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When beliefs collide: How do people deal with psychological contradictions and conflicts?
In psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as the psychological discomfort people feel when they realize that their cognitions are inconsistent or contradictory with their behaviors. This state may ultimately prompt people to adjust their cognition or behavior to achieve greater harmony between the two, thereby reducing this sense of dissonance. Relevant information includes people's behavior, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, values, and the environment in which they live. These cognitions often lead to psychological distress for the individual who engages in an action that contradicts one or more of these beliefs.
Cognitive dissonance is often viewed as a response to psychological stress, when a person's behavior or beliefs are psychologically inconsistent with other beliefs, and they do everything they can to change those beliefs and bring them into alignment.
According to this theory, psychological discomfort occurs when an action or idea conflicts with other beliefs held by an individual. Individuals will try to find ways to resolve this contradiction and reduce their own anxiety. In his 1956 and 1957 papers When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group Predicting World Destruction and Cognitive Dissonance Theory, American social psychologist Leon Festinger pointed out that human efforts Strive for inner psychological coherence in order to function properly in the real world. People who experience internal inconsistency often feel psychological discomfort and are driven to reduce this cognitive dissonance.
To reduce this feeling of dissonance, individuals may employ several different strategies. For example, they may rationalize their behavior by adding new cognitions or selectively accept certain information while rejecting or even ignoring other information that contradicts it. Festinger described this phenomenon this way: "Tell him you object, and he turns away. Give him some facts or data, and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic, and he can't see your point. .”
Relationships between cognitions
In order to function in human society, individuals continually adjust the consistency between their psychological attitudes and their behavior. This adjustment can produce the following three relationships:
- Congruent relations: A cognition or behavior that is consistent with other cognitions, such as choosing water instead of alcohol when dining out to avoid getting drunk.
- Irrelevant: A cognition or behavior is unrelated to other behaviors, such as not wanting to get drunk outside but wearing a shirt.
- Inconsistent relationship: One cognition or behavior is inconsistent with other cognitions, for example, drinking too much alcohol even though you don’t want to get drunk.
The "degree" of cognitive dissonance depends on the relationship between two different internal beliefs and whether the individual's behavior is incompatible with their beliefs.
The so-called "degree of cognitive dissonance" refers to the degree of distress that this discomfort causes to the individual. This can be determined by two factors: first, the importance of cognition; second, the consistency ratio of cognition. When there is higher cognitive dissonance, individuals typically experience greater psychological distress. People face conflicts of choice and belief in their daily lives, and as knowledge and wisdom continue to increase, this dissonance seems impossible to completely eliminate.
How to reduce cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that people seek to maintain mental consistency between their expectations of life and the reality of the world. In order to achieve existential consistency, people constantly reduce their cognitive dissonance to align their cognition with their behavior. In fact, people can reduce cognitive dissonance in four ways:
- Change behavior or cognition (e.g., “I will no longer eat this donut.”)
- Justifying a behavior or cognition by changing an opposing cognition (e.g., “It’s okay to slack off on your diet once in a while.”)
- Add new behaviors or cognitions to help justify (e.g., “I’ll spend an extra thirty minutes at the gym to make up for the time I spent eating the donuts.”)
- Selectively ignore or deny information that contradicts existing beliefs (e.g., “This donut is not a high-sugar food.”)
It is true that there is a certain degree of cognitive dissonance when people are faced with making decisions, and this state requires energy and effort to deal with things that seem to be contradictory.
Selective Exposure
Selective exposure is another way to reduce cognitive dissonance. Because of the psychological discomfort they experience, people choose to avoid information that contradicts their beliefs and actively engage with information that is consistent with their existing mindset. For example, studies have shown that people prefer to consume media that aligns with their own political views. The operation of this psychological mechanism allows them to face the world around them in a way that is more supportive of their own views when faced with inner conflicts.
How to deal with inconsistent beliefs
When faced with inconsistent beliefs, people may choose to ignore, reject, or integrate opposing viewpoints and instead stick to their original beliefs. This behavior not only helps them maintain their psychological balance, but also helps them find moral support in social groups and further deepen their original beliefs.
When you face a conflict between your own beliefs and external reality, how will you choose to adjust your inner cognition and behavior to cater to reality?
