What is cognitive dissonance?
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Imagine you had a belief. Something like “The world will end on November 3rd.”
Now, Nov. 3rd comes and goes and the world doesn’t end.
What you might think would happen is you would realize you were mistaken and admit you were wrong and move on. However, if the original belief was something very important to you, or something that you had made part of your personality, then you may have a great deal of trouble letting that belief go. You are in a state of cognitive dissonance.
It should be noted that cognitive dissonance is an almost entirely subconscious thing. If you were fully aware it was happening, it would be easier to resolve.
What can cognitive dissonance lead to? Well, in my example above the person could deny they made a prediction, insist they didn’t mean the current Nov. 3rd but some future Nov. 3rd, or maybe insist the world really did “end” but in a spiritual or metaphysical way that only special people like them have noticed.
Note: my example above is (loosly) based on a real study published in a book called “When Prophesy Fails” written in the 1950’s that popularized the term “cognitive dissonance.”
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