Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance has been a major part of psychology since 1956. Ever since then, the theory has been becoming a part of everyday life; in business strategy decision making, in the criminal field and even universities. The theory behind cognitive dissonance is that individuals sometimes have conflicting beliefs which cause moral and psychological discomfort within themselves. The key factors that affect the strength of the discomfort (dissonance) are the number of beliefs in conflict and the importance attached to each of the beliefs. Dissonance occurs most often when an individual has to make a choice between two irreconcilable beliefs or actions. The greatest dissonance is cause when the two colliding beliefs are equal in their importance. The most interesting quality of cognitive dissonance is that it contradicts most psychological theories about incentives. In the case of CD (cognitive dissonance), and individual s attitudinal change is more likely to go in the direction of fewer incentives since it results in lower dissonance. This was brought out by Festinger, L. & Carlsmith, J.M (1959) in an experiment they have put with students.

Individuals seek to remove the discomfort by changing their attitude towards their beliefs, lowering the importance of one of them in order to lessen the dissonance, acquiring new beliefs or completely removing the conflicting attitude or behavior. Cases such as these occur every single day in a person’s life; buying an expensive car and finding out that it lacks comfort when having long trips. The dissonance is created due to a clash of beliefs that the person bought a good car and that a good car should be comfortable. A person may illuminate the dissonance by bringing up argument such as that the car isn’t used for long distance travel and hence the comfort does not matter as much or by trying to ignore the fact and concentrating on the car’s power , safety, appearance or other qualities. The individual could remove the...