Voiceover: So we talked
about, in our previous
video, about how attitudes generally shape
our behaviors.
People strive for consistency and harmony
between their attitudes and behaviors.
For example, you wouldn't hold the
attitude
that eating meat is immoral and then
still go out to Burger King and
have a positive attitude towards eating
hamburgers.
So, there's an inconsistency and as people
we usually don't like that.
We feel a sense of discomfort.
Now, when we have these contradictions in
our attitudes
and behaviors, this can lead to something
called cognitive dissonance.
So, cognitive dissonance is the discomfort
experienced when holding two or more
conflicting cognitions, and these
cognitions can
be ideas, beliefs, values or emotional
reactions.
And this feeling of discomfort can lead to
alterations in one
of our attitudes, and one of our beliefs
and even our behaviors.
And the reason we alter or change these
cognitions is kind of like
a protective mechanism or defense
mechanism, to
reduce the discomfort we feel between
inconsistencies.
So, let's take a look at cognitive
dissonance in the eyes of a smoker.
Now, pretending we're a smoker, we're
going to say, I smoke.
But at the same time, we also think
and have this attitude that smoking leads
to cancer.
Now, our behavior is we smoke, but our
attitude is that smoking leads to cancer.
There is a contradiction there, do you see
it?
There is an inconsistency.
So, this is what dissonance is, if they
are, are contradictions.
And we don't like contradictions.
We like balance and harmony, all that good
stuff.
So, when we have these contradictions, we
may do four different things to our
cognitions to alter alter those attitudes
in order to reduce that comfort.
And the first of these is that we may try
to modify one or two of our cognitions.
So, in this example of the smoker, the
smoker may say, I really don't smoke that
much.
So, he went or she went from saying, I
smoke, to modifying
that a little bit and saying, I really
don't smoke that much.
So, there's a little bit of an alteration
there in order
to reduce the discomfort that person has
in their attitude and behavior.
The second thing that they might try and
do is trivialize.
Trivialize.
Which means, making less important.
So they may change the importance of their
cognition or trivialize
it, by saying something like, the evidence
is weak that smoking causes cancer.
So, remember their original cognition was,
smoking leads to cancer.
Now they're saying, by trivializing, that
the
evidence is weak that smoking causes
cancer.
So, do you see how there's a little bit of
an alteration there as well?
Now, the third way that this contradiction
can be modified or reduced is by adding
more cognitions.
So, another way we can make our cognitions
less discomfortable
or the contradictions less uncomfortable,
is by adding more cognitions.
So, someone may say, I exercise so much
that it doesn't even matter that I smoke.
Well, the first was, I smoke.
The second was, smoking leads to cancer.
And now we're slightly modifying both of
those by adding another cognition
saying, I exercise so much that it doesn't
even matter that I smoke.
So there's a third way that we deal with
cognitive dissonance.
And the last way is by denying these
cognitions altogether.
So, we're denying that they're even
related.
Denying that smoking and cancer are even
related.
So the smoker, in this case, may say that
there's no evidence that smoking and
cancer are linked.
So, this is cognitive dissonance in a
nutshell in the eyes of a smoker.
And the big take home message here is that
people strive for harmony.
We strive for harmony in our thoughts, in
our words, in our actions, and
as soon as our contradict, as soon as our
cognitions, our attitudes and
behaviors don't align, that's when we have
cognitive dissonance.
