Have you ever done something which proved to be a bad idea, then proceeded to find a million different ways to justify why you did it? I know I do this quite often, not even realising, until I came across the theory of cognitive dissonance. A nice example of cognitive dissonance is if you were someone who smoked cigarette’s, knowing the severe health impact they had on you. Many people I know justify this by saying, oh yes but i’ll quite before I have kids, or I’ll quite in a few years. This shows that they are justifying their habit by giving themselves a hall pass because they are going to quit.
This isn’t a post to bash people who smoke, you do you. I believe smoking is a great example of cognitive dissonance, people who are addicted will find ways to make themselves feel better about their actions, and that is cognitive dissonance. Another example may be if you were furious at someone for something they did to you, you hated them; fair enough. Weeks later you find out that it wasn’t actually them who wronged you, rather than go back on your hatred and apologise, you double down and invent another reason to justify your anger at them.
Cognitive dissonance is the state of having inconsistent or conflicting beliefs on something, usually relating to behaviours. It can arise when you are provided with new evidence for something which contradicts your previous actions or beliefs. This can be a very uncomfortable state of mind and can result in a heightened level of stress.
So what can I do about it?
Getting yourself out of a state of cognitive dissonance can be very easy or very difficult. Fundamentally all it requires is for you to identify the mismatch between your beliefs (or the new evidence) and your actions, then change them. In the case of being angry at someone, reflecting on the new information and accepting that there is no reason to continue to be angry (and maybe even apologising). That isn’t too hard. When it comes to longstanding behaviours or addictions such as smoking it gets harder because you must break your addiction (the current best evidence suggests nicotine patches are likely the best to assist with this. Just so everyone knows).
Ultimately, the only way to solve cognitive dissonance is to bring your beliefs and actions into alignment, which can be done by either changing your behaviour, or change your beliefs. The former is usually the hardest to do as it is normally ingrained in us but sometimes beliefs can be just as hard, due to social reasons. Maybe you’ve been a massive proponent of the paleo diet for years, only to realise that it has very little evidence going for it *cough* Pete Evans *cough*.
An example for me was realising that I’d made a bad purchase, but rather than admit that, I began fabricating all these reasons it was actually a good purchase, which I told myself and my family. Now this isn’t a huge issue but it did make me feel uncomfortable, and in hindsight, makes me feel really silly.
I hope that having an understanding of what cognitive dissonance is will help you identify it in your life, helping you live more consistently.
I was inspired to write this after listening to ‘The Drive’ podcast by Peter Attia, he had an episode with Carol Tarvis and Eliot Aronson who are both social psychologists. This was an excellent listen where they discussed the concept of cognitive dissonance, the theory and how it affects our lives. Check it out if you’re interested to learn more.
Harrison Hansford 