Cognitive Lewis

Dissonance
Hargreaves
What is Cognitive Dissonance?
Leon Festinger: The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957)

• Cognitive Dissonance is the mental discomfort

experienced by someone holds two thoughts that are
inconsistent with one another.

• Those who experience cognitive dissonance tend to be

motivated to reduce discomfort.

• People strive for mental consistency.

• “The grass is usually not greener on the other side”

How it effects us?

• Tends to only manifest when you feel like you had a choice

• It is said that when experiencing cognitive dissonance people feel an actual

physical discomfort

• It will also cause people to feel that this inconstancy will cause some form of
negativity later in life

• You’re asked to write an essay about the positives of increased tuition fees. You
write the essay. Tuition fees increase because of this. (Luttrell, 2016)
Examples of Cognitive Dissonance

• Somebody who smokes whilst acknowledging that its bad for their health

• Somebody who eats unhealthily whilst acknowledging that its bad for them

• Me buying people things saying “its fine I can afford it” whilst being in my overdraft

• Give a child a toy they can keep and show them one they cant keep. Ask which they
prefer. They will probably say they like the one they can keep. Take away the one they
can’t keep then ask once more. Studies show that their opinion wont change,
conflicting with the saying “grass is greener on the other side” (Festinger, 1962)
How People Respond to it

• People will usually respond to cognitive dissonance in 3

ways
They will either:

• Deny or ignore the problem

• Trivialise the problem

• Work to re-establish constancy

Bibliography

• Festinger, L. (1962). Cognitive Dissonance. [online] JSTOR. Available at:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24936719?seq=1 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

• Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press.

• Luttrell, A. (2016). Cognitive Dissonance Theory: A Crash

Course. YouTube. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y17YaZRRvY [Accessed 6 Nov.
2019].