Cognitive dissonance is the feeling that something is not sitting right with you. It can be a deeply internalized feeling of being uneasy with yourself or with others. You try to stuff those unpleasant feelings down but they keep popping up. Instead of feeling defensive, dig into the information that your response gives you. Understanding what caused the dissonance can help you figure out the best way to address it. In one study, researchers asked participants to give speeches that would encourage the audience to take a certain positive action.
Advocates of a ‘natural birth’ without pain relief argue that it makes better mothers consequent to them experiencing the transformative effects of natural birth. Leap and Anderson [23] are vocal proponents of childbirth without pain relief, arguing that women who undergo birth with epidural anaesthesia become ‘passive and biddable’ (p. 28) as mothers, because that is how they have labored. This qualitative study used a case series design and a limited longitudinal approach. It was designed by a multidisciplinary team comprised of a post-graduate medical anthropology candidate, a sociologist, an anthropologist and an academic midwife with previous lived midwifery experience. Additional advice was provided from a senior anaesthetist, and a consulting physician involved in advance care planning.
A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance – Leon Festinger
You still feel guilty, though, because you know it’s important to be active. That’s why we often respond to cognitive dissonance by doing mental gymnastics to feel like things make sense again. However, this mode of dissonance reduction frequently presents problems for people, as it is often difficult for people to change well-learned behavioral responses (e.g., giving up smoking). If we put effort into a task that we have chosen to carry out, and the task turns out badly, we experience dissonance.
- It’s hard at first, but instead of feeling guilty when you see the gym keychain, you feel proud of yourself.
- Participants were all aged between 22 and 32, one had completed high school, all others had additional qualifications.
- Cognitive dissonance occurs frequently and to all of us (Harmon-Jones, 2019).
- The idea is, choosing something that is in opposition to how you feel or believe in will increase cognitive dissonance.
Understanding our mechanisms with which we reduce dissonance and recognizing when it occurs are key to making informed and constructive decisions. Self-awareness and mindfulness practice empower us to notice inconsistencies in our thinking and find the space between dissonance triggers and our reaction so we can choose a response we are truly happy with. Therapy can help patients by reflecting on and taking control of their thoughts. Sometimes when patients engage in a new, more constructive behavior, they can perceive dissonance simply because it is contrary to the way they used to act. Providing the space and time to understand their new behavior and justifying it can help to reduce the dissonance. They further presupposed that participants would be driven to reduce the dissonance by justifying their behavior.
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The key research foci for this study revolved around how women developed expectations about pain relief in labour and how requests for analgesia were met. An emergent question as the analysis of the post-birth interviews proceeded was how their experiences may or may not have negatively affected their cognitive dissonance treatment psychological well-being. While some women whose good birth experiences also include being able to work with their pain and/or minimal pain relief, others find the pain unbearable, disempowering and even traumatising [32, 33]. This can certainly be the case when birth does not go as planned [34, 35].
Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort felt when two pieces of information contradict each other or when your behavior goes against the truth of a situation. Examples of cognitive dissonance include a smoker who knows cigarettes are dangerous, a company that doesn’t follow its code of ethics, or a person who avoids speaking about a past trauma while still dealing with it in the present. Unlike hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance threatens our identity and sense of self. That’s why it’s important to recognize what it is and what it feels like — if you don’t, then it will be that much harder to live an authentic life aligned with your personal values. All of those routes help you get back to a mental state without conflict, where you feel like your beliefs, values, and actions are all in harmony.
Change your relationship with change: Get comfortable being uncomfortable
Birth trauma may arise because women have more intervention than anticipated, but can extend to laboring women fearing for their lives or those of their unborn child/ren. Also having pain during birth which needs pharmacological treatment and is not treated, and finally the overall subsequent mismatch between reality and their expectations should this occur https://ecosoberhouse.com/ [44,45,46] can lead to post birth trauma. Childbirth may be a painful experience for women hoping to have a baby vaginally without pain relief – especially for first births. As in the UK, Canada and parts of the United States, nearly all Australian women (96%) deliver their baby in a hospital [1] and thus have access to the full formulary of pain relief.
- Reputable health organizations such as Lyu and Wehby studied the effects of wearing a face mask on the spread of COVID-19.
- This approach works by encouraging patients to say things or role-play behaviors that contradict their beliefs about food and body image.
- It has the advantage of being testable by scientific means (i.e., experiments).
- This can prompt people to adopt certain defense mechanisms when they have to confront it.
To function by that expectation of existential consistency, people continually reduce their cognitive dissonance in order to align their cognitions (perceptions of the world) with their actions. When faced with conflict, you may experience cognitive dissonance if you make a decision to lessen potential conflict between you and other people, but it’s not necessarily a decision you fully believe in. When faced with a deadline, you could even cut corners to accomplish a task, but then experience discomfort when it’s done because you value hard work. People experience cognitive dissonance for many reasons, but a common trigger is work. “Maybe you’re at a company with a work culture or attitudes that are in opposition or conflict to what you believe,” according to Dr. Scott.
Building good habits in your life (and ditching bad ones)
This article will use the terms “male,” “female,” or both to refer to sex assigned at birth. Join 550,000+ helping professionals who get free, science-based tools sent directly to their inbox. Patients are likely to feel uncomfortable when dissonant thoughts are discussed, which can impede their ability to think constructively.
- Being paid $20 provides a reason for turning pegs, and there is, therefore, no dissonance.
- In cases like these or for more complex changes, you’ll benefit from additional accountability and support.
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