Social psychology is a science that deals with how people act, think and feel in set up of society. The discipline deals with how individual's actions, thoughts, and emotions are affected as they interact with other people in society. Social psychology generally revolves around the study of individuals attitudes as influenced by the people in their immediate environment. One significant aspect of social psychology is cognitive dissonance as depicted by Angela Spagnolo on her YouTube channel.
According to Spanolo (2016), cognitive dissonance refers to a case involving conflicting beliefs and attitudes in individuals. The conflict results when an individual's beliefs go against their behavior or a new paradigm is presented to them. Individuals tend to maintain consistency in their perceptions; hence when their ideologies are challenged something has to come up to compensate for the dissonance (Spagnolo, 2016) . Usually, when a person's beliefs are changed by the individual's acquisition of new information, the person tends to undercut their self. In the video, the individual goes to extra lengths to account for their thoughts or feelings to reconcile the differences. Some may convince themselves that there is no conflict and others may resort to other defensive means to maintain the stability of their perceptions about their thoughts, feelings or behaviors.
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Spanolo (2016) gives various examples of cognitive dissonance behavior in the society including when people indulge in behaviors that are harmful to their health. For instance, in the video, the girl was smoking cigarettes knowing that it causes lung cancer but continued to smoke convincing themselves that it helps cure her anxiety. She, however, reconciled with the dissonance after convincing herself that she did not have to be the one to inflict suffering in her own body.
Just like it is taught in social psychology, the video portrays cognitive dissonance as a function of internal conflict and can be positively resolved by having a more open-minded approach towards issues and revising our perceptions. An example is when a person learns that smoking cigarette exposes him or her to lung cancer. As such, he or she feels the anxiety when smoking and can ease the tension by deciding to stop or reduce the habit.
Reference
Spagnolo, A. (2016). Smoking a cigarrete with Mr. cognitive dissonance [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAbVjiW439o: you tube.
