Coping Strategies for Cognitive Dissonance Examples in Everyday Life
Trying to believe two opposing ideas or concepts leads to physical distress. Let’s learn the coping strategies for cognitive dissonance examples in everyday life. You can use this.
Let’s start by breaking down the terms. The word cognitive or cognition is the ability of the mind to process data. Cognition deals with important functions like awareness, learning, and recalling information.
Dissonance is a word that means a lack of harmony, confusion, or conflict. When there is confusion and disharmony in the mind, this results in discomfort. Together, the term cognitive dissonance refers to a painful psychological condition. It is caused by the inability to resolve a conflict.
Trying to Believe Two Opposing Points of View
When we cannot resolve the conflict between opposing ideas, it creates internal conflict. This conflict causes pain and limits our ability to think clearly. So, when we encounter a conflict with our worldview, the first reaction of the mind is to reject it. The mind automatically protects the sacred ground of existing beliefs.
Religions indoctrinate children as early as possible to get their ideas programmed first. That way, the child will grow up protecting these beliefs. It doesn’t matter if these beliefs are accurate or not.
However, trying to believe two opposing ideas can create an opportunity for growth. Instead of taking the easy way out, you can challenge what you believe. Religions don’t like this option. When you consider new ideas, you are more likely to question their conflicting and illogical ideologies.
Cognitive Dissonance Examples in Everyday Life
Many people resolve the mental distress of this dilemma by going along with predominate programming. They take the easy way out to stop the distressful situation. They simply fall back on what they have been told to believe.
Religion dominated the cultural narratives of most societies before the modern era. When the modern era began in the 1500s, then other sources influenced the culture. Newspapers became an influence, competing with religion as a source of information. Politics began using both newspapers and religion. The internet changed the medium of communication but not the sources.
The number one purveyors of cognitive dissonance examples in everyday life are still religion and politics. The medium of communication may have shifted to the internet, but they are still the key drivers of the cultural narrative.
Religions are the primary source of conflict in our modern world. It starts with an internal conflict. If you believe things that are contradicted by science, facts, and logic, the mind battles to reconcile differences. This conflict causes physical pain.
How does someone adopt ideas that are not backed by sound evidence? It’s easy, actually. All you need to do is subject someone to a system of continual indoctrination. This happens when you expose yourself to self-hypnosis and group hypnosis manipulation techniques.
These techniques are used to program people to reject any facts that conflict with their beliefs. This way, they escape the dilemma and discomfort of the conflict. If people don’t connect their symptoms with this dilemma, it can last for years.
Cognitive dissonance examples in everyday life increase during times of social stress. War, famine, riots, or any significant social conflict cause distress. It’s your mind telling you that your belief system isn’t working for you or your society anymore.
If you maintain this conflict for long periods, it will blind your mind. It is harmful to your health and wellness and affects your ability to apply logical reasoning in other areas of your life.
The Coping Strategies for Cognitive Dissonance
A healthy mindset is an asset. It means you are open-minded and absent any harmful prejudice and bias. An open-minded person will reconcile any conflicts with their worldview rather quickly. And they do it without the discomfort of cognitive conflict. How do they do it? Simple. They consider rather than reject new data. They learn to validate the facts and use common sense to analyze any opposing points of view.
Rational thinking helps a person change their minds when they encounter new data. It’s a valuable skill set to have in a rapidly changing world. Changing your mind when you confront new data is critical to your overall health and wellness.
The best coping strategies for dealing with cognitive dissonance in everyday life are simple to implement:
1. Cultivate a healthy, flexible worldview that can change when you find better, reliable data. Seek healthy sources of information that promote inclusion, equality, and equity.
2. Avoid inflexible sectarian religious beliefs. Many religions are inflexible and limiting and contain bias and prejudice. Avoid or eliminate exposure to harmful sources of groupthink manipulation tactics. These are the tools of Western religion and extremist politics.
An Unhealthy Response to New Data
An unhealthy mindset is not an asset. It is harmful to you and everyone in your circle of influence. Harmful sectarian bias and prejudice build an unhealthy mindset. When you cannot reconcile opposing views, you learn to avoid or reject conflict. That way, you won’t trigger negative symptoms. People from highly religious backgrounds are most likely to use these strategies. Therefore, hardline religious believers often have closed social circles.
We see this scenario unfold when people believe that their freedom is being violated. We saw this during the beginning of the pandemic in 2016. When masks were mandated as a public health measure, some refused to do so. They confused public health issues with individual rights. This placed others in jeopardy because of ignorance and negligence. Yet if you ask these same people if they wear a seat belt, they say yes. Or, if they use the toilet instead of defecating on the sidewalk, they will say, of course, I do that.
Flexible Religious Paradigms
Not all religions are inflexible. Some do not have strict boundaries on thinking. For example, Taoism and paganism have very few constraints, if any. With these systems, you are free to explore and develop your path.
Those least likely to suffer from cognitive dissonance examples in everyday life are atheists. Agnostics and atheists are freethinkers who do not need to believe two opposing ideas. They can change their minds when they encounter new data.
Inflexible Religious Paradigms
Western religion is a tree with three branches: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. These systems use myths and superstition as a basis for their belief systems. This presents a lot of opportunities for conflicts to arise in the modern world based on science rather than mythology. They are the source of everything negative in our society, from genocide to ethnic and gender discrimination. Their fight against progress is not new. They killed and imprisoned early scientists for suggesting the sun and not the earth was not the center of the galaxy.
Why do they do this? It is a way of controlling your thinking. The more entrenched you become in the belief system, the more susceptible you are to extremist ideologies. Opposing points of view are the enemy. Keeping you in a highly emotional state makes you a target.
Here, cognitive dissonance and physical symptoms are warning signs. It’s your mind telling you to resolve the conflict between facts and fiction. If you don’t resolve the tension, it will distort your perception and values.
Sadly, this is the thinking we see reflected in cultures that have a significant religious influence. Some use powerful social programming tools such as self-hypnosis and group hypnosis.
Families are very important in the religious indoctrination process of children. Parents pass down lifestyle, religious, political, and personal values. These institutions influence many cultures, even if you are not a follower.
People with deeply held religious views live in this stressful mental condition. They become used to friction and conflict. Thus, they are more likely to act with violence to protect their beliefs. It doesn’t matter if the new information is accurate. What matters is that they maintain their boundaries. Otherwise, it causes headaches and other physical pain. It’s why this mental condition is called a religious headache.
“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more, but I want nothing more.” ― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Tools to Guard Against Cognitive Dissonance
Cultivating a healthy, skeptical mindset guards your mind. It protects you against the tools of propaganda and groupthink manipulation. Eliminate the known sources of harmful mind control and conspiracy theories, and you’ll be on your way to becoming a freethinker.
1. Enhance Your Critical Thinking Ability
The quality of our thinking results in our ability to discern facts from fiction. People form beliefs based on preconceived points of view and arguments. An argument is a selling tool. It acts as a filter to justify our beliefs.
The study of logic and rational thinking is the heart of healthy coping strategies. These tools help you strengthen the mind against groupthink manipulation. Everyone uses arguments that have something that supports their conclusions and their worldview. If the foundation of your worldview is facts, then your decisions will be based on facts. If mythology and superstition are the basis of your premises, then they will determine your conclusions.
“Because of propaganda induced cognitive dissonance, most people hate themselves and don’t even know it.” ― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Here are some links to the basics of logical reasoning. It uses practical examples to show the proper use of deductive and inductive logic. Spotting logical fallacies is a tool to reveal the most popular tactics used by religion and politics. The truth-seeker axioms are logical propositions that unmask unhealthy thinking. If you apply the principles of these tools, you will not need to believe two opposing ideas. You will sort out the most reliable using facts, evidence, and logic.
2. Conducting Independent Research
Don’t give in and ignore the new data. Find the courage to face the fact that what you may believe is incorrect. Then, conduct your research. Use sources from outside the paradigm you are researching. In some cultures, this is hard to do. So, use the internet and get outside of the cultural narrative. Learn to question cultural folklore. Use tools like comparative analysis to investigate the concepts of your own beliefs.
3. Eliminate and Minimize Negative Programming
It’s important to remove all sources of programming that project and reinforce inaccurate information. The primary sources of this are Western organized religion and right-wing extremist politics. These sources use many forms of mass media to project misinformation.
In Conclusion
The physical symptoms of cognitive dissonance are a warning sign of a rigid belief system; we can do something about it. It’s a wake-up call. This conflict is an opportunity for growth, which forces us to align with the new truth. Science and belief systems that encourage freethinking resolve the need to believe two opposing ideas.