I’ve looked it up, but still feel a little confused
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Basically, knowing something is wrong, but doing it anyway. You see it a lot with smoking (I know it is unhealthly, but I still smoke) or diet (I know I need to lose weight, but I keep eating junk). It can also apply to things like peer pressure or doing something illegal at work.
It might help to break down the words; cognition is basically understanding / awareness and dissonance is basically two things not working together. So you understand something isn’t right but do the wrong thing anyway.
It’s what happens when what you say or believe is different from what you do. It can make you feel like you need to either change what you’re doing or change what you believe to make things match up again.
Cognitive dissonance is simply saying you believe or live by a certain set of standards, but you do things directly against that belief and it makes you uncomfortable or shamed.
A good example is when someone claims they are tolerant or inclusive but when you point out their actions are in direct opposition of that they lash out in anger at you. In reality they are shamed that they did not live up to their beliefs, but instead of being mad at themselves for their short comings they are mad at you for pointing it out.
You hold a certain set of beliefs, in fact you are deeply attached to them. Then you are confronted by facts that directly contradict them.
A common reaction is to refuse to accept these new facts, to denigrate them, to get angry
Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort people feel when their understanding of reality comes into conflict with objective reality, proving that their understanding is faulty or incomplete.
It’s not what you DO in that situation. It’s the discomfort of realizing you ARE in that situation.
For instance, let’s say you’re a vegetarian and you eat a lot of lettuce, because everyone knows lettuce is very good for you. Then ten years from now, scientists prove that people who eat lettuce on the regular are 20 times more likely to get colon cancer.
Your innate belief in the health value of lettuce is being challenged by objective facts from scientific studies, and you feel confused and possibly even betrayed, and have trouble reconciling your previous beliefs with this new knowledge that’s being presented to you. That feeling is cognitive dissonance.
It’s when two separate ideas are fighting in your head because you can’t resolve them into one truth but also can’t find a way to deny one or the other. It makes you feel confused and upset because there is no clear truth.
Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of discomfort or stress one feels when they attempt to reconcile two contradictory or competing beliefs. For example, if you think that eating apples is downright horrible and then find out that you actually really enjoy fresh-baked apple pie from your local diner, you will likely experience cognitive dissonance as you undergo what I call a “reshaping” of your worldview.
Obviously, a light-hearted example. Not wanting to stoke fires here, you don’t need to look far to see cognitive dissonance at play when people call for boycotts but don’t engage in the boycott themselves, in politics, and issues of health.
It’s the internal mental struggle and resultant feeling a person gets when they realize two of their core or cherished beliefs are in opposition with each other. As beliefs often form the basis of identity, this can have profound problems.
For example, a gay person who is strongly devout in an extremely homophobic religion will have to come up with some way to reconcile who they are with what they believe. They will have to decide if there is something wrong with themself, or if there is a problem with their religious conviction. At a certain point, a person can only live a lie for so long before the internal stress breaks them.
When there is something about u that isn t fuly aligned with ur values.
For example
U consider going outside it is important. Yet u don t do it. But u see urself as someone who go.
Cognitive dissonance is a feeling of discomfort that you want to get rid of.
The discomfort comes from holding beliefs that can’t be held at the same time. Cognitive dissonance often pops up when you learn something new – something that fights with something that you already believe.
There’s a constant struggle to try and believe all the things, but when you put in the effort to believe all the things, only to hit brick wall after brick wall because they can’t all be reasonably believed at the same time, that feels uncomfortable.
In addition, choosing to irrationally believe all the things also feels uncomfortable. Even if you don’t realize they can’t all make sense together, believing all of them still feels a little “off”, a little uncanny.
Your choices are to scrap the problematic beliefs, or to reframe one or more of the beliefs in a way that makes sense with all the other ones.
Sometimes reframing beliefs isn’t possible – logic just doesn’t allow it. How do you make sense of loving both cows and beef? You can’t – you have to do something drastic like admit that you don’t in fact love one.
Until you scrap a belief, you’re stuck in cognitive dissonance.
But when you do scrap the belief that you love beef, for example, how do you make sense of how much you enjoy beef still? It seems like we still have a problem. Cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance can be hard to alleviate, and it feels very “off” until you do.
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