In psychology, cognitive dissonance is a mental conflict that happens when people hold ideas, beliefs, or actions that do not match. When people face situations that show these differences, they often feel uncomfortable and try to change their thoughts or actions to reduce the conflict. This can happen by changing a belief, explaining away the problem, or acting in ways that make the conflict feel smaller.
Important parts of cognition include a person’s actions, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, values, and things around them. Cognitive dissonance is not always obvious, but it can cause stress when someone does something that goes against their beliefs or when new information challenges what they already believe.
According to the theory, when two ideas or actions do not match, people naturally try to fix the problem. They often change how they think about one part to make the situation feel more consistent. This discomfort happens when beliefs clash with new information or when someone must deal with a problem that has opposing sides. To feel better, people try to find ways to make the situation easier to handle. This need to reduce discomfort can help change attitudes, such as encouraging kind behavior or helping people stop harmful actions.
In When Prophecy Fails (1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger explained that people try to keep their thoughts and actions in line to function well in the real world. When people feel inner conflict, they become uncomfortable and are motivated to reduce the tension. They may change their thinking to justify their actions, add new ideas to explain the conflict, believe that people get what they deserve, focus on some information while ignoring others, or avoid situations that might make the conflict worse. Festinger’s theory remains one of the most important ideas in modern psychology. He described how people avoid dealing with conflict by saying, "If you tell someone they’re wrong, they might ignore you. If you show them facts, they might question where you got them. If you use logic, they might not understand 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 influential 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 psychological stress when their beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors conflict. According to the book Persuasion and Influence in American Life, people often reduce this stress by either justifying their actions or changing their beliefs. Festinger’s interest in how people evaluate their beliefs and resolve internal conflicts was influenced by his earlier work on social comparison theory, which helps explain why conflicts cause tension.
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 work in Gestalt psychology. For much of his career, Festinger studied under Lewin and later returned to work 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 create order in their lives. These habits might include sitting in the same seat during a commute or eating meals at the same time each day. When these routines are disrupted, people may feel uneasy, which can affect their thinking or beliefs. Festinger concluded that the only way to reduce this discomfort is by changing either their actions or their beliefs to restore balance.
Since publishing A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in 1957, Festinger’s work has helped explain how people deal with personal biases, how they reframe situations to maintain a positive self-image, and why people may act in ways that conflict with their values by seeking or avoiding certain information.
Relations among cognitions
To live in society, people often change how their thoughts and actions match. These changes between thinking and doing lead to one of three types of relationships with the real world:
The term "magnitude of dissonance" describes how uncomfortable a person feels when faced with conflicting ideas or actions. This discomfort can happen when two beliefs inside a person do not agree, or when an action does not match a person's beliefs. Two factors influence how strong this discomfort feels when two thoughts or two actions conflict:
People always experience some level of discomfort when making decisions because their knowledge and understanding change over time. The level of discomfort is measured subjectively, since it is based on a person's own reports, and there is no clear, objective way to measure it exactly.
Reduction
Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that people try to keep their thoughts, beliefs, and actions in line with each other. When there is a conflict between what someone believes and what happens in the real world, they feel mental stress. To reduce this stress, people take actions to make their thoughts and actions more consistent.
Reducing cognitive dissonance can happen in several ways. One method is to change thoughts or actions to match each other. Another is to justify the conflict by finding reasons to accept it. A third method is to ignore the conflict entirely. These strategies help people feel less stressed when their beliefs or actions do not match.
Three cognitive bias theories are connected to cognitive dissonance. First, the "bias blind spot" is when people think they are less likely to have biases than others. Second, the "better-than-average effect" is when people believe they are better than others in terms of skills or character. Third, "confirmation bias" is when people pay more attention to information that supports their existing beliefs and ignore information that contradicts them.
According to research from The Psychology of Prejudice (2006), people use categories such as gender, age, and race to help them interact with others. These categories help people make sense of the world and manage their social relationships.
Studies from many scientific fields, including social psychology and neuroscience, suggest that all behaviors involving thinking are influenced by cognitive dissonance. For example, behaviors like curiosity, aggression, and fear may be linked to trying to reduce mental conflict. If someone cannot reduce this conflict, it may cause stress.
One way to reduce cognitive dissonance is through "selective exposure." This idea was first proposed by psychologist Leon Festinger. He found that people choose to engage with information that matches their current beliefs and avoid information that challenges them. For example, people might watch or read news, music, or movies that support their views and avoid those that do not. This helps them feel more comfortable and reduces mental stress.
A study from 1992 showed how selective exposure works. In a nursing home, residents who felt lonely were shown documentaries about both happy, successful elderly people and unhappy, lonely elderly people. The residents preferred the documentaries about unhappy, lonely people. This suggests that people are more likely to choose information that matches their current feelings or experiences. Watching someone else’s happiness might have made them feel more lonely, so they chose media that aligned with their mood.
Another example is how people choose media that matches their political views. A 2015 study found that people trusted news articles that supported their beliefs more than articles that challenged them, even if the sources were the same. This shows that people often seek out information that agrees with their existing opinions.
Recent research also suggests that when people feel a conflict between their thoughts, they are more likely to seek out information that supports their beliefs. At the same time, when people feel negative emotions, they tend to avoid information that goes against their beliefs. This helps them reduce the mental discomfort caused by cognitive dissonance.
Paradigms
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There are four theoretical paradigms of cognitive dissonance, which is the mental stress people feel when they are exposed to information that does not match their beliefs, ideals, or values. These paradigms are called Belief Disconfirmation, Induced Compliance, Free Choice, and Effort Justification. Each of these explains what happens after a person acts in a way that is inconsistent with their beliefs, after a person makes a decision, and what happens when a person puts in a lot of effort to achieve a goal. A common idea in all of these paradigms is that when people are faced with evidence that challenges their beliefs, they will try very hard to justify keeping their original beliefs.
When a person's beliefs, ideals, or values are contradicted, it causes cognitive dissonance. This can be resolved by changing the challenged belief. However, instead of changing their beliefs, people may reduce the mental stress by misperceiving 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.
In the early hypothesis of belief contradiction, a study called When Prophecy Fails (1956) showed that members of an apocalyptic religious cult deepened their faith even after their prophecy failed. The cult believed that an alien spacecraft would soon arrive to save them from Earth's corruption. When the spacecraft did not arrive, the members experienced strong cognitive dissonance. To resolve this, most of them believed that the aliens had given Earth a second chance, which allowed them to redirect their religious efforts toward environmentalism and social advocacy. This change in belief led the cult to grow in numbers through proselytism.
In the study The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (2008), belief contradiction was observed in the Chabad Orthodox Jewish congregation, who believed that their Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was the Messiah. When he died in 1994, some members of the congregation refused to accept that he was not the Messiah and continued to believe he would return from the dead.
In the study Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance (1959), researchers Leon Festinger and Merrill Carlsmith asked students to perform tedious tasks, such as turning pegs. After completing the tasks, the students were asked to convince another group that the tasks were fun. One group was paid $20, another was paid $1, and a control group was not asked to speak with the other group. The students who were paid $1 rated the tasks more positively than those who were paid $20. This was evidence of cognitive dissonance. The students who were paid $1 had no external justification for their actions, so they convinced themselves that the tasks were actually fun. The students who were paid $20 had an external justification for their actions, so they experienced less cognitive dissonance.
In the study The Effect of the Severity of Threat on the Devaluation of Forbidden Behavior (1963), researchers Elliot Aronson and Carlsmith examined self-justification in children. Children were told that playing with a forbidden toy would result in either a severe or mild punishment. All children refrained from playing with the toy. Later, when the threat of punishment was removed, the children who had been threatened with a mild punishment were less likely to play with the toy. This was because they had to justify to themselves why they did not play with the forbidden toy. The punishment was not strong enough to resolve their cognitive dissonance, so they convinced themselves that playing with the toy was not worth the effort.
In the study The Efficacy of Musical Emotions Provoked by Mozart's Music for the Reconciliation of Cognitive Dissonance (2012), researchers Nobuo Masataka and Leonid Perlovsky found that listening to music can reduce the development of cognitive dissonance. In an experiment, children who listened to classical music in the background did not devalue the importance of a forbidden toy as much as those who did not listen to music. The researchers concluded that music might help reduce the thoughts that cause cognitive dissonance.
Music can also help reduce post-decisional dissonance. In an earlier study called Washing Away Postdecisional Dissonance (2010), researchers suggested that the act of hand-washing might reduce the thoughts that cause cognitive dissonance. However, this study later failed to replicate.
In the study Post-decision Changes in Desirability of Alternatives (1956), 225 female students rated domestic appliances and then were asked to choose one as a gift. The results showed that the students increased their ratings of the appliance they chose and decreased their ratings of the one they rejected.
This type of cognitive dissonance occurs when a person faces a difficult decision and the rejected choice may still have desirable characteristics.
Examples
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Meat-eating can create differences between the act of eating meat and the values or beliefs a person holds. Some researchers call this kind of conflict the meat paradox. Hank Rothgerber suggested that meat eaters may face a conflict between their eating habits and their feelings toward animals. This happens when a person realizes that their behavior as a meat eater goes against their beliefs, attitudes, or values. To deal with this, people may use different methods, such as avoiding thinking about it, pretending they don't know, separating themselves from the situation, believing they have changed their behavior, or blaming others for the problem. Once this conflict happens, people may reduce it by thinking in ways that support their behavior, such as looking down on animals, giving reasons that support eating meat, or saying they are not responsible for eating meat.
The amount of conflict a person feels about eating meat can depend on their values and beliefs because these can affect whether they see any problem with their eating habits. For example, people who value being in control and see themselves as masculine are less likely to feel this conflict because they are less likely to believe eating meat is wrong. Others deal with this conflict by ignoring the facts about where their food comes from or by giving reasons that are not strong, such as taste. This psychological situation becomes stronger when people think about the mind or human-like qualities of animals.
A study called "Patterns of Cognitive Dissonance-reducing Beliefs Among Smokers: A Longitudinal Analysis from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Four Country Survey (2012)" showed that smokers use beliefs that support their behavior to reduce the conflict they feel about smoking and the bad effects of smoking.
To reduce this conflict, people who smoke changed their beliefs to match their actions:
Throwing trash in places where it is not allowed, even though it is wrong and harms the environment, is a clear example of this kind of conflict, especially if the person feels bad about it but still does it.
Between November 2015 and March 2016, a study by Xitou Nature Education Area in Taiwan looked at how tourists litter. Researchers studied the relationships between tourists' attitudes toward the environment, their feelings of conflict, and their actions that damage the environment. In this study, 500 questionnaires were given out and 499 were returned. The results showed that older tourists had better attitudes toward the environment and cared more about it. Older tourists who liked outdoor activities were less likely to litter. Younger tourists, on the other hand, littered more and felt more conflict. This study showed that younger tourists littered more overall and felt regret or thought about it after.
A study by Kari Marie Norgaard looked at how people in Norway deal with the conflict between their attitudes toward climate change and their actions, such as littering and environmental justice. Norgaard found that some Norwegians had ways to reduce their feelings of conflict that helped them feel in control of their lives and avoid feeling responsible for climate change. Some people had the advantage of "tools of order" and "innocence" that allowed them to avoid thinking about how their actions affect the environment and reduce their feelings of conflict. The study showed that most Norwegians used these methods to avoid dealing with their situation.
In a study called "Cognitive Dissonance and Attitudes Toward Unpleasant Medical Screenings (2016)," researchers Michael R. Ent and Mary A. Gerend told study participants about a test for a made-up virus called the "human respiratory virus-27." The study used a fake virus to keep participants from having opinions or feelings about the virus that might affect the experiment. The participants were in two groups: one group was told they were being tested for the virus, and the other was told they were not. The researchers said, "We predicted that [study] participants who thought they were being tested for the unpleasant test would feel conflict because they know the test is both uncomfortable and good for them—this conflict was predicted to make them have negative feelings about the test."
In the context of religious practices, especially in Christian or Catholic traditions, being a homosexual and engaging in those acts while being religious can seem to be in conflict.
Kimberly A. Mahaffy described this in her study "Cognitive Dissonance and Its Resolution: A Study of Lesbian Christians." She explained that many Christian women who are also lesbians experience a strong tension because of their different identities. Their conflicts were found to be either no conflict (or not seeing it), internal conflict (feeling that no one else can judge them, but fearing that God might), or external conflict (feeling that God is okay with them but others are not). Many people dealt with this by changing the meaning of Bible passages to comfort themselves and focusing on how wide and deep God's love is.
In another study by Martine Gross, 311 men and 84 women in France were asked about their relationship with churches and religion. The study found that some people who still believed that homosexual acts were wrong according to the church and still went to church had a kind of conflict. However, the main way they dealt with this was by leaving a more traditional church that focused more on this conflict and moving to a less traditional church that was more open to accepting people who are homosexual or at least less focused on the differences between religious beliefs and homosexual practices.
In "The Process of Jesus' Deification and Cognitive Dissonance Theory" by Fernando Bermejo-Rubio (2017), it was found that there was some kind of conflict in how early Jews viewed the idea of accepting Jesus as God. If early Jews believed in one God, Bermejo-Rubio asked how these Jews, especially the Nazareans, could believe that Jesus was a deity since God was already their main being of worship. Some kind of conflict must have happened for them to accept two gods. If Jesus was fully human and Jewish, how did he become a god? This research said that much of this conflict must have happened in the Nazarean movement after Jesus' death, not during or before.
Evangelists may feel a kind of conflict when asked to become missionaries because they may be asked to present their religion in a way that does not match how they practice it. In "Symbolic Filtering: Selectively Permeable Evangelical Boundaries in an Age of Religious Pluralism" by Jared Bok, this was studied and found to not be a kind of conflict but rather a way of being selective about which boundaries to cross while ignoring others to spread their religion in a way that is morally right to them.
Conflict can also be found in the attitudes of people who are thinking about changing religions. In "Implications of Conversion and Magnitude of Cognitive Dissonance" by Timothy C. Brock (1962), religious and non-religious men from Yale were asked about their feelings of conflict when considering converting to Catholicism. This study was done on men who were thinking about changing their religion.
Applications
The way people handle cognitive dissonance, which is the discomfort from holding conflicting beliefs, can affect how motivated students are to learn. A study from 1975, called Turning Play into Work, showed that giving preschoolers rewards for completing puzzles made them less interested in the puzzles later compared to children who completed the tasks without rewards. This suggests that external rewards might reduce a child’s natural interest in learning.
Using cognitive dissonance in learning models helps students recognize conflicts between their beliefs and new information. This process teaches students to defend their beliefs and then objectively consider new facts to resolve the conflict. Educational tools based on these ideas help students handle complex subjects better. Reviews of many studies show that creating cognitive dissonance through psychological methods improves learning in subjects like reading and science.
Cognitive dissonance also explains why certain therapies work. 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. This shows that feeling in control of decisions can improve outcomes.
A 1980 study found that people with a fear of snakes (ophidiophobia) who spent effort on activities that did not help them directly showed fewer fear symptoms. Similarly, a 1985 study showed that patients who justified their efforts in weight-loss therapy felt better and were more successful. These findings suggest that effort justification can lead to long-term changes in behavior.
Cognitive dissonance is also used to encourage positive social behaviors, such as using condoms or avoiding littering. It helps explain why people might donate to charity or support anti-racism efforts. Research by Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen (2015) found that people who commit violent acts against others from different racial groups often develop hostile attitudes to reduce their discomfort. These attitudes may continue even after the violence stops. This supports the idea that racial divisions can be influenced by individual actions.
A study called Vicarious Dissonance shows that dissonance can affect group behavior. When a group member acts against the group’s norms, others may feel dissonance even if they did not act. People may change their attitudes to protect their group’s image, even if they were not directly involved. This aligns with Festinger’s original theory, which applies to both individuals and groups.
In 2020, Lyu and Wehby found that wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic reduced cases by 2%. However, some people resisted mask use and vaccines despite evidence from health organizations. The Ad Council ran campaigns to encourage people to follow CDC and WHO guidelines, such as wearing masks and getting vaccinated. Surveys showed that most Americans agreed these measures were necessary, but only about half followed them regularly. This created cognitive dissonance because people believed in the importance of safety measures but did not always act on them.
A study by Cooper and Worchel (1970) looked at how personal responsibility affects dissonance. Participants were asked to work with partners who had negative traits. Some knew about the traits beforehand, while others did not. The study aimed to see how awareness of a partner’s flaws influenced dissonance and responsibility for outcomes.
Related theories and ideas
Self-regulation is the process by which an environment influences a person, and a person responds to that influence. When a situation or environment encourages a person to act in a way that is accepted by society, but the person chooses not to act, this creates a conflict in their thinking called cognitive dissonance. In such cases, the person may try to explain or justify their behavior to align with their surroundings. Self-regulation includes all types of actions, such as following rules of thought, behavior, and even mental processes. In the book 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 thoughts and actions to meet social expectations.
Self-regulation can be divided into two types: intentional and organismic. Intentional self-regulation happens when a person is aware of their choices and plans how to change their behavior. Organismic self-regulation refers to automatic bodily responses, such as adjusting body temperature, that are not controlled by conscious thought. When self-regulation is linked to cognitive dissonance, it is intentional because this type of conflict occurs in the conscious mind, not in unconscious, biologically controlled processes.
Self-regulation develops during childhood and adolescence as the brain's frontal cortex matures. How people respond to their environment and process information is shaped by the reactions of those around them. Over time, self-regulation can change as people grow and experience life. This growth is not always steady; it may change or shift as a person develops. Delaying gratification, such as waiting to enjoy a reward instead of taking it immediately, is an example of self-regulation that helps build control.
Cognitive dissonance is also connected to the theory of moral disengagement, which occurs when a person separates their thinking from their usual moral beliefs to justify an action. This is a form of self-directed disengagement, where a person applies this conflict to their own actions, not to the actions of others. This theory is closely linked to self-regulation, as explained earlier.
Personal standards, such as how a person wants to live, and moral standards, such as how a person is taught to live, influence these theories. 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 use moral disengagement. Cognitive dissonance happens when a person justifies an action that goes against their usual thinking. Moral disengagement is a type of cognitive dissonance where a person acts immorally and then uses reasoning to make their actions seem acceptable again.
Moral disengagement often involves strong feelings of guilt, especially before the person chooses to disengage from their morals. This distinguishes it from cognitive dissonance. While cognitive dissonance uses moral reasoning to justify actions, moral disengagement completely separates from moral thinking and creates a new way of justifying actions.
Moral disengagement is often driven by self-interest and actions taken for personal gain. These choices can lead to unethical behavior. In the study Situational Moral Disengagement: Can the Effects of Self-Interest be Mitigated? by Kish-Gephart et al. (2014), the researchers explain that moral disengagement occurs when a person sees a clear opportunity to benefit themselves. This study also connects moral disengagement to weak self-regulation, which is influenced by social standards that guide behavior.
Alternative paradigms
In Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena (1967), social psychologist Daryl Bem introduced the self-perception theory. This theory suggests that people often do not think deeply about their attitudes, even during conflicts with others. According to the theory, people form attitudes by observing their own behavior. They then believe their attitudes caused the behavior they observed, especially when their feelings or thoughts are unclear or weak. In this situation, people act like observers, using 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 Festinger and Carlsmith study (Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance, 1959), participants were asked, "Did you find the task interesting?" Many answered "yes," even if they did not truly enjoy the task. They believed their answer reflected their actual feelings. Those paid $20 likely thought the money, not the task itself, caused their positive response.
The self-perception theory (Bem) and 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 (Aronson, Berkowitz, 1969), Elliot Aronson connected cognitive dissonance to the self-concept. He explained that mental stress occurs when conflicting thoughts threaten a person’s positive view of themselves. A reinterpretation of the Festinger and Carlsmith study suggested that dissonance arose from a conflict between the thoughts "I am an honest person" and "I lied about finding the task interesting."
A study titled Cognitive Dissonance: Private Ratiocination or Public Spectacle? (Tedeschi, Schlenker, etc., 1971) found that people protect their public image by maintaining consistency in their thoughts, not necessarily their private self-image. However, a later study (I'm No Longer Torn After Choice: How Explicit Choices Implicitly Shape Preferences of Odors, 2010) showed that people can change their preferences for items after making a choice, even if they no longer remember the choice.
Fritz Heider proposed a theory about attitude changes, based on the idea that people want to keep their thoughts and feelings balanced. This drive, called the consistency motive, pushes people to keep their values and beliefs the same over time. Heider’s idea of psychological 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 are placed at the corners of a triangle and connected by two relationships. People aim for balance in these relationships, such as having three positive or two negative and one positive connections. They avoid unbalanced states, like three negative or two positive and one negative connections.
In On the Measurement of the Utility of Public Works (1969), Jules Dupuit explained that decisions can be studied from an economic perspective. People compare the costs and benefits of choices to decide if a decision is worth making. This process helps them determine if the benefits of a choice outweigh the costs. However, people often struggle to compare costs and benefits effectively.
E. Tory Higgins suggested that people compare themselves to three different "selves": their ideal self, their actual self, and their ought self. When these self-guides conflict, psychological stress (cognitive dissonance) occurs. People try to reduce the gap between these self-guides.
In the 1980s, Cooper and Fazio argued that dissonance arises from negative consequences, not just conflicting thoughts. They believed that people feel bad because they believe lying is wrong, not because their thoughts conflict. However, later research showed that people still feel dissonance even when they believe they did nothing wrong. For example, people felt dissonance even when convincing others to use condoms, even if they themselves did not use condoms.
A study titled How Choice Affects and Reflects Preferences: Revisiting the Free-choice Paradigm (Chen, Risen, 2010) criticized the free-choice method for studying cognitive dissonance. The method assumes that changes in how people rate options show changes in their attitudes. However, other factors, like indifference between choices, might explain different ratings.
Some follow-up studies (Do Choices Affect Preferences? Some Doubts and New Evidence, 2013) questioned the reliability of this method. However, other studies (Neural Correlates of Cognitive Dissonance and Choice-induced Preference Change, 2010) found no evidence that the method is invalid. These studies showed that making a choice can change a person’s preferences.
Festinger’s original theory did not explain why inconsistency feels so uncomfortable. The action–motivation model suggests that inconsistency causes stress because it interferes with a person’s ability to function in the real world. To cope, people might change their behavior or adjust their beliefs to match their actions. Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person’s thoughts do not align with their actions.
Cognitive dissonance creates a negative emotional state, which pushes people to rethink their actions to resolve the conflict. As people work to commit to a behavior, this process activates the left frontal cortex of the brain.
The predictive dissonance model links cognitive dissonance to the predictive coding model of the mind. This model suggests that the brain uses prior knowledge to predict new experiences, primarily through a system called Bayesian hierarchy. This system helps the brain interpret sensory and internal information.
Neuroscience findings
Technological advances are helping psychologists understand how the brain works during cognitive dissonance. A study titled Neural Activity Predicts Attitude Change in Cognitive Dissonance (Van Veen, Krug, etc., 2009) used a special brain scan called fMRI to find the brain areas involved in cognitive dissonance. The scan showed that some participants, from an experimental group, said they enjoyed the uncomfortable environment of the fMRI machine more than participants in the control group, who were paid actors.
The results of this study support a theory from 1957 about cognitive dissonance and also support a theory about how the brain deals with psychological conflict. The brain’s anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insular cortex become more active when a person’s attitude changes. The level of brain activity in these areas is linked to how much a person’s attitude changes.
Another study, How Choice Reveals and Shapes Expected Hedonic Outcome (2009), showed that after making a choice, brain activity in the striatum changes to match a person’s new opinion about the chosen item. Brain activity increases if the item is chosen and decreases if it is rejected. Studies like The Neural Basis of Rationalization: Cognitive Dissonance Reduction During Decision-making (2010) and How Choice Modifies Preference: Neural Correlates of Choice Justification (2011) also found brain activity linked to cognitive dissonance.
A study titled The Neural Basis of Rationalization: Cognitive Dissonance Reduction During Decision-making (Jarcho, Berkman, Lieberman, 2010) used fMRI to examine brain activity while participants tried to reduce cognitive dissonance. The results showed increased brain activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus, medial fronto-parietal region, and ventral striatum, and decreased activity in the anterior insula. These changes happened quickly, without the person being aware of them, and showed that the brain uses emotional responses during decisions.
A study from 2004, Contributions from Research on Anger and Cognitive Dissonance to Understanding the Motivational Functions of Asymmetrical Frontal Brain Activity (Harmon-Jones), found that cognitive dissonance is linked to brain activity in the left frontal cortex, which is also connected to the emotion of anger. Another study, Anger and the Behavioural Approach System (2003), showed that when a person takes control of a situation causing dissonance, brain activity in the left frontal cortex increases. If a person cannot control the situation, they may feel negative emotions like socially inappropriate behavior.
The anterior cingulate cortex becomes more active when people make mistakes or face conflicts with their self-image. A study tested whether the left frontal cortex would be more active in students who had more choice in writing a paper about tuition increases. Students in the high-choice group showed more activity in the left frontal cortex than those in the low-choice group. This suggests that dissonance first affects the anterior cingulate cortex, then activates the left frontal cortex to reduce anger.
A study titled The Origins of Cognitive Dissonance: Evidence from Children and Monkeys (Egan, Santos, Bloom, 2007) found that preschool children and Capuchin monkeys may have evolved ways to reduce dissonance. When given choices between similar items, both groups later preferred new items over previously unchosen ones, even though all items had equal value.
A study called An Action-based Model of Cognitive-dissonance Processes (Harmon-Jones, Levy, 2015) proposed that dissonance happens when thoughts interfere with goal-driven actions. Researchers found increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex when people performed tasks that caused psychological stress from contradictory behaviors.
A study titled Cognitive Neuroscience of Social Emotions and Implications for Psychopathology: Examining Embarrassment, Guilt, Envy, and Schadenfreude (Jankowski, Takahashi, 2014) linked social emotions like envy and embarrassment to brain activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. These emotions were associated with reduced activity in the insular lobe and increased activity in the striate nucleus, which may lower empathy and increase antisocial behavior.
Some school programs teach about body image and eating disorders in children and adolescents. Disordered eating includes binge eating, fasting, vomiting, and using diet pills. Data from 2017 and 2018 showed that about 50% of college students became more concerned with their weight and body shape after starting college.