Theory: My Experience With Cognitive Dissonance Theory

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Cognitive dissonance is a theory presented by Leon Festinger’s in 1957. This theory suggested that we have an inner drive to hold our attitudes and beliefs in harmony. When we have two inconsistent cognitions this creates dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is physically uncomfortable to experience. There’s some negative physical tension that you feel any time you recognize two inconsistent thoughts or realize that you’ve done something through your behavior that contradicts you true attitudes and beliefs. Dissonance gets in the way of finding some sense of truth. In general, if we want to understand the world, then we want a clear, consistent picture of it. Anything that makes us feel inconsistency of something that’s a problem, and we are motivated to restore consistency again. We can restore …show more content…

By doing one of the four this will decrease dissonance and restore consistency of our behavior. My Experience with Cognitive Dissonance I have been experiencing some cognitive dissonance in my life currently. I have a love interest, we will call him Christian, and we have been knowing each other for 6 years now. We used to be in a relationship until we broke up 2 years ago. Since then we have been on and off. Currently we are back communicating, but not back together. I’m experiencing cognitive dissonance because my attitude is I’m in love with

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