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Cognitive dissonance is a theory in social psychology first proposed by Leon Festinger. According to this theory, cognitive dissonance describes the discomfort experienced when two cognitions are incompatible with each other.
A cognition is a piece of knowledge, such as a:
- thought
- attitude
- personal value
- behavior
This incompatibility (dissonance) can happen when you do something that goes against one of your values. Or maybe you learn a new piece of information that disagrees with a long-standing belief or opinion. For example, eating meat even though you adore animals.
As humans, we generally prefer for our world to make sense. Cognitive dissonance can be distressing. That’s why we often respond to cognitive dissonance by doing mental gymnastics to feel like things make sense again.
Some effects of cognitive dissonance can include:
- anxiety
- regret
- low self-worth
- shame
- stress
- reduced self-esteem
- anger
In addition to these emotional experiences, cognitive dissonance can also inspire a change in your behavior or beliefs. Some of these changes can be positive, such as shifting problematic beliefs or harmful habits.
Share on PinterestIllustration by Brittany England
Here’s a look at some everyday examples of cognitive dissonance and how you might come to terms with them.
1. Picking up after your dog
Let’s say you have a dog that you take for daily walks around your neighborhood. Like any responsible dog owner, you carry plastic bags and always clean up after your dog.
One day, you realize you forgot the bags while halfway through the walk. And your dog chooses that moment to do his business.
You take a quick look along the street. No one’s around, so you call your dog and hustle away. Once home, you begin to feel guilty. You know it’s not right to leave your dog’s mess. What if someone steps in it or it ruins your neighbor’s garden?
“But it’s just the one time,” you tell yourself. You ran out of bags. You’ll replace them and always pick up after your dog in the future.
Besides, it’s not like you’re the only one who does it. You’ve seen other dogs’ messes in the neighborhood. If other people don’t pick up after their dogs, why should you have to?
2. Getting enough exercise
Chances are, you value your health. You may make a conscious effort to choose nutritious foods, try to avoid processed foods and soda, and shoot for eight hours of sleep every night.
But you spend most of your day sitting at your desk. You tell yourself it’s OK since you’re taking care of your health in other ways. You still feel guilty, though, because you know it’s important to be active.
You even joined a gym a while back, but you stopped going. Every time you see the membership tag on your keychain, it reminds you of that pesky truth — that exercise is part of a healthy lifestyle.
Finally, you decide to go to the gym. You start going to bed earlier and get up with enough time to work out. It’s hard at first, but instead of feeling guilty when you see the gym keychain, you feel proud of yourself.
3. Moving for love
You and your partner live in a large city. You love city life and can’t imagine living anywhere else. One day, your partner comes home from work with some news. They’ve received a promotion — in a small town four hours away. You’ll have to move.
You feel unhappy. You don’t want to move, but your partner is excited about the promotion and you want them to be happy. Little by little, you begin to consider the pros of living in a small town. You even read some articles on small-town living.
Small towns are safer, you think. There won’t be city traffic. The cost of living will be lower. You might even be able to get around town without having a car. Finally, you remind yourself that four hours isn’t so far after all. You’ll still be able to visit your friends and family often.
4. Being productive at work
At work, you have a fairly private cubicle. Your computer use isn’t monitored, and you often find yourself browsing the internet or even catching up on TV shows instead of working.
Sure, you eventually get your work done, but you know you could be doing more. You might feel guilty, knowing you’d be in trouble if anyone found out. But whenever you get bored, you find yourself online again.
You read an article about workplace productivity that says people are more productive when they work in short bursts and take frequent breaks. “I’m just increasing my productivity,” you tell yourself.
After all, you rarely take time off. And when you do work, you work hard. You should get to relax, too.
5. Eating meat
You consider yourself an animal lover. You’ve always had pets and, whenever possible, purchase products that aren’t tested on animals.
But you also enjoy eating meat, though you know some animals are kept in inhumane conditions before being used for meat. You feel guilty but can’t afford to buy meat from pasture-raised or grass-fed animals. And a meat-free diet isn’t realistic for you.
In the end, you decide to start buying cage-free eggs and plan to replace one of your meat purchases each shopping trip with humanely raised meat or a meat substitute, like tofu or tempeh. This reduces your guilt and helps you bridge the gap between your love of animals and your diet.
Cognitive dissonance isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can prompt you to make positive changes when you realize your beliefs and actions are at odds.
It can become problematic if it leads you to justify or rationalize behaviors that could be harmful. Or you may get caught up in trying to rationalize the dissonance to the point of stressing yourself out.
The next time you find yourself in a moment of cognitive dissonance, take a moment to ask yourself a few questions:
- What are the two cognitions that aren’t fitting together?
- What actions would I need to take to eliminate that dissonance?
- Do I need to change any specific behaviors? Or do I need to change a mindset or belief?
- How important is it for me to resolve the dissonance?
Simply being more aware of how your thoughts and actions fit together can help you better understand what’s important to you, even if you don’t eliminate the dissonance.
Everyone experiences cognitive dissonance in some form in their life. It’s more common to feel discomfort and to feel like you need to resolve the dissonance when cognitions are important to you or they conflict heavily with each other.
Confronting cognitive dissonance can often lead to positive results. This doesn’t always involve making sweeping changes either. Sometimes, resolving cognitive dissonance is just a matter of changing your perspective on something or developing new patterns of thinking to help you live according to what’s most important to you.
Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff
Cognitive dissonance is a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. The clashing cognitions may include ideas, beliefs, or the knowledge that one has behaved in a certain way.
The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people are averse to inconsistencies within their own minds. It offers one explanation for why people sometimes make an effort to adjust their thinking when their own thoughts, words, or behaviors seem to clash with each other.
When one learns new information that challenges a deeply held belief, for example, or acts in a way that seems to undercut a favorable self-image, that person may feel motivated to somehow resolve the negative feeling that results—to restore cognitive consonance. Though a person may not always resolve cognitive dissonance, the response to it may range from ignoring the source of it to changing one’s beliefs or behavior to eliminate the conflict.
When someone tells a lie and feels uncomfortable about it because he fundamentally sees himself as an honest person, he may be experiencing cognitive dissonance. That is, there is mental discord related to a contradiction between one thought (in this case, knowing he did something wrong) and another (thinking that he is honest).
Psychologist Leon Festinger published the book A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in 1957. Among the examples he used to illustrate the theory were doomsday cult members and their explanations for why the world had not ended as they had anticipated. Many experiments have since been conducted to illustrate cognitive dissonance in more ordinary contexts.
No. Hypocrisy involves a contradiction between a person’s supposed principles, beliefs, or character and who they really are or how they behave. Cognitive dissonance is the unpleasant mental state that may result if someone really does have certain beliefs but thinks or acts in a way that contradicts them.
It’s not clear. While cognitive dissonance is often described as something widely and regularly experienced, efforts to capture it in studies don’t always work, so it could be less common than has been assumed. People do not necessarily experience discomfort in response to every apparent contradiction in their thoughts and beliefs.
Cognitive dissonance poses a challenge: How can we resolve the uncomfortable feeling that arises when our own thoughts or actions clash with each other? Some responses may be more constructive than others.
A man who learns that his eating habits raise his risk of illness feels the tension between his preferred behavior and the idea that he could be in danger. He might ease this feeling by telling himself that the health warning is exaggerated or, more productively, by deciding to take action to change his behavior. If a woman reads that her favorite politician has done something immoral, she could conclude that the charges have been invented by his enemies—or, instead, rethink her support.
It may lead us to alter our attitudes to be more consistent. Study participants who complete an uninteresting task have been found to rate the task as more enjoyable if they were first asked to tell someone else it was enjoyable—an effect attributed to cognitive dissonance. Theoretically, dissonance may contribute to a variety of changes in behavior or beliefs.
There are a variety of ways people are thought to resolve the sense of dissonance when cognitions don’t seem to fit together. They may include denying or compartmentalizing unwelcome thoughts, seeking to explain away a thought that doesn’t comport with others, or changing what one believes or one’s behavior.
Not necessarily. By bringing attention to the inconsistencies in our minds, cognitive dissonance may present an opportunity for growth. People who feel it could realize, for example, that they need to update their beliefs to reflect the truth, or change their behavior to better match the person they want to be.
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