Essay On Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a theory defined as “the discomfort people feel when two cognitions (beliefs, attitudes) conflict, or when they behave in ways that are inconsistent with their conception of themselves” (Aronson, 2016, pg. 158). This, in turn, causes discomfort that can be difficult to ease. Some basic ways to reduce cognitive dissonance are: Realign our behavior with the dissonant condition, justify our behavior by changing one of the dissonant behaviors, justify our behavior by adding additional cognitions. The reason we experience cognitive dissonance is that as humans we aim to keep a positive self-image, but occasionally we go against that image and cause cognitive dissonance (Aronson, 2016). The following are

I am a Nanny and keep two children on the days that I work on top of running errands and cleaning the house. I usually do not get too stressed when I am at work, but this particular day was quite stressful. I ended up yelling at the eight-year-old that I keep over something silly, which was her not putting her bike under the carport. This is something any eight-year-old would forget to do, and instead of me asking her first I went straight to getting aggravated with her. This immediately caused me to experience cognitive dissonance, because I always believe in treating the kids with respect and giving them the benefit of the doubt first. She could have just been distracted or only coming in for a few minute to use the bathroom, but instead of considering those options first I went straight to arguing with her. I felt horrible about yelling at her, and I once again felt guilt for taking my stressful day out on her. To reduce this dissonance I apologized to her and corrected my behavior toward the kids for the rest of the day. Then, I found myself reducing the discomfort even more by justifying my actions and telling myself that all parent, guardians, or nannies get easily aggravated with the kids sometimes. This was me adding in a new cognition to reduce the feelings of

I am a 4.0 student and I have never consciously missed an assignment since I have been in college. I am fully aware that this is not only bad, but it goes against my beliefs of work ethic. This probably hindered my positive self-image the most of all of the examples. I figured the assignments were not worth many points at all, so I purposely missed them to focus on another assignment, and when I received the zero I immediately felt the discomfort wash over me. To reduce my discomfort I once again justified my actions by adding a new cognition. This time I used self-affirmation which is " a way of reducing dissonance by reminding oneself of one or more of one's positive attributes" (Aronson, 2016, pg. 160). I simply told myself that I was a very good student, that I made good grades, and that I completed all of the other assignments. This did, in the end, reduce a lot of my discomfort, but I also plan on learning from this experience, and not repeating