Simple psychology for daily life: Cognitive dissonance

Adapted from image by Gift Habershaw on Unsplash.

When simultaneously trying to hold two conflicting concepts in our minds, we experience a psychological stress known as cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance occurs when two prescribed to notions — such as beliefs or values — are incompatible and form a somewhat paradoxical roadblock in mental processing. Some examples of this may look like:

• Strongly believing those of African descent cannot write high quality literature, only to discover your favourite novel is written by someone of African descent.
• Holding the belief that unemployed people are just lazy, to then find yourself let go and struggling to find a new position despite your greatest efforts.
• Growing up a religious Creationist to then study Biology and see evidence of evolution in action before your eyes.

We experience conflicting information regularly, and usually our held concepts simply shuffle some to accommodate new information.

When information does cause dissonance, however, we wrestle with ourselves to resolve the dissonance and return to a stable mind. At such times, we reduce the dissonance through changing our held concepts or justifying a concept or behaviour through rationalisation. Otherwise we push conflicting information from our minds to return to a state of peace as if the information was never encountered.

Persuading somebody afflicted with cognitive dissonance can result in a boomerang effect, where their dissonance leads them to a different conclusion than that the person persuading hopes for. Recognising when someone is battling with cognitive dissonance can open up opportunities to guide them through the discomfort.

When we ourselves feel we may be suffering from cognitive dissonance, mindfulness can allow us to reason through the cause; perhaps we have a dogmatic belief ingrained upon us that needs consideration.

Catching cognitive dissonance not only allows us to direct ourselves and others onto more informed paths, but can present curiosities worth reflecting upon.