Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that a person experiences when he/she has contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values toward others or toward society.
Here are some examples of this psychological phenomenon:
First Example of Cognitive Dissonance
I was reading some news articles and op-eds about pipelines.
The information I was reading was pretty left-wing and listed things that were against pipelines.
It talked about the harm it can cause to the environment. It also talked about how it won’t benefit people as much as it would benefit the oil corporations.
I thought I had a really good understanding of it.
When I went out to eat with some friends, they brought up pipelines. They were saying how it needs to be built and all this positive stuff.
I brought up how it can be harmful to the environment.
So they said that pipelines are the safest way to transport crude oil.
This new information conflicted with my current belief, so I started arguing with them using non-facts.
I just wanted to win the argument so that my beliefs would remain true.
Cognitive dissonance.
Second Example of Cognitive Dissonance
I was having this conversation with one of my family members and, as a joke, brought up dumpster divers.
This person started to get serious about this topic.
He was saying how odd these people are and how they aren’t motivated to succeed in life.
So I told him that he was being prejudiced because there is no way he can know that.
He said that he watched a documentary on it.
Then I said that he only one documentary and that type of blanket statement is inaccurate.
Then he counters by saying, “yeah, maybe I am being prejudiced. But those people are weird.
Maybe if they were students, then I can understand because they’re trying to save money.
But if they’re done school and still dumpster diving… then there must be something wrong with them.”
I had no response to this ignorance. I just said I couldn’t really make any other comments because I don’t know any of these people and enough information on it.
He continued to try to convince me (or himself) that he was right, but I walked away.
Cognitive dissonance (him trying to convince me, not me walking away).
***
For more on cognitive dissonance, check out this article from Simply Psychology: https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html