The cognitive dissonance

[Teacher]

Any person seeks to live in harmony and harmony with himself, his thoughts and desires. But life is a complex and confusing thing, full of contradictions and inconsistencies, often leading to such a state as cognitive dissonance.

Understanding this phenomenon will help us in both profiling and lie detection.

The theory of cognitive dissonance was developed by the social psychologist Leon Festinger in 1957 and outlined in some detail in his book of the same name. It describes the state of a person as a result of the appearance in the system of his knowledge, that is, in the cognitive system, of two conflicting opinions, beliefs and beliefs, as well as the actions taken by a person to get out of such a crisis.

A prime example is our need for unhealthy food or bad habits. The overweight man goes to the store and buys cakes, donuts, a box of cookies and chocolate syrup. What are the thoughts in his head: "I can't have cookies, they get fat from it." Second thought: "I want cookies, they are delicious and with chocolate pieces." These thoughts contradict each other and create dissonance. The state of cognitive dissonance is completely natural for a person. We all strive for a clear, correct, logical construction of the world according to certain laws, and even better, corresponding to our ideas.

Therefore, it is not surprising that in a situation where our desires and beliefs do not coincide with the desires of other people or with the established norms of the world around us, we experience discomfort. Faced with a contradiction.

1. You can change your behavior. In this example, giving up sweets, going on a diet and going to the gym, the person may think they made a mistake and never touch the buns again.
2. Conviction to oneself that one of the statements is inconsistent. Sweet is not so bad, but in some ways it is useful and in general on the packaging with cookies something is written about cereals and vitamins. And grandmother always supplies pies, I can't offend grandmother. This is one of the powerful driving forces. After all, there is no person more enthusiastic and diligent than the one who wants to justify himself.
3. This is, in fact, corking yourself in a bottle, that is, all kinds of refusal to consume information (read "the less you know - you sleep better"). Since people don't like to be in a state of discomfort very much, sometimes they prefer to simply avoid the appearance of dissonance. A person can be absolutely sure that the Sun revolves around the Earth, trees grow horses upward, and snails fly across the sky, and no persuasion of scientific literature and discussions can convince him otherwise.

We simply do not want to cause dissonance, because then we will have to suffer, choosing, analyzing, comparing facts, and this is much more difficult than being absolutely sure that we are right.

Each time, trying to get out of dissonance, you will stumble upon the resistance of its elements, and there are different reasons for this:

1. Strong emotional discomfort. A lover of sweets will have to go through a lot of painful sensations before he gets used to a new lifestyle, realizing this, people strive to avoid pain, thereby continuing to consume sugar contrary to their beliefs.
2. The same action can have both positive and negative sides. If you are tired after work, and your friends are calling you to the movies, then you want and don't want to go. You dream of sleeping, but you also don't mind enjoying a movie in pleasant company.
3. There are situations when change is simply not possible. If you sold an apartment, you won't be able to return it. It has already become obvious that a mistake has been made, that is, you would gladly change your behavior, but you can no longer, and the dissonance remains.

Sometimes it may seem to you that having made a choice, you waved your hand to dissonance. This is not entirely true, because even after the decision was made, you still gave up all the advantages of the other option, and since this does not suit you at all, the second unrealized option begins to depreciate. We can say to ourselves that it was this car that we wanted from the very beginning, and after sitting behind the wheel, that this one is even better than we expected, and in the second, the suspension is worse and the interior rattles and, in general, the color is not the same. In this way, we calm down and dissonance diminishes.

Cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant and largely unhelpful thing, but there are also positive features in it: certain individuals may encounter a contradiction with a challenge, try to figure out the problem, piece by piece putting together a puzzle, build a complete picture of their thoughts and come to agreement with themselves, but no a happier person than one who lives in peace with his feelings and actions.

 

[Tomcat]

Sweet self-deception or the power of cognitive dissonance

Good evening everyone, this is Stalilingus! Today I am sharing a very powerful material with you. It is not mine, but I believe that anyone interested in NLP and developing their own skills in the field of manipulation should read the text below. Enjoy reading!

Leon Festinger is an American psychologist, author of the theory of cognitive dissonance, which states that if people are imposed on behavior that does not correspond to their inner beliefs, they begin to feel discomfort and social pressure. And in order to avoid this unpleasant state, we begin to "adjust" ourselves and some of our thoughts to the imposed standards or situations.

For example, you bought an expensive, but absolutely stupid device that also does not work well. You can't admit to others that you missed such an expensive purchase, can you? How does our internal switch work?

Curious experiment
Imagine being asked to take part in a social experiment. The participants were divided into two groups. One group was not told anything about the upcoming assignments, and the second group was given a certain attitude.

You find yourself in the first group and now during the first 30 minutes you move the reels in the box, and for the next 30 minutes you are busy moving the pegs around the board and it all seems incredibly boring. Which, in principle, is actually the case.

After the end of the experiment, the presenter enters your room and asks if you liked it? And when you say that it was terribly boring, he is surprised and tells you that everyone else liked it and found it very interesting.

Then he asks you for a small favor. The fact is that his assistant, who introduces the next participant into the course, did not come and he needs a person who would tell him about the exciting task to be performed during the experiment. And after that the host offers you $ 1 for this service. You agree to help, the next participant enters and you tell that he is now about to complete a very interesting task, although literally 5 minutes ago you yourself thought that you would die of boredom without waiting for the end of the experiment. After this, the moderator returns to the room, thanks you heartily for your help, and reminds you once again that the other participants found these activities very exciting.

You then walk into the next room, where you are interviewed about the experiment you just went through, during which they ask you how interesting the tasks were. And give you a couple of minutes to think about your answer. You reflect and the completed tasks no longer seem so boring to you. You even begin to see a certain beauty of symmetry in the movement of the coils and the rearrangement of the pegs. The thought that now you have made a significant contribution to science and the results of the experiment will help you find out something interesting and useful, warm your soul. And you decide that the tasks were interesting enough.

And at the very end, you talk to a friend or girlfriend who also went through this experiment, but were in the second group. During the conversation, it turns out that your experiences and the process were almost identical, except for one point - your friend was paid not $ 1, like you, but $ 100 for the introduction of the next course by the participants and in a positive mood. Then you ask how it felt while doing the pegs and reel assignments, to which you get the answer that it was terribly boring! But you no longer think so and you are trying to insist on your own, proving the fascination and hidden beauty of the actions performed.

What happened? You were not warned that the tasks would be boring, but after completing them, you were constantly told that everyone else was having a lot of fun. That is, your initial feelings did not coincide with the opinion of the majority and you began to feel uncomfortable. Therefore, consciousness began to look for a way out of this delicate situation, and in the end you even found "hidden charms", because since everyone else liked it, it means that you did not catch something or did not overlook it. And the brain suits us with its "augmented reality". The participants in the second group did not have such discrepancies, since they were told in advance that the experiment would be terribly boring, and they were clear of their conscience.

Since the first experiment, such studies have been repeated more than a dozen times, and each time the results show that people are prone to self-deception if they are under pressure from external circumstances. We find simply unimaginable reasons and evidence and begin to believe in them, as long as our inner state at least slightly coincides with the opinion of the majority.

The power of cognitive dissonance
A great example of the use of cognitive dissonance is shown by coaches who sell training, and sometimes for a pretty tidy sum (5 favorite false statements of coaches about personal development). There are several rules for successful coaching, built on the habit of people deceiving themselves: trainings should cost quite an impressive amount; the more people in the group, the better; always guaranteed result.

We all harness together in one harness and pull it, repeating in chorus everything that the coach tells us. Yes, we can do everything! Yes, there are no insurmountable obstacles for us! Yes, we are the most charming and charming! And even if we really don't feel all this at the end of the training, it's a shame to admit it. Firstly, because everyone around is smiling and saying that now there is no such word for them as "impossible." Can't we be less gifted than the other twelve people in the group ?! Secondly, we laid out a tidy sum for this and admit to friends (and to ourselves) that the money was wasted, oh, how I don't want to. Therefore, our subconscious begins to quickly look for all kinds of excuses and benefits received from classes.

In the same way, soldiers justify their actions by following orders that run counter to their worldview: after all, they are in the service and this is their duty. Politicians lie to voters, instilling in themselves that this is all for the sake of the country: after all, they must, by hook or by crook, get into the government?! For example, Hitler convinced the people of Germany that the Second World War began Poland and that he was actually saving Europe from the invasion of communism. And he himself died piously believing that Germany was the victim of a world Jewish conspiracy.

Don't let others convince yourself that your thoughts are not really true just because everyone else thinks differently. After all, we have a mind for that, which allows us to think rationally and separate though not so attractive reality from a beautiful lie. Don't give in to herd feelings, think, analyze, and don't be afraid to admit your mistakes and failures.