What exactly is “cognitive dissonance”?

In the 1950s, the US-American Leon Festinger (1919-1989) developed a theory according to which people process and evaluate new information that they consider relevant even after having made a respective decision. The aim is to arrive at statements that fit the decision made (“Then everything is fine!”) or that question it (“This is no good at all.”).

In the first case, the new information fits the initial decision and both are in balance with each other. The theory of cognitive dissonance is therefore also classified as a psychological equilibrium theory.

In the second case, the new information contradicts the decision previously made. Here the theory of cognitive dissonance postulates an unpleasant motivational state leading to a feeling of mental tension ("cognitive dissonance"). A respective person will usually strive to reduce this tension. This can happen by changing one's own attitudes or behavior or by taking a fundamentally new view of the decision-making situation. All these possibilities increase a person's potential for cooperative actions.

Festinger's modernity

Together with Kurt Lewin (1890-1947), who had already fled from Nazi Germany to the USA in 1933, Festinger is considered as the founder of modern social psychology. His work goes far beyond the theory of cognitive dissonance. His Theory of Social Comparison Processes is equally fundamental. Nevertheless, Festinger's interests were not limited to psychology. At the age of 60, he shifted his field of work completely and devoted himself from then on to archaeological and historical studies. This, too, may be seen as a sign of his modernity.

Meaning

Festinger's working methods were strongly based on self-developed psychological experiments and their consistent statistical evaluation. The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance helped to overcome the behaviorist thinking that was prevalent in psychology until the 1960s (explanations of actions based on stimulus-reflex patterns, free of conscious processes). In scientific psychology, this is known today as the cognitive turn. Currently almost 65,000 references to scientific publications with the keyword cognitive dissonance prove the effectiveness of this theory till today.