Cognitive dissonance is defined as the uncomfortable tension people experience when our actions do not correspond with our attitudes; in other words, when people behave in a way that does not align with their values, we experience an unpleasant anxiety concerning the discrepancy. Cognitive dissonance can also occur when we hold conflicting attitudes or beliefs. We are most likely to experience dissonance when we have done or said something that makes us feel stupid, embarrassed or immoral.
The values and attitudes that we hold most strongly are deeply important to how we see ourselves, which results in our interpretation of inconsistency as a threat to the stability of our self-concept. Dissonance is uncomfortable enough to motivate us to re-establish an acceptable level of consistency. It is fascinating to note that when people are experiencing cognitive dissonance, brain scans reveal that areas of the brain responsible for reasoning shut down while the emotional circuitry of the brain is highly active upon the re-establishment of consonance.
Since behaviours cannot be undone and dissonance frequently demands that people instead change their thoughts, feelings or beliefs. People are capable of doing all sorts of “mental gymnastics” to justify their behaviour and thereby resolve their discomfort. The more permanent and less reversible an action and its consequences are, the greater our need to reduce the resulting dissonance. According to cognitive dissonance theory, there are several ways we can resolve dissonance. We can change our attitudes to become more consistent with our behaviour, change our perception of our behaviour, add consonant cognition or extenuating justifications, minimize the significance of the conflict or reduce the perceived choice by emphasizing the factor of inevitability or non-responsibility.
For example, a smoker who is consciously aware of the proven health risks of nicotine will experience cognitive dissonance because of the inconsistency between their actions (smoking) and their awareness (that smoking kills). As a result, they might comfort themselves by calling into mind their grandmother who lived to 103 years to convince themselves that their “good genes” will make them immune to the consequences of their addiction.
We are more willing to change our attitudes when the issue at hand is not important to us. However, when we have a deeply held belief or attitude, we are more motivated to change our behaviour or justify the incongruent behaviour with additional rationalizations. When we make a decision, we relieve ourselves of any resulting dissonance by emphasizing the worthiness of our choice and denigrating unchosen alternatives. Our inability to accept the discomfort of cognitive dissonance can fundamentally shift our value systems and cause us to change our behaviour, for better or worse, in the future.
While cognitive dissonance theory argues that the uncomfortable nature of dissonance is what motivates people to change their attitudes to align with their behaviour, self-perception theory questions whether the experience of dissonance is a necessary piece of the puzzle when it comes to explaining the process of attitude change. Self-perception theory contends that people come to conclusions about themselves the same way that they do about others: by observing their own overt behaviours. This is especially likely when assessing ambiguously held attitudes. If the situational factors at hand provide adequate justification for their behaviour, people assume their behaviour was the result of external factors; conversely, if the situational factors are not sufficient, people assume their behaviour results from internal factors. People with poor self-knowledge are more likely to attribute internal factors for their behaviour. Regarding a change in attitude, self-perception theory suggests that the attitudes that people hold which are weak and ambiguous (which are plenty) may be changed or shifted without any sense of inconsistency or dissonance. Essentially, because we are not deeply invested in every attitude we hold, we can freely change and shift our perspective to suit the moment or situation without necessarily experiencing discomfort.
