For example, using a car when walking is completely feasible or not giving up one’s seat cognitive dissonance treatment for an elderly individual on the subway might produce feelings of guilt. Since guilt usually has a corrective response, the individual might try to make amends for the transgressions in these cases (e.g., behavioral change). The subsequent emotion (after “making up” for bad behavior) might be a feeling of serenity. However, a failed attempt to make up might lead to continued guilt, which might in turn lead to the individual trying to compensate with an indirect gesture rather than addressing the main issue.
- Resolving cognitive dissonance requires intentional effort, self-awareness, and often, external support.
- When a person always has a rational explanation for their irrational behavior, this is known in psychology as the cognitive dissonance theory.
- For example, when the individual engages in a dissonant situation, a change/modification of the initial attitude might take place.
- Thus, escape or distraction (after the feedback loop from the secondary to the primary evaluation stage) might be the likely reduction strategies employed in these situations.
- When looking at other people’s cognitive distortions, they seem easy to dispute.
- If the individual’s experience is dominated by fear and anxiety (also high-arousal negative emotions), avoidance, escape, or distraction are likely dissonance-reduction strategies.
- Therapy provides a safe space to explore these inconsistencies, examine why they exist, and find healthier ways to resolve them.
Improved Decision-Making
- Note that in our model dissonance detection has already occurred, and it thus deals exclusively with the dissonance-reduction process.
- They might recognize the harm it’s causing while also believing they need the substance to cope with life’s challenges.
- By Kendra Cherry, MSEdKendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the “Everything Psychology Book.”
- This is because the cognitive dissonance theory explains that people are willing to increase their own delusional ways of thinking to protect themselves from reality.
- We suggest research exploring the mechanism of cognitive dissonance has the utility to inform “evidence-of-narrative practice,” and thereby may expand its utility for family mediators of divorce.
Common signs include emotional discomfort, self-justification, avoidance of challenging information, guilt, and decision paralysis. For example, the thought “I value kindness” paired with the action “I just punched someone in the face” is going to bring on some pretty strong feelings of regret, guilt, and disappointment. Dissonance makes us feel unsettled, guilty, uncertain, fake, or bad about ourselves.
How to resolve cognitive dissonance
As with varying emotional reactions, people seem to differ substantially regarding how they resolve cognitive dissonance within the same situation. Thus, focusing only on total mean scores is a clear misrepresentation in this case as well. Appraisal theories of emotion (e.g., Scherer, 2009; Moors et al., 2013) hold that the emotions following from a specific event are products of the cognitive evaluation of that situation. First, the individual makes a quick assessment of the stimuli’s relevance for ongoing goals. This assessment occurs at low-level processing, in which https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-cbt-for-addiction-and-substance-abuse/ the stimuli’s novelty (familiar or unfamiliar situation) and intrinsic meaning (intrinsic pleasantness or unpleasantness) are classified.
The Ultimate Guide to What is Cognitive Dissonance: Its Impact on Mental Health and Positive and Negative Choices
Applying a broader emotional perspective, we will incorporate many of the previous, seemingly disconnected, accounts of dissonance reduction into a general model (see Figure 1). This organization of past accounts will not just clarify the existing literature, it will also generate novel ideas and a new set of hypotheses not considered in past dissonance research. Note that in our model dissonance detection has already occurred, and it thus deals exclusively with the dissonance-reduction process. Founded in 2005, GenPsych is an elite mental health and substance use disorder treatment provider with locations in New Jersey. We serve clients with a multitude of mental health and substance use concerns. GenPsych is dedicated to helping our clients regain their emotional and physical health in a safe, supportive environment.
Reduced Emotional Distress
Aside from the individual differences approach, future dissonance research should involve a broader set of methodological approaches to the study of dissonance reduction. Longitudinal designs, experience sampling, multi-trait analyses, non-linear analyses, and more qualitative analyses will undoubtedly advance our understanding of the dissonance-reduction process. For instance, from a lifespan perspective it is obvious that an individual will probably not reduce dissonance in the same way at 55 years of age vs. 21 years of age (e.g., middle aged and older individuals are less prone to engage in aversive situations). Given that most research on dissonance has been performed on university students, a lifespan perspective might be a very important issue to consider.
Any deviation from the expected reaction within the experiment group is treated as error variance. Consequently, theoretical conclusions are then based on mean-score differences between groups–regardless of how large the overlap between score distributions, as long as the difference is statistically significant at alpha level 0.05. Given this common practice, studies have rarely pre-measured people’s initial attitudes, and/or Oxford House the perceived importance of that attitude (which is supposed to decrease if one trivializes) (i.e., in a within-subjects design).
Prevalence and Variation of Dissonance-Reduction Strategies
Adversity and uncomfortable experiences often contribute to personal growth. Additionally, it is important to understand the role of cognitive dissonance in mental health conditions. In this paper, we present a novel approach for how to reconcile previous ideas and findings related to dissonance reduction in a more inclusive model. The first step for such reconciliation must make use of an a priori approach to the problem, where the theoretical groundwork for the new model is established. We first describe dissonance theory and review some of the major views on dissonance reduction. Later, we outline our theoretical account of dissonance reduction (based on Festinger’s original formulation from 1957) and show how past ideas of dissonance reduction can be understood under a broader model of emotion regulation.
We believe in our own cognitive distortions, no matter how inaccurate they may be. Sometimes, the mere awareness of a cognitive distortion will be enough to eliminate it. Other cognitive distortions are more deeply ingrained, and require extra work. This is where cognitive restructuring techniques, which make up the rest of this guide, will come in handy.
Understanding Cognitive Dissonance: Its Impact on Mental Health and Both Positive and Negative Choices
To resolve cognitive dissonance, a person can aim to ensure that their actions are consistent with their values or vice versa. The dissonance between two contradictory ideas, or between an idea and a behavior, creates discomfort. Festinger argued that cognitive dissonance is more intense when a person holds many dissonant views and those views are important to them. Sometimes, you might find yourself engaging in behaviors that are opposed to your own beliefs due to external expectations at work, school, or in a social situation. This might involve going along with something due to peer pressure or doing something at work to avoid getting fired. Because you are being pressured to comply by outside forces, you are more likely to experience some degree of dissonance.
Yes, therapies like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), family therapy, and group therapy are effective in addressing and resolving cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is resolved by changing either the conflicting belief or the behavior. Depending on the situation, one may be easier or more practical than the other.