And the glue that holds all these mental relationships together is consistency. Because it is consistent. Consistency becomes like a form of human gravity. It holds everything down and together. It helps us to understand the world and our place in it.
Inconsistencies create a state of dissonance .
As much as we need consistency, however, there are many occasions where things occur in surprising and unexpected ways. There is an inconsistency between what we expected and what we got. Your worst enemy compliments you on your outfit. You love your child, but you forget to attend the piano recital. Dissonance is simply a technical term for the cognitive, emotional, physiological, and behavioral state that arises when things do not go the way we expected them to.