If someone says you suffer from cognitive dissonance, what does that even mean?
Many people are giving wrong answers. Cognitive dissonance is NOT simply holding two opposing ideas in your head. Cognitive DISSONANCE is the uneasy feeling people are supposed to get when holding discongruent ideas at the same time.
Some people do not feel cognitive dissonance at all even while openly voicing the opinions. Great examples are all over politics. If one is for women having the freedom to make their own medical decisions, but oppose abortion bejng legal, those are two opposing views that SHOULD trigger unease and make them reconsider one position or the other.
A better example is people that believe laws should apply equally to everyone, but then go on to say Trump should totally be immune. That SHOULD cause dissonance, but it doesn’t for far too many.
So like believing all I was told about a political party from my youth, then seeing the evidence of what that party believes that is against what I thought, that confused feeling is cognitive dissonance. Thank you!
There’s a great comic by The Oatmeal that explains it more thoroughly, and it’s an amusing read.
I always love The Oatmeal, but I hadn’t seen that one yet.
Thanks for sharing!
That is a really cool comic thank you!
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The thing with cognitive dissonance is also a bit more subtle than just the duality of conflicting beliefs. It can often arise from unidentified conflicts that are outside of your conscious self awareness.
One that I am familiar with is religion. I knew a whole lot about the bible and christianity growing up. From an early age I halfway knew things like how, when I looked at road cuts through bedrock, those layers hinted at deep time and held a story that wasn’t well alined with my beliefs. Then there was my love of dinosaurs as a kid and that too did not mesh with my religious narrative. Each little element of conflict was present on some subconscious like level, and my life became partitioned between this narrative belief system and evidence based reality. I had lots of peripheral consequences in life due to this building conflict, but I never allowed the core issue to come to a head in an attempt to rectify the disparity until I was around 30 years old.
Cognitive dissonance can also be dangerous and is a contributing factor in many crimes and heinous acts humans commit. Alternative expressions of individuality may also have an origin in cognitive dissonance. Identification of these underlying conflicts is reflective of a person’s self awareness and can help one improve one’s mental health by taking productive action to resolve inner conflicts after identification.
That is really deep! I thank you tons!
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It refers to the stress of believing two or more mutually exclusive things at the same time.
Stress like the inner conflict, that helps thank you!
I wouldn’t say inner conflict but moreso conditioned thinking.
If someone has been conditioned to have certain beliefs and values then they see evidence that those values are wrong they’ll ignore it completely.
Like a person on welfare complaining about “welfare queens”. They are receiving govt assistance while complaining about people who receive govt assistance.
It’s the state of mind caused by simultaneously believing two (or more) things that conflict with each other.
A lot of people have given good answers but I’ll throw in an anecdote.
Growing up my dad would talk about how important it is to follow laws. Don’t do drugs, don’t drink and drive, etc, but even the smaller ones like don’t jay-walk and never litter.
On a car ride I noticed he was going like 5 mph over the speed limit and I pointed it out. Something like “if its important to follow every law why are you breaking the speed limit”.
And he responded something about how it’s not an actual law but a recommended speed or something. But I kept saying it was a law and he was breaking it. He got pretty upset and finally said if I didn’t drop he’d take away my Gameboy for a weekend or something.
It could’ve been he was just annoyed his kid wouldn’t shut up but it seems like textbook cognitive dissonance that he couldn’t reconcile the two ideas that every law should be followed and it’s ok to break the speed limit a little and it got him upset.
That really helps make it understandable. Thanks you!
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You think milkshakes are the best food
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Medical knowledge says you shouldn’t try to only live off milkshakes
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You say the medical community is part of a conspiracy by Big Vegetable
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I swear reddit had a community around news articles and such about conflicting beliefs. have not seen one in the fediverse.
This could have been an internet search engine job, literally just type “define cognitive dissonance” and it will be explained. Why do we need an entire post for this??
Yes you are correct, and I did. But the more human element is missing in that. The reply that said about following laws and speeding for instance really helped it make sense.
Cognitive dissonance is a term from psychology that refers to the stress which results from holding conflicting beliefs.
When paired with the theory of operant conditioning, the theory of cognitive dissonance predicts that if two of a person’s beliefs contradict one another, then one or both of the beliefs will change to minimize the dissonance (the dissonance acts as a positive punishment for the conflict).
An example of a prediction made by cognitive dissonance is this: if a person mistreats someone they love, and does not own the fact that they have mistreated them, then they will love that person less.
This is because the behavior of hurting a person is in conflict with loving them. If they are unable to integrate the mistreatment via conscious acknowledgement and amends-making, then this conflict will cause dissonance. In order to eliminate the dissonance, the person will stop loving the person.
Basically, the psychological process called justification is a dissonance-reduction strategy.
Colloquially, the term “cognitive dissonance” refers to the simple fact of the conflict. But technically speaking, the dissonance is the stress caused by that conflict.
Thinking “Cognitive dissonance doesn’t exist”, is one way to experience cognitive dissonance.
