I have been an ardent environmentalist for close to a year now. My daily goal is to ensure that I live green by ensuring that I engage in activities that will ensure maximum conservation to the environment. I have participated in policing and environmental campaigns to sensitive community members on the importance of maintaining a clean environment and health benefits of reducing air pollution. I recently acquired a new car as a birthday gift from my father. The car is classy, but there is one major problem. The car guzzles a lot of fuel and emits a lot of smoke to the environment the smoke contributes to air pollution and therefore conflicts with my values of environmental responsibility. I have a divided opinion between continuing driving the car and trying to save the environment.
The car does not have a very good gas mileage, and its fuel-guzzling ability is against my principle of conserving energy and the environment. The car's performance is inconsistent with my environmentally friendly values. The state of disharmony (dissonance) between my values and performance of my newly acquired car causes cognitive inconsistency.
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In the text, there is a conflicting belief in the actions of an individual who wants to maintain a healthy lifestyle and at the same time continues eating junk food such as chips on a daily and consistent basis. Though chips are tasty, it has a high fat and calorie content thus high partaking of chips is against the principles of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. To maintain goal congruence of staying healthy, the person should refrain from consuming chips and adopt a healthy diet. Even though arriving at a decision of keeping the car will not directly affect me health-wise, its environmental pollution capability affects my attitude and values of keeping my surrounding environment clean. The overall outcome of continues excessive emission of biodegradable smoke into the air will lead to air pollution. The resultant air pollution from the burnt fuel of my car thwarts my attempts to maintain a clean environment. It simply means that I am equally contributing to environmental pollution and yet I am the same person advocating for a clean and pollution free environment. My beliefs are inconsistent and conflict with my continuous use of the car. It is, therefore, my responsibility is to ensure that there are consistency and congruence between my beliefs of conserving the environment and the type of car I drive.
At first, I was very happy and received the car gift with open arms. When it came to my realization that the fuel guzzling capacity was against the values and beliefs I advocate for, my self-esteem was dealt a negative blow and it crashed instead of getting uplifted due to the change in social class. It felt like I was lying to myself and made feel like a hypocrite who preaches water but drinks wine because I was the same person advocating for pollution free environment and at the same time polluting the environment.
In an attempt to reduce discomfort dissonance, I was contemplating selling the car and use a bike or board public transport service for all my commuting needs. However, I decided of not selling the car and shifted my focus to support beliefs that outweigh my dissonant belief that car emissions are not the only responsible source of air pollution. I researched air pollution and was able to acquire new information the major contributing factors of air pollution were untreated industrial gas emissions. The research also disputes the fact that there is no connection between air pollution and air emissions.
My experience in the case of dissonance cognition helped improve my analytical capability in analyzing any every decision that affects my life. I am now in a position to make an informed decision that that impact my life positively and at the same time ensuring that any decision I make does not negatively affect other individuals in my surrounding ecosystem.
