In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is a mental condition where people hold ideas, beliefs, or actions that conflict with one another, often without realizing it. When people face situations that highlight these conflicts, they are motivated to change their thoughts or actions to reduce the discomfort caused by the conflict. This can happen by adjusting a belief, explaining away a situation, or taking steps to make the conflicting ideas seem less inconsistent.

Relevant parts of cognition include people's actions, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, values, and things in their environment. Cognitive dissonance does not always show outwardly, but it can cause psychological stress when someone does something that contradicts their beliefs or when new information challenges their existing ideas.

According to the theory, when an action or idea conflicts with another, people automatically try to fix the problem. They often reframe one side of the conflict to make the ideas seem more consistent. This discomfort arises when beliefs clash with new information or when a person must resolve a situation involving opposing ideas. To reduce this discomfort, people attempt to find ways to make the conflicting ideas fit together. This process can be used in methods that help change attitudes, such as encouraging people to act in ways that challenge their beliefs or helping to guide individuals toward more positive behaviors or away from extreme views.

In When Prophecy Fails (1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that people naturally seek internal consistency to function in the real world. Those who feel internal inconsistency often experience psychological discomfort and are driven to reduce this conflict. They may justify their actions by adding new ideas to their thinking (rationalization), believing that "people get what they deserve" (just-world fallacy), focusing on some information while ignoring others (selective perception), or avoiding situations that might increase the conflict (confirmation bias). Festinger’s theory remains one of the most important ideas in modern social psychology. He described how people avoid cognitive dissonance by saying, "Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."

Originator

Leon Festinger, born in 1919 in New York City, was an American social psychologist. His work in psychology includes the theory of cognitive dissonance, social comparison theory, and the proximity effect. In a 2002 article by the American Psychological Association, Festinger was named the fifth most well-known psychologist of the 20th century, following B.F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Bandura.

In 1957, Festinger introduced the theory of cognitive dissonance. This theory explains how people feel mental tension when they have conflicting thoughts, behaviors, or beliefs. According to Persuasion and Influence in American Life, people often reduce this tension by changing their beliefs or justifying their actions. Festinger’s interest in how people evaluate their thoughts and resolve conflicts was influenced by his earlier work on social comparison theory, which helps explain why such tension occurs.

Festinger graduated from the City College of New York in 1939. He later earned a PhD in Child Psychology from the University of Iowa. He was inspired to study psychology by Kurt Lewin, known as the "father of modern social psychology," and his research in Gestalt psychology. Festinger studied under Lewin for much of his career and later worked with him at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During his research, Festinger observed that people often prefer consistent habits and routines to keep their lives organized. These habits might include sitting in the same seat during a commute or eating meals at the same time each day. Disruptions to these routines can cause mental discomfort, which may change how people think or believe things. Festinger concluded that the only way to ease this discomfort is by adjusting actions or beliefs to restore balance.

Since publishing A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in 1957, Festinger’s research has helped explain how people deal with personal biases, how they change their thinking to maintain a positive self-image, and why people might act in ways that conflict with their beliefs. This includes how they choose to accept or ignore certain information.

Relations among cognitions

To live in society, people often change how they think and act. These changes between thoughts and actions lead to one of three ways people relate to the world.

The term "magnitude of dissonance" describes the amount of discomfort a person feels. This discomfort can come from two conflicting beliefs inside a person or from an action that goes against their beliefs. Two factors influence how strong this discomfort is: how important the beliefs are to the person and how much the beliefs or actions differ from each other.

People always experience some level of discomfort when making decisions because their knowledge and understanding change over time. The amount of discomfort is measured subjectively, as it depends on how individuals report their feelings. Currently, there is no objective way to measure this discomfort clearly.

Reduction

Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that people try to keep their thoughts and beliefs in balance with the way the world actually works. To do this, people often take steps to reduce the mental stress caused by conflicting thoughts, which happens when their beliefs or actions do not match. This balance helps them feel more at ease and function better in daily life.

People reduce the stress of cognitive dissonance in several ways. These include changing their beliefs, justifying their actions, ignoring the conflict, or finding ways to make the contradiction seem less important. In practice, people often use four main methods to lower the level of dissonance they feel.

Three cognitive bias theories are connected to cognitive dissonance. These theories are not separate but share ideas. The first is Bias Blind Spot, which is the belief that one is less likely to be influenced by biases than others. The second is the Better-Than-Average-Effect, which is the belief that one is better than most people in skills or character. The third is Confirmation Bias, which is the tendency to notice and accept information that supports what someone already believes, while ignoring or dismissing information that contradicts those beliefs.

According to research from The Psychology of Prejudice (2006), people use categories like sex, gender, age, and race to help them interact with others in the real world. These categories allow them to organize their thoughts and manage social situations more easily.

Studies from many scientific areas, such as social psychology, learning, and stress, suggest that all actions involving thinking are driven by conflicting thoughts. These actions aim to make thoughts more consistent. For example, behaviors like curiosity, aggression, and fear may be linked to cognitive inconsistency. If people cannot reduce this inconsistency, it may lead to stress, depending on how serious the conflict is.

One way people reduce cognitive dissonance is through selective exposure. This idea was first discussed by Festinger, who noticed that people choose media that matches their current feelings or beliefs. They avoid messages that challenge their views and instead seek out information that supports them. This can happen with news, music, or any type of media. For example, someone who feels lonely might prefer watching stories about people who are also lonely, as it helps them feel more comfortable and reduces mental stress.

A study in 1992 looked at elderly residents who felt lonely and had little contact with family. They watched documentaries about both happy, successful older people and unhappy, lonely older people. After watching, the residents preferred the stories about unhappy, lonely people. This happened because seeing someone their age who was happy and successful made them feel more stressed about their own loneliness. The study shows how people often choose media that matches their current emotions or experiences.

Another example is how people often choose news or media that agrees with their political views. In a 2015 study, participants were shown news that supported their views, challenged their views, or was neutral. They trusted the news that supported their beliefs the most, even if the source was not reliable. This shows that people actively pick information that matches their existing beliefs.

Recent research also shows that when people feel a gap between their thoughts, they are more likely to seek out information that supports their views. At the same time, when people feel negative emotions, they are more likely to avoid information that challenges their beliefs. This suggests that the discomfort from conflicting thoughts leads people to choose information that helps them feel more balanced mentally.

Paradigms

There are four main theories that explain cognitive dissonance, which is the mental stress people feel when they encounter information that conflicts with their beliefs, values, or ideals. These theories are called Belief Disconfirmation, Induced Compliance, Free Choice, and Effort Justification. Each explains what happens when a person acts in a way that contradicts their beliefs, when they make a decision, or when they put in a lot of effort to achieve a goal. All these theories share a key idea: When people face evidence that challenges their beliefs, they often work hard to justify keeping those beliefs.

Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person’s beliefs, values, or ideals are contradicted. This can be resolved by changing the challenged belief. However, instead of changing their beliefs, people often reduce the mental stress by misinterpreting the contradiction, rejecting it, or refuting it. They may also seek support from others who share their beliefs or try to convince others that the contradiction is not real.

One early study, When Prophecy Fails (1956), looked at a religious group that believed an alien spacecraft would rescue them from Earth. When the spacecraft did not arrive, the group faced a strong contradiction between their beliefs and reality. To resolve this, most members changed their belief to a less stressful idea: that the aliens had given Earth a second chance. This new belief led the group to shift their focus to environmentalism and social advocacy.

Another study, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (2008), examined a Jewish religious group that believed their leader, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was the Messiah. When he died, some members refused to accept this contradiction and continued to claim he was the Messiah and would return from the dead.

In Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance (1959), researchers Leon Festinger and Merrill Carlsmith asked students to perform tedious tasks, such as turning pegs, and then convince others that the tasks were fun. Some students were paid $20, others $1, and a control group was not asked to persuade anyone. Students who were paid $1 rated the tasks more positively than those paid $20. This showed that people who had little external justification (like the $1 group) experienced more cognitive dissonance and convinced themselves the tasks were fun to reduce the stress.

In The Effect of the Severity of Threat on the Devaluation of Forbidden Behavior (1963), children were told they would face either mild or severe punishment for playing with a forbidden toy. Later, when the threat was removed, children who had faced mild punishment were less likely to play with the toy. They had to justify their decision to themselves, as the punishment was not strong enough to resolve their dissonance.

A study in The Efficacy of Musical Emotions Provoked by Mozart's Music for the Reconciliation of Cognitive Dissonance (2012) found that listening to classical music helped reduce cognitive dissonance in young children. When children avoided a forbidden toy while listening to music, they were less likely to devalue the toy compared to children who avoided it without music. Researchers suggested that music might reduce the mental stress of dissonance.

Another experiment, Washing Away Postdecisional Dissonance (2010), suggested that hand-washing might reduce cognitive dissonance by removing the physical trace of a decision. However, this study was not successfully repeated.

In Post-decision Changes in Desirability of Alternatives (1956), 225 female students rated household appliances and then chose one as a gift. Afterward, they rated the chosen appliance more highly and the rejected ones less highly. This shows that people often adjust their opinions to reduce the stress of making a difficult decision.

This type of cognitive dissonance happens when a person faces a hard choice and the rejected option still has some positive qualities.

Examples

Meat-eating can create a conflict between a person’s actions and their beliefs or values. Researchers call this conflict the "meat paradox." Hank Rothgerber suggested that people who eat meat may feel tension between their behavior and their feelings toward animals. This happens when a person realizes their actions (eating meat) contradict their beliefs, attitudes, or values. To manage this conflict, people may use strategies like ignoring the issue, pretending it doesn’t matter, pretending their behavior has changed, or blaming others who try to help. Once the conflict exists, people may reduce it by changing their thinking, such as by saying animals are not important, justifying eating meat, or avoiding responsibility for eating meat.

The level of conflict a person feels about eating meat depends on their attitudes and values. For example, people who value dominance or a strong, masculine identity are less likely to feel conflict because they are less likely to believe eating meat is wrong. Others may reduce their conflict by ignoring facts about how meat is produced or by focusing on taste. The conflict becomes stronger when people think about animals as having human-like qualities.

A study titled Patterns of Cognitive Dissonance-reducing Beliefs Among Smokers found that smokers use beliefs to reduce their conflict about smoking and its harmful effects. For example, smokers may change their beliefs to match their actions, such as throwing trash in places where it is not allowed, even though they know it is wrong and harmful to the environment.

A study in Taiwan from 2015 to 2016 looked at how tourists litter. Researchers found that older tourists had better environmental attitudes and were less likely to litter. Younger tourists littered more and felt more conflict after doing so. Another study by Kari Marie Norgaard found that some Norwegians avoided feeling responsible for climate change by using "tools of order" or pretending they were not involved. Many Norwegians reduced their conflict by distancing themselves from the issue.

In a study about medical screenings, researchers found that people who thought they needed an unpleasant test felt conflict because the test was both harmful and helpful. They had negative feelings about the test.

In religious contexts, being a homosexual and practicing Christianity or Catholicism may seem contradictory. A study by Kimberly A. Mahaffy found that some lesbian Christians felt tension between their identity and their faith. Some people reduced this conflict by reinterpreting religious texts to support their beliefs. Another study by Martine Gross found that some homosexual Christians reduced their conflict by leaving traditional churches that emphasized strict rules about homosexuality and joining more open churches.

A study by Fernando Bermejo-Rubio examined how early Jews accepted Jesus as God despite believing in one God. This created conflict, and some Jews resolved it by changing their beliefs after Jesus’ death. A study by Jared Bok found that evangelists may not always feel conflict when sharing their religion in different cultures. Instead, they may choose to focus on certain beliefs while ignoring others to spread their message. A study by Timothy C. Brock looked at how people felt when considering converting to Catholicism. It found that religious and non-religious men had different levels of conflict based on their beliefs.

Applications

Managing cognitive dissonance can affect how motivated a student is to learn. A study from 1975 showed that giving children a reward for completing puzzles made them less interested in the puzzles later compared to children who did not receive a reward. This suggests that external rewards might reduce a child's natural interest in an activity.

Using cognitive dissonance in learning helps students recognize conflicts between their beliefs and new information. When students face these conflicts, they are encouraged to examine new facts objectively to resolve the tension. Educational tools that use these principles can help students better understand complex subjects. Research shows that methods that create cognitive dissonance can improve learning in reading and science.

Cognitive dissonance also plays a role in therapy and mental health. Studies suggest that when patients choose their own therapy and put in effort to overcome dissonance, they may experience better outcomes. For example, a 1983 study found that overweight children who believed they chose their therapy lost more weight than those who did not feel they had a choice.

In a 1980 study, people with a fear of snakes who spent effort on activities that did not help them directly showed reduced fear. Similarly, a 1985 study found that people who justified their efforts to lose weight felt better about their progress. These findings suggest that effort and justification can influence long-term behavior changes.

Cognitive dissonance can be used to encourage positive social behaviors, such as using condoms or reducing littering. It can also explain why people donate to charity or follow rules like anti-speeding campaigns. Research by scholars at Stanford and Harvard found that when individuals commit violent acts against others of different races, they may develop hostile feelings to reduce their discomfort. These attitudes can remain even after the violence stops.

A study called "Vicarious Dissonance" showed that dissonance can affect group behavior. When a group member acts against the group’s norms, others may feel dissonance too. People may change their attitudes to protect the group’s image, even if they are not directly involved. This supports the idea that Festinger’s original theory about dissonance applies to both individuals and groups.

Lyu and Wehby found that wearing masks during the pandemic reduced COVID-19 cases by 2%. Despite this, some people resisted mask use and vaccines, even though health organizations supported them. The Ad Council ran campaigns to encourage following CDC and WHO guidelines, including vaccination. Surveys showed that 80% to 90% of U.S. adults agreed that masks, social distancing, and vaccines were important, but only 50% admitted to following these steps regularly. This gap between belief and action created cognitive dissonance.

To address this, a study asked people to write about supporting mask use and social distancing, then reflect on times they failed to follow these steps. Researchers predicted this would motivate people to act more consistently. A week later, participants reported increased compliance with safety measures.

A 1970 study by Cooper and Worchel explored how personal responsibility affects cognitive dissonance. Participants were asked to work with partners who had either negative traits or were unaware of them. Those who knew about their partner’s negative traits faced different challenges in managing dissonance compared to those who did not.

Related theories and ideas

Self-regulation is the process where an environment influences a person, and the person responds based on this influence. If a situation makes someone want to act in a certain way, and that action is considered acceptable by society, but the person chooses not to act, this creates a conflict in their thinking. The person may then try to explain or justify their choice to fit with the expectations of their surroundings. Self-regulation includes all types of actions, from following rules in the mind to following rules in behavior and even how people think. In Positive Development in Adolescence: The Development and Role of Intentional Self-Regulation by Gestsdottir and Lerner (2008), self-regulation is also described as a way to adjust behavior, thoughts, and physical actions to match social rules.

Self-regulation can be divided into two types: intentional and organismic. Intentional self-regulation happens when a person is aware of their decisions and plans how to change their behavior. Organismic regulation refers to automatic changes in the body, such as adjusting body temperature, that occur without conscious effort. When self-regulation is connected to cognitive dissonance, it is usually intentional because this type of conflict happens at a conscious level, not through unconscious or hormone-controlled processes.

Much of self-regulation develops during childhood and adolescence as the brain’s frontal cortex grows. How people respond to their environment and process information is shaped by how others around them react. Self-regulation can change over time as a person grows and experiences different life events. This growth is not always steady—it may change and develop in different ways as a person ages. Delaying gratification, such as waiting to enjoy something instead of taking it immediately, is an example of self-regulation used during development to learn self-control.

Cognitive dissonance is also linked to the theory of moral disengagement, where a person separates their thinking from their usual moral beliefs to justify an action. This is a form of disengagement that focuses on the person’s own actions, not the actions of others. This theory is closely connected to self-regulation, as described earlier.

Personal standards, such as how someone wants to live, and moral standards, such as how someone is used to living, influence this theory. Cognitive dissonance plays a key role because a person may want to act in a certain way, but their surroundings or the way they achieve their goal may stop them, leading to feelings of guilt and the need to justify their actions through moral disengagement. Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person justifies an action that goes against their usual thinking, while moral disengagement is a type of cognitive dissonance where a person acts immorally and uses new thinking to justify their behavior and restore their sense of morality.

Moral disengagement often involves strong feelings of guilt, especially before the person chooses to act immorally, which sets it apart from cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance uses moral reasoning to justify actions, but moral disengagement completely removes moral reasoning and replaces it with a different kind of thinking to justify actions.

Moral disengagement is often driven by self-interest and actions taken to benefit oneself. These motivations can lead to unethical behavior. In Situational Moral Disengagement: Can the Effects of Self-Interest be Mitigated? by Kish-Gephart et al. (2014), the researchers explain that moral disengagement happens when a person sees a clear chance to gain something for themselves. This study also connects moral disengagement to a lack of self-regulation, which is described as the social rules that guide and shape a person’s actions.

Alternative paradigms

In 1967, the social psychologist Daryl Bem introduced the self-perception theory in Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena. This theory suggests that people do not always think deeply about their attitudes, even when they are in conflict with others. According to the theory, people form attitudes by observing their own behavior. They believe their attitudes caused the behavior they observed, especially when they are unsure about their feelings or thoughts. In this way, people act like observers who must use outside clues to understand their own inner feelings. The theory also states that people can develop attitudes without knowing their own emotions or thoughts.

In the 1959 study Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance, Festinger and Carlsmith found that participants inferred their mental attitudes based on their own actions. When asked, "Did you find the task interesting?" participants believed they must have found the task interesting because that is what they said. Those who were paid $20 likely thought the money, not the task itself, caused them to say the task was interesting.

The self-perception theory (Bem) and the cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger) make similar predictions. However, only the cognitive dissonance theory predicts that people feel uncomfortable or stressed when their thoughts conflict. This was confirmed in laboratory experiments.

In The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance: A Current Perspective (1969), Elliot Aronson linked cognitive dissonance to the self-concept. He explained that mental stress occurs when conflicting thoughts threaten a person's belief in being a good person. This reinterpretation of the Festinger and Carlsmith study suggested that dissonance arose between the thoughts "I am an honest person" and "I lied about finding the task interesting."

The 1971 study Cognitive Dissonance: Private Ratiocination or Public Spectacle? reported that people maintain consistency in their thoughts to protect how others see them, not just their private self-image. However, a 2010 study, I'm No Longer Torn After Choice: How Explicit Choices Implicitly Shape Preferences of Odors, showed that people can change their preferences for items after making a choice, even if they no longer remember the decision.

Fritz Heider proposed a theory of attitude change based on the idea that people seek psychological balance. This drive, called the consistency motive, pushes people to keep their values and beliefs the same over time. Heider’s theory of balance has been used to explain cognitive dissonance.

According to balance theory, three elements interact: (1) the self (P), (2) another person (O), and (3) an object or idea (X). These elements form a triangle and have two types of relationships. People aim for a balanced state, which can be either three positive relationships or two negative and one positive. They avoid unbalanced states, such as three negative relationships or two positive and one negative.

In On the Measurement of the Utility of Public Works (1969), Jules Dupuit argued that people make decisions by comparing the costs and benefits of an action. This process helps them decide if the benefits of a choice are worth the costs. However, people often struggle to compare costs and benefits effectively.

E. Tory Higgins proposed that people compare themselves to three different parts of their identity: the ideal self, the actual self, and the ought self. When these parts conflict, it causes psychological stress (cognitive dissonance). People are motivated to reduce the gap between these self-guides.

In the 1980s, Cooper and Fazio suggested that dissonance comes from negative outcomes, not just conflicting thoughts. For example, people might feel bad if they lie, not because of inconsistency, but because lying is wrong. Later research showed that people can still feel dissonance even when their actions have positive consequences, such as encouraging others to use condoms even if they do not use them themselves.

In How Choice Affects and Reflects Preferences: Revisiting the Free-choice Paradigm (2010), Chen and Risen argued that the rank-choice-rank method used in studies of cognitive dissonance is unreliable. This method assumes that changes in how people rank choices mean their attitudes have changed, but other factors, like indifference, might explain the differences.

Some later studies, such as Do Choices Affect Preferences? Some Doubts and New Evidence (2013), supported this criticism. However, other studies, like Neural Correlates of Cognitive Dissonance and Choice-induced Preference Change (2010), found that making a choice can change preferences, suggesting the method is not entirely invalid.

Festinger’s original theory did not explain why inconsistency causes discomfort. The action–motivation model suggests that psychological inconsistency interferes with how people function in the real world. To cope, people might change their behavior or adjust their beliefs to match their actions. If they change their beliefs after dissonance, they must commit to the new behavior.

Cognitive dissonance creates negative emotions, which push people to rethink their actions to resolve the conflict. This process activates the left frontal cortex of the brain.

The predictive dissonance model connects cognitive dissonance to the predictive coding model of the mind. This model suggests that the brain uses past knowledge to predict what will happen next, and dissonance occurs when predictions do not match reality.

Neuroscience findings

Technological advances are helping psychologists study the biomechanics of cognitive dissonance.

A study titled Neural Activity Predicts Attitude Change in Cognitive Dissonance (Van Veen, Krug, etc., 2009) used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify the brain regions involved in cognitive dissonance. The brain scans of participants repeated the findings of the induced-compliance paradigm. During the fMRI scans, some participants claimed they enjoyed the uncomfortable environment of the MRI machine, while others in an experimental group reported liking the environment more than participants in the control group (paid actors) who discussed the uncomfortable experimental setting.

The results of the fMRI experiment support the original theory of cognitive dissonance proposed by Festinger in 1957. They also support psychological conflict theory, which explains that the anterior cingulate cortex activates the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insular cortex when a person responds to conflicting attitudes. The level of brain activity in these regions is linked to how much a person’s attitude changes.

In a study titled How Choice Reveals and Shapes Expected Hedonic Outcome (2009), researchers found that after making a choice, brain activity in the striatum changes to reflect a person’s new opinion about the chosen item. Activity increased if the item was chosen and decreased if it was rejected. Other studies, such as The Neural Basis of Rationalization: Cognitive Dissonance Reduction During Decision-making (2010) and How Choice Modifies Preference: Neural Correlates of Choice Justification (2011), also confirm the brain’s role in cognitive dissonance.

A study titled The Neural Basis of Rationalization: Cognitive Dissonance Reduction During Decision-making (Jarcho, Berkman, Lieberman, 2010) used the free-choice paradigm to examine brain activity during decision-making when participants actively tried to reduce cognitive dissonance. Results showed increased neural activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus, medial fronto-parietal region, and ventral striatum, while activity decreased in the anterior insula. These changes happened quickly, without conscious thought, and involved emotional responses during decision-making.

Research in Contributions from Research on Anger and Cognitive Dissonance to Understanding the Motivational Functions of Asymmetrical Frontal Brain Activity (Harmon-Jones, 2004) found that cognitive dissonance is linked to neural activity in the left frontal cortex, a brain area also connected to the emotion of anger. A study titled Anger and the Behavioural Approach System (2003) showed that when a person controls a stressful social situation causing dissonance, the left frontal cortex becomes active. If a person cannot control the situation, other negative emotions, such as socially inappropriate behavior, may arise.

The anterior cingulate cortex becomes more active when errors occur or when there are conflicts between behavior and self-concept. A study tested whether the left frontal cortex would show increased activity by asking university students to write about supporting a 10% tuition increase under high-choice or low-choice conditions. Students in the high-choice group showed greater left frontal cortex activity than those in the low-choice group. This suggests that initial dissonance activates the anterior cingulate cortex, which then activates the left frontal cortex and the approach motivational system to reduce anger.

A study titled The Origins of Cognitive Dissonance: Evidence from Children and Monkeys (Egan, Santos, Bloom, 2007) found that children and Capuchin monkeys may have evolved ways to reduce cognitive dissonance. When given a choice between two equal options, and later offered a new choice between the unchosen option and a new one, both groups chose the new option, matching the theory of cognitive dissonance.

A hypothesis in An Action-based Model of Cognitive-dissonance Processes (Harmon-Jones, Levy, 2015) suggests that psychological dissonance occurs when thoughts interfere with goal-driven behavior. Researchers mapped brain activity during tasks that caused psychological stress from contradictory actions. When participants read aloud the name of a color printed in a different color, their anterior cingulate cortex became more active, showing dissonance.

A study titled Cognitive Neuroscience of Social Emotions and Implications for Psychopathology: Examining Embarrassment, Guilt, Envy, and Schadenfreude (Jankowski, Takahashi, 2014) found that social emotions like envy are linked to activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. This activity increases when a person’s self-concept is threatened or when they experience embarrassment from social comparisons. Social emotions such as embarrassment, guilt, envy, and Schadenfreude are associated with reduced activity in the insular lobe and increased activity in the striate nucleus. These changes are linked to lower empathy and higher tendencies toward antisocial behavior.

Some school programs teach about body image and eating disorders in children and adolescents. Disordered eating behaviors include binge eating, excessive fasting, vomiting, and using diet pills. National data from 2017 and 2018 showed that about 50% of college students reported becoming more concerned with their weight and body shape after starting college.