this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Psychology

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What exactly does cognitive dissonance mean? (lemmy.goblackcat.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Lately I have been hearing the term "cognitive dissonance" being used a fair amount. I am checking my understanding of it so please bare with me and feel free to correct me if I am wrong. My understanding of the term is that it refers to someone who continues to hold on to their core beliefs despite overwhelming incontrovertible evidence that their beliefs are patently wrong.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

i believe that you're thinking of confirmation bias, which is more like holding a belief despite being challenged with logical evidence.

cognitive dissonance is more like holding two ideas simultaneously which seem to conflict with one another. the cognitive load (how much you have to think about something) is high because you are trying to square these two competing thoughts/ideas.

a quick and simple example of cognitive dissonance is knowing that smoking is bad for your health, but continuing to do so, using the excuse that you have high stress and the nicotine mitigates that stress.

just to contrast, confirmation bias in the same example would be someone telling you that smoking is bad for you (citing legitimate evidence), but you continue to believe that it's fine to smoke because you like to smoke.

hope this helps to distinguish the two