Cognitive Dissonance Theory

“There is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (Festinger, 1954 p. Sometimes there exists inconsistency among people’s attitudes, opinions, and beliefs thus the need to change up something so as to eliminate the dissonance (Festinger, 1954 p. This is referred to as the principle of cognitive consistency (Festinger, 1954 p. According to Leon (1957), “A feeling of discomfort is always experienced when one's values or attitudes occurs in a way that conflicts with each other”. The objective of this paper is to select behavior that people identifies as immoral then explain how people portraying this kind of behavior cope up with the resulting cognitive dissonance. These include selective exposure, selective attention, selective interpretation, and selective retention. All these processes are basically used by an individual to avoid conflict (West & Turner, 2018).

Selective exposure- this process is involved in seeking information that is not already present and is used as a way of reducing dissonance (West & Turner, 2018). This process can be related to the Cognitive Dissonance theory which predicts that people will tend to avoid conflict by searching for the information is consistent with their behaviors and attitudes (p. In the example given, West & Turner (2018) claims that Juan may approach friends to who he thinks are happy with their relationships so as to ask on the information on how to improve his relationship. Alternatively, the partner who suggests a cruise may not remember much about camping plans West & Turner, 2018 p. Gossiping can be referred to as conversation about other people’s private lives that may be disapproving, unkind or untrue (Spacks, 2012).

Joy is a student at Yale University taking bachelor in psychology. Joy is among my close friends that I do share most of my secrets with. Unfortunately, Joy is obsessed by gossiping trait. I was sitting in my normal position in our psychology class three days after the trip when most of my classmate girls came laughing at me and looking me with eyes that displayed abhorrence. That morning, Joy did not get close to me nor did she give me a good morning hello. I did not bother to ask her what was wrong with her that day but I realized that she was shying off anytime I rested my eyes on her. Our lecturer was late that morning so I decided to log in my Facebook account.