Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Relationship between cognitive development and moral reasoning
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
1. Conflicting views improve one’s moral reasoning, critical thinking, and mental dexterity, but difficult to accept because of their context and one’s cognitive dissonance (Dalton, Week 5). Moral reasoning begins with our own set convictions of what is right, like believing abortion is wrong. One then uses critical reasoning to analyze the reason for these convictions, like the belief that abortion is murder. Introducing new ideas leads to confusion due to confliction between our “world of action and realm of reason” (Justice, 28), like the idea that abortion is murder with the conflicting view that the child may be the product of rape. In response, we constantly go back and forth between these ideas (Justice, 28). Inner conflict and tension encourages one to exercise mental dexterity. Mental dexterity expands through the process of rethinking and revising principles to include an adaptation of these ideas, which creates a deeper understanding (Dalton, Week 2). For example, accepting that there are cases where abortion is accepting like in the case of rape. (Justice, 28). Cognitive dissonance makes it difficult for people to accept conflicting new ideas. Conflicting beliefs create discomfort …show more content…
Moral reflections turn political when they “prompt us to articulate and justify our moral and political convictions, not only among family and friends but also in the demanding company of our fellow citizens” (Justice, Pg. 29). This is true for the case of segregation, which started with the enactment of the Jim Crows laws in the 1880’s legalizing racial segregation of public facilities, including railroad cars. As illustrated in 1896 with Plessy v. Ferguson when Plessy, a 7/8 white man was arrested for refusing to move from the white seating area back to his assigned seat in the African American seating area. This case upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine in it’s decision, stating that racial segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment (Dalton, Week
As a human race we always seem to argue with ourselves, battling between one choice and th...
14 One might think that the standard cognitive view of moral judgments evades the burden of
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
Since the theory was published, cognitive dissonance has made a big impact in the way that people view attitudes and behaviors. To have a clear understanding of the cognitive dissonance theory it important to clearly understand the term cognition. A cognition is the knowledge a person has about something. They can relate to emotions, thoughts, facts or values (Barker, 2003). People hold a vast amount of cognitions with them and many of them are not conflicting with each other. But when cognitions do conflict or contradict with each other dissonance occurs and it leaves an individual in a state of uncomfortable distress. It is evident that people do not like being in a state of dissonance but researchers even argue the desire to hav...
According to Festinger (1957), we hold many cognitions about the world and ourselves. When they clash, a discrepancy is evoked, resulting in a state of tension known as cognitive dissonance. As the experience of dissonance is unpleasant, we are motivated to reduce or eliminate it, and achieve consonance.
The theory of cognitive dissonance has been developed by the psychologist Leon Festinger and according to his analysis, “every human has a tendency to strive for consistency between and among cognitions”. In psychology, cognitive dissonance is defined as a situation of conflicts in attitudes, beliefs and behavior. Those situations with conflicts lead to a state of tension or discomfort, that is when we talk about dissonance. When people are aware about their behaviors and attitudes we talk about cognitions .In addition to that, let’s define the other component of the theory which is the word dissonance. In fact , Dissonance is known as an uncomfortable state of psychological and psychological tension. Leon Festinger has illustrated the dissonance as the reaction one has when someone breaks something belonging to someone else. When a person is experiencing dissonance, they are three ways to restore consonance. The first one is to reduce the importance of the conflicting cognitions. The second one is to add numerous
When intuition, faith, and emotions run contrary to facts, science, and reason people typically act out of self-interest; furthermore, some will ignore facts and embrace irrational thoughts to justify poor actions. A moral basis from faith and intuition create a strong conscience which helps them guide their behaviors and reasoning. A strong conscience for each individual defines what is good and reasoning defines the commonality. Behaviors that implement the common good are mutually inclusive of both irrational and rational
Conflict is a natural. People go through their day-to-day life and meet those who they find agreeable and then there are those who they share conflicting views with. In order for a conflict to exist and be interpersonal, the conflict must have three parts to it. First, the conflict must be an expressed struggle, or that other opposing parties are aware of it. Next, conflict groups must be interdependent. This means that interpersonal conflict doesn’t exist if the conflicts outcome does not affect other members within the system. The last requirement for conflict is the perception that the individual is in the right about the concern of subject (Hocker and Wilmot,
All of sudden, I suddenly realize that I learn to think outside my moral intuition. At first, I believed that thinking outside the box, and trying something new with be extremely hard. However, over time the task was applicable. Something, I thought would be impossible at the time, became
Humans have a powerful internal motivation to keep a stable and positive self-image. Cognitive dissonance refers to situations where there are two or more conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors. This disharmony or dissonance between beliefs can cause feelings of stress and discomfort and is a threat to a person’s overall self-esteem and self-image. These feelings of tension and discomfort motivate a person to reduce and eliminate the dissonance. This can be achieved by changing a behavior, changing one of the contradicting thoughts, or by adding a new belief. In this paper, I analyze examples of cognitive dissonance in my life and the effectiveness of the different methods I utilized in attempting to resolve it. The first example of dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance is a state of discomfort resulting after an individual recognizes an inconsistency between their attitude and behavior or multiples attitudes. ( Baron and Branscombe, 169) It most often occurs when forced compliance is involved as well as when a person states something they do not truly believe, reject an object the person finds compelling, or find out an investment was not worth investing. (Baron and Branscombe, 169) Dissonance can lead to attitude change when the less-leads-to-more effect is applied. A person barely given enough reward to participate in counterattitudinal behavior produce greater attitude changes compared to ones receiving larger reward. This effect is due to the belief that the participants were more responsible for the actions and the negative effects resulting from their actions. (Baron and Branscombe, 170) Cognitive dissonance can be reduced via direct and indirect methods. Direct methods focus on altering the attitude and behavior inconsistency that causes the dissonance and indirect methods adopt external tactics to distract the individual from the dissonance (Baron and Branscombe, 171)
Cognitive dissonance can have an influence on our behaviors and actions if our beliefs are conflicting. “The term cognitive dissonance is used to describe the feelings of discomfort that result from holding two conflicting beliefs. When there is a discrepancy between beliefs and behaviors, something must change in order to eliminate or reduce the dissonance. Psychologist Leon Festinger describes. According to Festinger 's theory of cognitive dissonance, people try to seek consistency in their thoughts, beliefs, and opinions. So when there are conflicts between cognitions, people will take steps to reduce the dissonance and feelings of discomfort.” Changing the conflicting cognition is one of the most effective ways of dealing with dissonance, but it is also difficult, especially if they strong. Being aware of how conflicting beliefs effects decision making will help you make more appropriate
To disagree is within everyone’s capability. To do the act, in the most objective processes, is much more difficult: the mind, in all of its grandeur, still is flawed. Thus, we must reconsider our perspectives and our preconceived notions.
In discussing cognitive dissonance, I ran across a familiar attitude though new vocabulary. I have had these conflicts before, but the terminology was not known. “The theory of cognitive dissonance (CD) describes a condition of stress, or a feeling of internal discomfort caused by conflicting ideas, values, beliefs or practices” (Prvulovic, 2015). All this is saying is that sometimes there are situations in which arises two conflicting thoughts which causes psychological disturbances with a person. Many people experience this kind of behavior in the workplace when several thoughts and ideas come together in one organization. This dissonance can affect your health, your satisfaction about your job or your job performance to say the least. Having conflicting thoughts or beliefs impact your ability to make the right decisions. A person that is experiencing cognitive dissonance will seek ways to minimize it. “When
Peter F Drucker, an American author once said, ‘Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.’ Knowledge mainly consists of information, skills and opinions that are obtained through opportunities in life, encounters with individuals as well as education and life lessons imparted through education. In the modern world today, we pursue knowledge because it is useful for the pursuit of information. For many years, we, as human beings have strived to gain an advanced level of knowledge and information. A disagreement, in my opinion, is the opposite of logic; an argument that contradicts or opposes the evidence that has otherwise proven to be true. Disagreements act as obstacles that hinder the flow of pursuit of knowledge. The idea of a disagreement can be connected to the two important ways of knowing which are perception and reasoning. There are three main forms of disagreements namely religious disagreements, individual disagreements or idealistic disagreements.