Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory: Summary

The psychologist Leon Festinger proposed a theory that he called cognitive dissonance and that refers to all those uncomfortable moments where we can find ourselves in conflict with ourselves due to the feeling we have of not acting in coherence with our beliefs, ideas and thoughts.

To explain better and in more depth how cognitive dissonance occurs, we are going to show you an example from everyday life that usually occurs very frequently:

Example of cognitive dissonance

One of your personal goals at this time may be to save a certain amount of money each month, the first month passes and everything is perfect, you separate the proportional part of your salary that you want to save and try not to spend more than you already you have calculated. However, the second month arrives and the sales in all the stores also arrive, so you are going to take a walk through the shopping plaza just to “take a look” and see the new clothes that have arrived and that are also at a incredible price. At that moment you think that you would like to buy some clothes because the sales are on, although on the other hand you are starting to save and if you start this month spending money that you had not contemplated, you may miss your budget and not make it to the end of the month. that you would have to take some money from your savings from last month.

You think about it many times and finally decide to buy some clothes and right after you have done so you feel remorse because you have the feeling of not having done the right thing, so you start to have thoughts like: “I shouldn’t have done it if I’m supposed to be saving.”, “It cost me so much to take the first step to save so that from one moment to the next I lose what I have”, “I’m not going to make ends meet”, etc. and to try not to feel so bad about yourself, you begin to contradict yourself and think: “I really needed those clothes”, “I had to take advantage of the fact that everything was on sale”, “I bought a lot of clothes for that price”, “the “Next month I’m not going to spend on anything else,” etc.

This is a clear example of a person who has cognitive dissonance and who, despite having done something that they wanted at the time, such as taking advantage of the sales and buying the clothes they wanted, feels uneasy because they have not been consistent with themselves. and not having met its objective, which was to save money.

Does it sound familiar to you?

This type of situation usually occurs quite frequently in everyday life where our mind tries to calm us down and defend ourselves by trying to deceive ourselves by convincing ourselves that what we did was not entirely wrong since the more incoherent we are with ourselves we will have the less emotional well-being.

As we have seen in the example in the previous section, cognitive dissonance occurs when we come into conflict with ourselves for having chosen one of the options we had that was not in line with what we really wanted or what was best for us. It must be taken into account that cognitive dissonance cannot exist when the person is forced to perform an action that he does not want and has no other alternative but to do so.

Cognitive dissonance in love

Cognitive dissonance will always occur when we have freedom of choice and have 2 or more options to choose from. All people have a series of values, beliefs and ideas that we have acquired throughout our lives and all of them direct our actions. Therefore, when I act against what I feel and think, whether because I am not respecting some of my personal values ​​or life goals, I will always enter into an internal conflict with myself and the only way to feel better will be to convince myself of that that action I carried out had some meaning for me. For example, in the case of a infidelity This phenomenon will occur within us.

We must take into account that, on many occasions, we are going to make mistakes and make mistakes for different reasons such as having acted on impulse for example, therefore that part or that defense mechanism will always appear in us that despite the error He will try to make us see his positive side. So we can use this to our advantage, that is, we can convince ourselves that what we did, although it affected us, also had some meaning, focus on it to feel better but above all learn from that experience. In this way, we can use self-deception to our advantage.

Is practically normal that we continually experience these types of situations that lead us to experience cognitive dissonance. In fact, if we did not experience it, we would not feel that small discomfort that, if we want it, leads us to do things better for the next occasion. On the other hand, if we did not try to convince ourselves of the positive or apparently positive side of our actions after having done them, the discomfort we would experience would be very exhausting.

Let’s say that for there to be a good balance between what we do and what we think, we must try to ensure that, as far as possible, we remain consistent with ourselves and at the same time, every time that does not happen and we begin to see the positive side to a situation that cannot be changed, let us also be aware of what we are doing and next time we will move more towards what we want and not continue deceiving ourselves.

In conclusion, we cannot consider cognitive dissonance as something completely bad or good since it has its pros and cons, however the important thing is to know that this can happen to us normally, learn to detect it and know how to use it to our advantage.

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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