Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a theory about human motivation. Cognation is an attitude or behavior that a person supports. Dissonance is an unpleasant feeling or conflict. Cognition is a desire to maintain harmony between one’s beliefs and one’s actions. Dissonance causes disharmony when someone makes a decision and follows a route of action that disagrees with their original cognition. Everyone faces frequently opportunities to make choices and to follow a course of action. When the course of action of which choice is made causes a conflict many times irrational thinking will develop. Irrational thinking is the attempt to lesson the dissonance maintaining harmony. There are three ways that people can decrease their cognitive dissonance in any decision or course of action. For example the surgeon general of the United States has provided extensive education to the people of the United States of the dangers, and addictiveness of tobacco products. Therefore people have a cognitive choice to smoke or not to smoke. People in any stage of their life, even though well educated can make a decision to use tobacco products. After their decision to use tobacco products, how do they reduce their cognitive dissonance? First they can change their conflicting behavior to have it match their attitude. Using this way people will quit using tobacco products (cold turkey) no matter what it takes. The second way they can change their conflicting cognition is to justify their behavior. For example people could realize their craving for tobacco products shouldn’t have them so they decrease their disharmony by forming an opinion such as “I have to die from something any so by using tobacco products I will at least have a choice”. The third way that people can reduce their cognitive dissonance is by life forming new cognitions to justify their behavior. In this example people admit that they are using tobacco products, they want to continue to use therefore it will explain their actions. A person might say something like (I only smoke when I go out with my smoking friends and I go out with them only once a week therefore I smoke less and therefore it’s less harmful).All of the above examples are people trying to reduce their cognitive dissonance by convincing themselves to use or not to use tobacco products.