In the field of psychology, **cognitive dissonance** is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions.[\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-:6-1) Being confronted by situations that challenge this dissonance may ultimately result in some change in their cognitions or actions to cause greater alignment between them so as to reduce this dissonance.[\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-:6-1) Relevant items of cognition include peoples' actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values "Value (ethics)"), and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance exists without signs but surfaces through psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of conflicting things. According to this theory, when an action or idea is psychologically inconsistent with the other, people automatically try to resolve the conflict, usually by reframing a side to make the combination congruent. Discomfort is triggered by beliefs clashing with new information or by having to conceptually resolve a matter that involves conflicting sides, whereby the individual tries to find a way to reconcile contradictions to reduce their discomfort.[\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-:6-1) Persons who experience internal inconsistency tend to become psychologically uncomfortable and are motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance.[\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-:6-1) They tend to make changes to justify the stressful behavior, by either adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance ( rationalization "Rationalization (psychology)")), believing that "people get what they deserve" ( just-world fallacy), taking in specific pieces of information while rejecting or ignoring others ( selective perception), or avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance ( confirmation bias).[\[3\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-3)[\[4\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-4) ## Reduction \ [edit\] Cognitive dissonance theory proposes that people seek psychological consistency between their expectations of life and the existential reality of the world. To function by that expectation of existential consistency, people continually reduce their cognitive dissonance in order to align their cognitions (perceptions of the world) with each other and their actions. The creation and establishment of psychological consistency allows the person affected with cognitive dissonance to lessen mental stress by actions that reduce the magnitude of the dissonance, realized either by changing with or by justifying against or by being indifferent to the existential contradiction that is inducing the mental stress.[\[2\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-:72-2) In practice, people reduce the magnitude of their cognitive dissonance in four ways: 1. Change the behavior or the cognition ("I'll eat no more of this doughnut.") 2. Justify the behavior or the cognition, by changing the conflicting cognition ("I'm allowed to cheat my diet every once in a while.") 3. Justify the behavior or the cognition by adding new behaviors or cognitions ("I'll spend thirty extra minutes at the gymnasium to work off the doughnut.") 4. Ignore or deny information that conflicts with existing beliefs ("This doughnut is not a high-sugar food.") ## Paradigms \ [edit\] There are four theoretic paradigms of cognitive dissonance, the mental stress people experienced when exposed to information that is inconsistent with their beliefs, ideals "Ideal (ethics)") or values "Value (ethics)"): Belief Disconfirmation, Induced Compliance, Free Choice, and Effort Justification, which respectively explain what happens after a person acts inconsistently, relative to their intellectual perspectives; what happens after a person makes decisions and what are the effects upon a person who has expended much effort to achieve a goal. Common to each paradigm of cognitive-dissonance theory is the tenet: People invested in a given perspective shall—when confronted with contrary evidence—expend great effort to justify retaining the challenged perspective.[\[33\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-33) ### Forbidden behavior paradigm \ [edit\] In the _Effect of the Severity of Threat on the Devaluation of Forbidden Behavior_ (1963), a variant of the induced-compliance paradigm, by Elliot Aronson and Carlsmith, examined self-justification in children.[\[39\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-aronson1963-39) Children were left in a room with toys, including a greatly desirable steam shovel, the forbidden toy. Upon leaving the room, the experimenter told one-half of the group of children that there would be severe punishment if they played with the steam-shovel toy and told the second half of the group that there would be a mild punishment for playing with the forbidden toy. All of the children refrained from playing with the forbidden toy (the steam shovel).[\[39\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-aronson1963-39) Later, when the children were told that they could freely play with any toy they wanted, the children in the mild-punishment group were less likely to play with the steam shovel (the forbidden toy), despite the removal of the threat of mild punishment. The children threatened with mild punishment had to justify, to themselves, why they did not play with the forbidden toy. The degree of punishment was insufficiently strong to resolve their cognitive dissonance; the children had to convince themselves that playing with the forbidden toy was not worth the effort.[\[39\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-aronson1963-39) ### Free choice \ [edit\] In the study _Post-decision Changes in Desirability of Alternatives_ (1956) 225 female students rated domestic appliances and then were asked to choose one of two appliances as a gift. The results of the second round of ratings indicated that the women students increased their ratings of the domestic appliance they had selected as a gift and decreased their ratings of the appliances they rejected.[\[43\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-43) This type of cognitive dissonance occurs in a person who is faced with a difficult decision and when the rejected choice may still have desirable characteristics to the chooser. The action of deciding provokes the psychological dissonance consequent to choosing X instead of Y, despite little difference between X and Y; the decision "I chose X" is dissonant with the cognition that "There are some aspects of Y that I like". The study _Choice-induced Preferences in the Absence of Choice: Evidence from a Blind Two-choice Paradigm with Young Children and Capuchin Monkeys_ (2010) reports similar results in the occurrence of cognitive dissonance in human beings and in animals.[\[44\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?utm_source=chatgpt.com#cite_note-Egan_et_al.-44) ## Examples \ [edit\]  In the fable of "The Fox and the Grapes", by Aesop, on failing to reach the desired bunch of grapes, the fox then decides he does not truly want the fruit because it is sour. The fox's act of rationalization (justification) "Rationalization (psychology)") reduced his anxiety over the cognitive dissonance from the desire he cannot realise.