Cognitive dissonance
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Cognitive dissonance is stress or discomfort caused by simultaneously holding contradictory ideas.
Examples of cognitive dissonance
- A mother, who believes that her son is a good boy, learns that he has committed a serious crime;
Responses to cognitive dissonance
People respond to the uncomfortable feelings associated with cognitive dissonance in a number of ways, including:
- Resolution: Identifying the source of the contradiction and adjusting one one or both of the contradicting beliefs to eliminate the contradiction;
- Rationalization: Inventing faulty justifications in an effort to maintain both contradictory ideas as true;
- Denial: Denying the existence of a contradiction where one exists
George Orwell famously discussed cognitive dissonance in his novel 1984, using the term doublethink.