— Reviewed by Dr. Sandip Roy.
Each pair of these maxims offers two opposing viewpoints on common life situations:
- “Look before you leap” but “He who hesitates is lost.”
- “Birds of a feather flock together” but “Opposites attract.”
- “The grass is greener on the other side of the fence” but “Home is where your heart is.”
They often cause a state of inner conflict called cognitive dissonance. Psychologists have been studying it for over 60 years now.
We commonly feel cognitive dissonance when what we see/hear challenges what we believe/know. Say, your friend has always insisted she is honest, but you catch her lying. This conflicting behavior might cause cognitive dissonance in your mind.
So the idea is this:
- When you hold two opposing thoughts at the same time, or when your actions conflict with your beliefs, it creates stress and anxiety.
- This mental discomfort pushes you to seek consistency. And that, at times, can make you behave in some unusual or irrational ways.
So, can we reduce it so that we don’t act unreasonably? Let’s find out.
6 Ways To Reduce Cognitive Dissonance
- Avoiding/Denying/Rejecting Conflicting Information
- Rationalizing Your Behavior
- Changing Your Beliefs
- Changing Your Behavior
- Reconciling Differences
- Increasing Frequency of Dissonant Behavior
1. Deny, Reject, or Avoid Conflicting Information
- Deny, reject, or avoid new information that contradicts your pre-existing ideas and beliefs.
- Seek out information that solely supports your existing beliefs (confirmation bias)
Leon Festinger said, “People will avoid information and situations that could increase that specific dissonance.”
A simple way to reduce cognitive dissonance is to avoid or reject new information that contradicts your pre-existing ideas.
In a worse way, you may also try trivializing, denying, or dismissing the contradicting information.
Some people who depend on external validation to build their self-worth, like grandiose narcissists, use this worse method. They can tell themselves that those who disagree with them are ignorant, uninformed, or biased. This reduces their cognitive dissonance and maintains their belief that they are always right.
But there’s a problem with rejecting, denying, or avoiding dissonant information. It fails to teach you anything new, blocks your critical thinking acumen, and leads to another bias, called “confirmation bias.”
2. Rationalizing The Irrational Behavior
- Convincing yourself (or others) otherwise
- Rationalizing the irrational behavior
- Minimizing the importance of conflicting beliefs
Rationalizing is the process of applying logic to a situation.
It is good when done the right way, as it allows you to make informed decisions based on logic and evidence. Seeking different options and evaluating the pros and cons can help you take calculated risks and get better results.
However, rationalizing is bad when it takes the shape of excuses.
You may apply this to reduce your cognitive dissonance. Try to rationalize your irreverent and irrational actions by inventing implausible (and sometimes ridiculous) excuses.
Despite knowing that smoking causes cancer, a smoker may rationalize the habit by claiming they only smoke once or twice a day and only when they are stressed at work.
Weick (1968) suggested that when we act in a way that goes against our beliefs or values in front of our friends and family, we may feel the need to justify or defend our behavior to avoid feeling embarrassed.
This is because changing our behavior to align with our beliefs may make us feel like we were wrong or hypocritical, which can be uncomfortable. So, instead, we may try to rationalize or justify our behavior to avoid feeling embarrassed or ashamed.
On the flip side, when you do a cognitively dissonant activity in front of strangers, you do not give a hoot (unless you are a celebrity).
This is because you know they have no idea of what beliefs you have regarding that activity.
3. Changing Your Beliefs
- Change your beliefs to align with your behavior
- View the conflicting beliefs as compatible or complementary
Another fairly easy way to reduce your cognitive dissonance is to convince yourself that there is no conflict.
And tell that to others too. In time, you will start believing in the idea that there is actually no dissonance since there is no contradiction.
“You are saying that my idea and your idea do not match. But allow me to explain why there is no contradiction there.”
And then serve them a “word salad” that leaves them utterly confused to sort out the threads of the argument.
As a cognitively dissonant person, you may also reach out to and find support from other people who hold similar opinions or matching ideologies as you, and join their group.
Then all of you might try persuading all outside the group that all fresh information is agenda-driven and fallacious.
4. Changing Your Behavior
- Change your behavior to align with your existing beliefs and values
- Modify your actions to be congruent with your attitudes
- If your behavior contradicts your beliefs, adjust the behavior
Every so often, your actions don’t match your internalized beliefs and principles. In such cases, rather than changing your beliefs, you can change your outward behavior instead.
For example, if you believe strongly in environmental conservation but find yourself wasting energy and resources, you can resolve that dissonance by modifying your daily habits — turning off lights, reducing consumption, recycling properly, etc. Aligning your conduct with your convictions eliminates the inconsistency.
This approach allows you to maintain your belief system while updating your behavior to create psychological consonance. The downside is it requires conscious effort and willpower to override ingrained patterns of behavior in service of your beliefs.
Some may find it easier to adjust their mindset than to undertake sustained behavioral changes. But for those motivated to “practice what they preach,” adjusting one’s actions can be an effective way to reduce conflicting thoughts and regain cognitive consistency.
The key is having enough self-awareness to recognize when your behaviors are clashing with your internally held values and ideals. With that recognition, you can consciously decide to update your conduct to resolve the dissonance.
5. Reconciling The Differences
- Reconciling the differences between conflicting beliefs
It means resolving the differences between your conflicting beliefs or behaviors and making peace with those that cause mental distress.
- You may shift your beliefs or behaviors to align with each other.
- You could find a way to see your beliefs or behaviors as compatible or complementary.
- You may accept the validity of pre-existing beliefs and change your behavior to match your views.
By reconciling the differences, you can reduce the pain and stress of cognitive dissonance.
Sometimes people are simply too exhausted to deal with dissonant situations and might try to find the easy way out of dissonance. They often resort to ways that are less cognitively taxing.
You could do that — distract yourself into another activity or escape the situation.
If you want to remove the discomfort of dissonance in the long run, you may need to use more complex strategies
Like changing your attitudes. Or finding a way to transcend your conflicting beliefs.
These are better strategies and require effort and time, but they can help you achieve a greater sense of consistency in your thoughts and actions.
For best results, you could do a total re-haul of your opinions stack and abandon your pre-existing ideas to build new ones.
6. Increasing Frequency of Dissonant Behavior
- Do the dissonance-causing activity more often
- It becomes easier to reduce dissonance when the contradictory behavior is repeated frequently
- Essentially desensitizing oneself to the dissonant action through increased exposure
Another way to make your dissonance less painful is to do the dissonance-causing activity more often. It is easier to stop getting conflicted and stressed when the dissonant activity is repeated frequently.
For example, eating meat while on a vegan diet causes cognitive dissonance, but the more often you do so, the easier it gets to remain unaffected by the conflict.
Final Words
The good thing about your cognitive dissonance is that it is temporary. The dissonance goes away when you change your opinion or behavior.
The problem is for those pig-heads who refuse to change their attitudes, actions, or opinions. These people remain inflexible in the face of our world’s constant change with new information.
If you are in the habit of being dogmatic about your beliefs and resist changing your deeply held beliefs, then it’s time you stop thinking too much about the past and start moving forward.
√ Also Read: Arrival Fallacy: Why Achieving Goals Doesn’t Make You Happy
√ Please spread the word if you found this helpful.
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