Cognitive dissonance is a state of conflicting attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that produce mental discomfort. Most people respond to that discomfort by altering their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to restore the balance. An example of cognitive dissonance is the mental process through which smokers justify their smoking. Smoking is a behavior, but science has linked the habit to cancer. The knowledge of the dangers of smoking is the cognition, but it conflicts with their habits, so smokers have to find a way of ignoring the information. Therefore, they might claim that they do not smoke excessively, or they might stop in the future to reduce the risk of cancer.
Based on experiments by Festinger (1957), humans have a natural motivation to seek consistency among cognitions and to deal with possible inconsistency or dissonance. The theory of cognitive dissonance can, therefore, explain behaviors such as bias or prejudice. However, on the other hand, Piaget suggested that presenting students with contradictory information could induce learning. The contradiction creates uncertainty, which prompts students to resolve it, and in the process, get an opportunity to learn something new (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 2019). One form of contraction is the presence of errors or something that contradicts the current information, or knowledge one is in possession. Such conditions force a person to take steps to learn more, or explore the issue in question to restore consistency.
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The theory of cognitive dissonance does a lousy job of predicting behavior. The theory assumes that an individual can only entertain one belief system as the ultimate guide of behavior and not two. However, in some cultures, people are comfortable operating under two conflicting systems as part of normal behavior. When confronted with conflicting information, some people embrace the contradiction without altering their existing beliefs or attitudes (Izuma et al. 2010). Moreover, a change in the face of something new is not necessary due to the effect of cognitive dissonance, but other motivations could be at play. For instance, in the case of corrupt police officers, they take bribes knowing the practice is illegal, but do it anyway as their colleagues within the force will protect them.
There is also an inconsistency in the methodology used in studies exploring the concept. For instance, the state of the dissonance and the term for the theory are not clearly distinguished. Festinger (1957) argued that regulation strategies are supposed to reduce dissonance, but it is unclear whether the regulation is about resolving the inconsistency or alleviating the arousal brought by a situation leading to a feeling of discomfort. The issue lacks clarity in the original conception of the theory. Also, as mentioned previously, in some people, the arousal does not arise in the first place due to their ability to deal with or accommodate contradictions.
Given the criticisms described above, recent theoretical views or interpretations of the cognitive dissonance focus more on some aspects of the theory. For instance, researchers are now more interested, like the regulation strategy to address cognitive dissonance and not necessarily the inconsistency (Izuma et al. 2010). Regulation is about decreasing the motivation state while reduction deals with the inconsistency. Previously, researchers thought that a change in behavior is due to the presence of dissonance, but that is not always the case. However, behavioral change from the perspective of the theory in only evidence of regulation occurring under specific conditions. The occurrence of regulation is not equivalent to dissonance. Therefore, the theory is currently undergoing refinement to flesh out inconsistencies that have even made some experiments non-replicable.
References
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance . Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson and Company. Reedited in 1962/1985 at Stanford University Press.
Harmon-Jones, E., & Mills, J. (2019). An introduction to cognitive dissonance theory and an overview of current perspectives on the theory. Cognitive Dissonance: Reexamining a Pivotal Theory in Psychology (2nd Ed.). , 3–24. doi: 10.1037/0000135-001
Izuma, K., Matsumoto, M., Murayama, K., Samejima, K., Sadato, N., & Matsumoto, K. (2010). Neural correlates of cognitive dissonance and choice-induced preference change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 107 (51), 22014–22019. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1011879108
