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Analysis of mean girls movie
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“I didn't want to do it..but then I did it”. A common phrase spoken by many who have experience cognitive dissonance. The Cognitive Dissonance theory deals with small occurrences that happen everyday, but for help with breaking down this theory, extreme examples help to explain the theory in better detail. In the movie Mean Girls, the plastics are evil & but their approval is what Cady desires which define her two conflicting beliefs. When she gets closer to them and acts like them, she tries to justify her action by saying she is just “spying” on them, this is said to reduce her cognitive dissonance, which in fact, she is turning into them. For example, if a person buys a really nice television, even though they can't really afford it ,but …show more content…
The validity of cognitive dissonance is the fact that we are faced with it everyday, by making a decision or solving a problem using our subjective values which include beliefs, opinions, attitudes, etc. An attitude describes the positive or negative feelings we have toward people, things, or ideas. As humans, what we do to make these decisions and solve these problems don't always line up, causing inconsistency. This means our beliefs go one way, and our behavior goes in the opposite direction. When we decide to change our subjective value, then the dissonance is resolved. Cognitive dissonance is defined simple as a “discomfort feeling resulting from inconsistency with attitude, thoughts, and behaviors” (Griffin, 2015, p. ??), this can be interpreted as an event that is motivational to be in peace. “ The theory claims that a person in a dissonant state will be motivated—as though it were a drive—to alleviate the condition of imbalance” (Norton). Envision a friend of yours is a serious animal activist and cares about the treatment of animals, yet eats food that are made by mistreating that said animal. It is the distressing mental state that people feel …show more content…
Cognitive dissonance theory follows all but one function strongly, as it applies to real world scenarios and explains why we experience cognitive dissonance. Experimentation is key to begin a good theory, because it provides an explanation that holds true from numerous test and observations done by scientists and researchers. “To support [this] theory, Festinger marshaled data from an impressive variety of field and experimental studies” (Chapanis). The large reward and small reward effects on attitudinal advocacy are testable, as seen by studies such as the one male students from Stanford University. They were brought together for an experiment by Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith. The purpose of the experiment was for the two men to further investigate the theory of Cognitive Dissonance on a large group of people. The men were asked to carry out a series of various repetitive boring and tiring tasks. The participants were then promise to be be paid either one dollar or twenty dollars to lie about how enjoyable the tasks were to the next set of participants. The men that lied for $1 had a lot of cognitive work to do, however the men who lide for $20, the money justified their reasoning for lying. The “dissonance was the result of the [male’s] feeling of personal responsibility for bringing about deceiving a fellow
Cognitive dissonance is when an individual feels uncomfortable because they are a good person but they have chose to do a bad things. Instead of dealing with the consequences they ignore the situation. Cognitive dissonance can relate to Lords of the flies book on Chapter 9. The morning after the boys killed Simon thinking it was the
In our modern world, sociology has a tremendous impact on our culture, mainly through the processes and decisions we make everyday. For movies and television shows especially, sociological references are incorporated throughout the storyline. A movie which includes many sociological examples is Mean Girls. Mean Girls is a movie based on the life of home-schooled teenage girl, Cady Heron, who moves to the United States from Africa and is placed in a public school for the first time. Cady finds herself in many uncomfortable scenarios and has to deal with the trials and tribulations pertaining to everyday high school issues. Her experiences involve interacting with high school cliques, such as ‘the plastics’, weird high school teachers, relationships,
Cognitive dissonance is a communication theory mostly used in the field of social psychology in providing a theoretical framework in dealing with various issues relating to psychology. The title provides us with the concept that cognitive is thinking while dissonance is the inconsistency or conflict brought about. Cognitive dissonance manifests when one holds two or more incompatible beliefs simultaneously. This theory has been used and applied in several disciplines including communication, due to its simplicity and straightforwardness. The theory is commonly applied in these dynamic fields since it replaces previous conditioning or reinforcement theories by viewing individuals as more purposeful decision makers striving to acquire a balance in their beliefs. Cognitions are chunks or bits of knowledge which can pertain to any variety of values, emotions or values. These cognations can be related to one another or they can also be completely independent from each other (Cooper, 06). For instance, one may like to eat junk food, but may also be trying to lose weight. The two cognitions are related to each other in tha...
Cognitive dissonance theory is the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort we feel when two of our thoughts are inconsistent. There are three methods that dissonance can be condensed. Individuals can modify one or more of the beliefs, attitude, behaviors, and more, this way the connection between the two elements are in agreement with one another. Another method is to gather new information that will compensate the dissonant beliefs. The third method is to decrease the importance of the beliefs, attitudes, behavior, and etc. Dissonance theory does not say that these methods will work; only people in the state of cognitive dissonance will use these methods to condense the degree of their dissonance. Cognitive dissonance theory
Cognitive dissonance is a theory presented by Leon Festinger’s in 1957. This theory suggested that we have an inner drive to hold our attitudes and beliefs in harmony. When we have two inconsistent cognitions this creates dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is physically uncomfortable to experience. There’s some negative physical tension that you feel any time you recognize two inconsistent thoughts or realize that you’ve done something through your behavior that contradicts you true attitudes and beliefs. Dissonance gets in the way of finding some sense of truth. In general, if we want to understand the world, then we want a clear, consistent picture of it. Anything that makes us feel inconsistency of something that’s a problem, and we are motivated to restore consistency again. We can restore
Cognitive dissonance is having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, thus relating in behavior or attitude changes. Attitude or thoughts are more likely to shift due to one’s behavior and actions. Cognitive dissonance can be seen in Jonestown and the KKK. This psychological technique is used to get people to join the cult and ultimately become members. In Jonestown the
“Humans are not a rational animal, but a rationalizing one” (“Class 20”). This was asserted by the much acclaimed, significant, and influential social psychologist Leon Festinger as referencing to his theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Social psychology is “a branch of psychology particularly concerned with understanding social behaviors such as” incentive and compliance (Sheehy). Festinger’s contributions to the social and cognitive branches of psychology as well psychology overall prove themselves worthy to today. This theory specifically challenged many common notions that were seemingly already accepted by behaviorists everywhere during his time (Tavris and Aronson). Its reality awakens its verifications. Consecutively, its “enormous motivational power” affects many on a daily basis (Tavris and Aronson). In the final analysis, the theory of Cognitive Dissonance by Leon Festinger is fundamental to behaviorism while directly changing the way human beings across the planet think and do.
Cognitive dissonance, originally coined by Leon Festinger, refers to the anxiety that arises when a person holds opposing ideas at the same time. The theory maintains that people are motivated to reduce dissonance and do so by either changing their attitudes, actions and beliefs or by justifying, denying and blaming.
In this paper I will discuss police brutality, which is a highly controversial topic in the media. The social psychology topics I will discuss in relation to the event are cognitive dissonance/self justification (Ch. 5) and privilege (Ch.8) My news sources are from NBC Philadelphia and CNN.
I will start by briefly describing Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Leon Festinger, a former Stanford University psychologist, developed Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological discomfort or distressing mental state resulting from an inconsistency in an individual’s actions and beliefs. “A person may know that smoking is bad for him and yet continue to smoke; many persons commit crimes even though they know the high probability of being caught and the punishment that awaits them” (Festinger 2). As people, we want to avoid dissonance in order to remain consistent. Momentary dissonance can occur with a new event, but dissonance indubitably exists in daily life (Festinger 5). Cognitive dis...
West, Richard, & Turner, Lynn H. (2000). Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield publishing.
Humans have a powerful internal motivation to keep a stable and positive self-image. Cognitive dissonance refers to situations where there are two or more conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors. This disharmony or dissonance between beliefs can cause feelings of stress and discomfort and is a threat to a person’s overall self-esteem and self-image. These feelings of tension and discomfort motivate a person to reduce and eliminate the dissonance. This can be achieved by changing a behavior, changing one of the contradicting thoughts, or by adding a new belief. In this paper, I analyze examples of cognitive dissonance in my life and the effectiveness of the different methods I utilized in attempting to resolve it. The first example of dissonance
Cognitive dissonance looks at the way people combat contradictions within their minds by actively seeking consistency. For his theory, Festinger refers to cognition as thought/mental processes and dissonance as inconsistency. His famous example is that of an addicted smoker who knows that smoking is detrimental to his or her health and is thus in conflict with his or her self. The main hypothesis of Festinger’s theory is comprised of two parts; Festinger wrote about the first part of his theory that "The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance," and described the second "When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance" (Festinger, 1957). Festinger elaborates on the importance an individual places on reducing cognitive dissonance by discussing two essential factors: the value of the cognitions and the ratio of cognitions (Festinger, 1957). The former consists of the personal importance or value that the individual places on the opposing cognitions, resulting in either a minor or major dissonance. The latter consists of the proportion of the degre...
Over six million individuals were killed in the Holocaust during World War II in Germany. To this day, people still wonder how an entire country could stand by while millions of people were massacred. Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) and Zimbardo (1971) both conducted experiments that involved cognitive dissonance, which helped explain how good people could be persuaded to do bad things. Cognitive dissonance is a feeling of discomfort that occurs when an individual’s actions are inconsistent with his behavior (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). To reduce this tension, an individual often changes his/her attitude to align with his or behavior (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). The results of both of these prominent studies provided valuable clinical information regarding the impact of cognitive dissonance that is still
In discussing cognitive dissonance, I ran across a familiar attitude though new vocabulary. I have had these conflicts before, but the terminology was not known. “The theory of cognitive dissonance (CD) describes a condition of stress, or a feeling of internal discomfort caused by conflicting ideas, values, beliefs or practices” (Prvulovic, 2015). All this is saying is that sometimes there are situations in which arises two conflicting thoughts which causes psychological disturbances with a person. Many people experience this kind of behavior in the workplace when several thoughts and ideas come together in one organization. This dissonance can affect your health, your satisfaction about your job or your job performance to say the least. Having conflicting thoughts or beliefs impact your ability to make the right decisions. A person that is experiencing cognitive dissonance will seek ways to minimize it. “When