Leon Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory

The theory of cognitive dissonance has been developed by the psychologist Leon Festinger and according to his analysis, “every human has a tendency to strive for consistency between and among cognitions”. In psychology, cognitive dissonance is defined as a situation of conflicts in attitudes, beliefs and behavior. Those situations with conflicts lead to a state of tension or discomfort, that is when we talk about dissonance. When people are aware about their behaviors and attitudes we talk about cognitions .In addition to that, let’s define the other component of the theory which is the word dissonance. In fact , Dissonance is known as an uncomfortable state of psychological and psychological tension. Leon Festinger has illustrated the dissonance as the reaction one has when someone breaks something belonging to someone else. When a person is experiencing dissonance, they are three ways to restore consonance. The first one is to reduce the importance of the conflicting cognitions. The second one is to add numerous

consonant cognitions and the last one is to change one of the discrepant cognitions. This theory has been the reason of the invention of many experiences ,also considered as the components of this theory, aiming to explain the human attitudes. For example , the forced compliance method defined as a method of forcing people to do a task in order to evaluate their reactions. The decision making , the effort and the critical evaluation are the other components that help to understand the relationship between the effort and dissonance and also to evaluation the dissonance even if it is tangible.
Each time one of us was experimenting a dissonance situation, team ,this person was in need to follow some steps.

The first step was to first to identify to conflict to know the root of it and think about solutions. It is important to recognize that sometimes we have reactions that are completely the opposite of our beliefs. After recognizing it, it is obvious that a we will have a feeling of dissonance and it will affect us but in the right way by motivating us to overcome and resolve this dissonance. The third and last step refers to thinking about changing those beliefs, changing the actions or change the perception of the action to get rid of this feeling of dissonance. Sometimes , in order to test the theory, we met and tried some experiences we have found on the internet. For example talking about death penalty and pushing the ones against it to say that they accept it. Once it happened, we automatically go through the steps stated above

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Following those steps made the overcome of this feeling of dissonance very easy and quick. In fact, since every step was clearly explained, once we had to face a state of discomfort , the steps were easy to follow and we knew what we had to do to not give up and feel mad about our actions. It helped us overcoming some wrong perceptions of our actions, to think about our behaviors and beliefs and also to avoid as much as possible to stay a long time in the state of tension or discomfort. While applying this theory, we have learned to nos stress when we are in a state of discomfort.
This theory can seem at first as a negative one but once you experience it you learn that this theory can help you learn more about your beliefs and behaviors by stressing you out a bit before overcoming the situation. We have learned to decrease the feeling of discomfort and tension. Applying this theory more often will help us learn to make good choices, to take time to think about our beliefs and know exactly what to do when we will have to face an unusual situations without experiencing any tension or stress. We will be ready to avoid any dissonance in the future.