
There is a level of discomfort within each person that is acceptable for living. Ratio of cognitions: the proportion of dissonant-to-consonant elements.
Therefore, when the ideals or actions now clash, it is difficult for the individual to decide which takes priority. Both have had a place of truth, at least subjectively, in the mind of the person. When the value of the importance of the two dissonant items is high, it is difficult to determine which action or thought is correct.
The importance of cognitions: the greater the personal value of the elements, the greater the magnitude of the dissonance in the relation. Two factors determine the degree of psychological dissonance caused by two conflicting cognitions or by two conflicting actions: This can be caused by the relationship between two different internal beliefs, or an action that is incompatible with the beliefs of the person. The term "magnitude of dissonance" refers to the level of discomfort caused to the person. not wanting to become drunk when out, but then drinking more wine) Dissonant relationship: Two cognitions or actions inconsistent with each other (e.g. not wanting to become drunk when out and wearing a shirt) Irrelevant relationship: Two cognitions or actions unrelated to each other (e.g. not wanting to become drunk when out to dinner and ordering water rather than wine) Consonant relationship: Two cognitions or actions consistent with each other (e.g. To function in the reality of society, human beings continually adjust the correspondence of their mental attitudes and personal actions such continual adjustments, between cognition and action, result in one of three relationships with reality: 6.6 Criticism of the free-choice paradigm. Festinger argued that some people would inevitably resolve the dissonance by blindly believing whatever they wanted to believe. It requires energy and effort to sit with those seemingly opposite things that all seem true. Ĭoping with the nuances of contradictory ideas or experiences is mentally stressful. They tend to make changes to justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance ( rationalization) or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance ( confirmation bias). A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance.
In When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World (1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information.