Harmonizing Your Thoughts: Cognitive Dissonance and How to Relieve It

The time is 4:59 pm. It’s nearly the end of the business day and still no emails. You’ve been waiting to hear back from that company you interviewed with two weeks ago for a position you were certain you would be offered. 5:00 pm hits and an email arrives, but to your surprise, it’s a rejection for the position you thought you were perfectly qualified for. Discomfort sets in because you had this belief that you were a skilled individual capable of earning this position, yet you weren’t offered the position and this conflicts with that belief. Psychologists call the discomfort created by this conflicting belief and experience cognitive dissonance. Now maybe you claim the company wouldn’t be that great to work for or you blame the interviewer for not asking the right questions. Perhaps you decide to spend more time preparing for future job interviews. In any case, your goal is to eliminate the discomfort that you are experiencing. 

The belief or experience causing cognitive dissonance is a threat to one’s self-image because it clashes with one of their deeply held beliefs or something that they believe strongly about themselves.

The belief or experience causing cognitive dissonance is a threat to one’s self-image because it clashes with one of their deeply held beliefs or something that they believe strongly about themselves. According to Dr. Claude Steele’s self-affirmation theory, when people experience a threat to their self-image, there are three things they will do to restore it. One option is to accept the threat and change their behavior or beliefs to eliminate the inconsistency. For example, in the job situation, someone could practice more for interviews and start receiving job offers. Another option is to adapt one’s view of the threat by diminishing its importance or framing it in a more positive light. Someone could decide that the job wasn’t that important or view the rejection as a learning opportunity. Lastly, Steele’s theory suggests that people can reflect on unrelated but important aspects of themselves. If the job involved working in a laboratory, someone could divert their focus to their musical talent or their political beliefs if either of those are important to them.

In short, if people had continued to dismiss handwashing to maintain their self-image, they would not only prevent themselves from learning, but also continue putting thousands of lives at risk.

While all of these are valid ways to deal with cognitive dissonance, some of them can be harmful to oneself and others if these methods prevent one from learning. One of the best examples of this has occurred in the medical field. Until about the mid-19th century, clinicians didn’t wash their hands when dealing with different patients which resulted in rapid disease spread in hospitals. According to a review in The Cross-Cutting Edge, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was the first to impose mandatory hand washing in his ward, and as a result, disease spread dropped significantly. The problem was that other clinicians refused to take handwashing seriously because doing so would suggest that they were responsible for the loss of thousands of patients’ lives. If people had continued to dismiss handwashing to maintain their self-image, they would not only prevent themselves from learning, but also continue putting thousands of lives at risk. If one doesn’t want to hurt themself and others, then how should one deal with cognitive dissonance?

In other words, when people recognize other important parts of themselves, their self-worth stops depending on that one immediate threat, so that they can more openly handle it.

According to a paper published in 2006 by David Sherman and Geoffrey Cohen, the best way to handle cognitive dissonance is reducing the need to distort incoming, threatening information. Dr. Steele’s self-affirmation theory indicates that by self-affirming, participating in, or reporting on an important value in our lives, people become more open to information that clashes with their current views. For instance, another study by Sherman and Cohen published in 2002 found that when people with strongly-held beliefs regarding capital punishment read an article about capital punishment, those that self-affirmed prior to reading the article were able “to evaluate the information in a less biased and defensive manner.” In other words, when people recognize other important parts of themselves, their self-worth stops depending on that one immediate threat, so that they can more openly handle it.

Now back to that job rejection. There’s no denying that you didn’t get the offer you thought you would get, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a smart, capable individual worthy of receiving a job offer in the future. Ultimately, by recognizing your other strengths and values, you can more easily accept threatening experiences and information that can enable self-growth.

Sources:
1. The Cross-Cutting Edge (2019). DOI: 10.1111/medu.13938
2. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (2006). DOI: 10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38004-5
3. Current Directions in Psychological Science (2002). DOI: 10.1111/1467-8721.00182
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