or changing their attitude ("I don't need or want to lose weight").