Cognitive Dissonance and Changing Behavior

In 1957 Leon Festinger was first to form the theory of cognitive dissonance into a well known social psychological theory. His theory stated that if someone behaves in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs a dissonance (discrepancy) occurs. Cognitive dissonance is the drive or feeling of discomfort caused by two or more inconsistent cognitions at the same time. Cognition is any element of knowledge which includes attitude, emotions, beliefs, or behavior. Cognition dissonance is threatening to a person’s self esteem because they see an inconsistency between the way they think that they are and they way that they actually behave. Cognitive dissonance causes a person to be in a motivated state where they have to settle the dissonance. Cognitive dissonance appears in all the evaluations and decisions people experience multiple times on a daily basis. Dissonance usually increases with the importance of the decision and the difficulty of reversing the consequences of that decision.

There are three steps that a person uses to reduce dissonance. The first step is that the person must change the behavior to come into alignment with the person’s cognition. The second step is to justify their behavior by changing one of the conflicting cognitions. The third step is to justify the behavior by adding new cognitions. For example Bob is an avid gambler. He considers himself a good provider for his family, financially stable and he can stop gambling at anytime. He intellectually knows that the gambling could be taking over his life. This begins to make him feel uncomfortable about his gambling. He wants to decrease his feelings of dissonance and the threats to his self esteem. He will first try and change the behavior by not gambling and staying away from casinos. His knowledge about gambling and how it is affecting his life is now consistent with his behavior by not gambling. However, he soon relapses and begins to gamble again. The next thing he can do might be to justify a change in his behavior in an attempt to decrease his dissonance. He begins to think that gambling is not really that addicting and he can stop anytime he really wants to. It is not really that costly because it is a form of entertainment for him. He continues to justify his behavior by thinking that he does win on occasion and than takes the money home for his family to enjoy together. By going through each of the three steps, Bob is able to reduce is cognitive dissonance so he can continue to gamble.