Because the $1 was not enough incentive for the task, the participants had to convince themselves that the tasks were actually fun in order to overcome their feelings of cognitive dissonance. One of Festinger’s experiments revealed how forced compliance could lead to cognitive dissonance. In the study, participants were asked to complete a boring task that involved turning pegs on a peg board for an hour.
Relapse prevention
Finally, understanding how prenatal exposure to drugs of abuse changes neural development should be a high priority, as prenatal exposure increases the new generation’s susceptibility to addiction and other problems. The mind works to resolve the discomfort caused by opposition between desire and need, and the individual may change their perception as a defense mechanism. Simply put, a person experiencing cognitive dissonance will make any excuse to justify their thinking and minimize the anxiety and discomfort they may experience. When they’re asked difficult questions about their addiction, they may minimize the dangers of their actions. An alcoholic may know the dangers of drinking but likely tell themselves, “It’s just one drink.” Someone spiraling into addiction knows that what they’re doing is harmful. However, they may still choose to abuse these substances because they block unwanted thoughts and feelings.
The Formation of Drug-Stimulus Associations
- The two thoughts – ‘sunbathing can cause cancer’ and ‘I am sunbathing’ – will cause the discomfort of cognitive dissonance.
- She is also the the Co-Host of the popular Elevate Experience Podcast, a no-holds-barred look at addiction and the power of effective treatment.
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- Moreover, Qaisar et al. [92] revealed that user addiction had a stronger negative effect on discontinuous usage intention among users with low self-efficacy towards mobile applications.
- Additionally, the study found that self-efficacy negatively regulates the effect of cognitive dissonance and the impact of information overload, service overload, and user addiction on cognitive dissonance.
- Another study documented structural changes in the frontal and parietal cortex of 3- and 4-year-old children who had been exposed prenatally to methamphetamine (Cloak et al., 2009).
Our drug and alcohol rehab in Massachusetts explains the connection between cognitive dissonance and addiction as well as why it occurs. These ideas will shape how they perceive and judge the world, and it would not be possible to live without them and still be https://ecosoberhouse.com/ able to function. Sometimes the individual can hold beliefs and opinions that are contradictory or that contradicts their behaviour. For example, a person may believe that drinking too much alcohol is bad, but they still continue to indulge in this behaviour.
- The observed enhancements might have reflected the reversal of withdrawal effects, rather than improvements over their normal cognitive powers.
- After you make a choice, you might wonder if the option you didn’t choose might have been better.
- Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling that can occur when you have conflicting beliefs, values, or behaviors.
- They further presupposed that participants would be driven to reduce the dissonance by justifying their behavior.
- In the face of temptation (problematic desires), we need to dispute rationally our distorted reasoning and the judgments that follow.
- Drawing upon the above hypotheses, this study proposes a research model that encompasses the concepts of cognitive dissonance and self-efficacy to examine the discontinuous usage intention of users of pan-entertainment mobile live broadcast platforms.
- An individual progresses through various stages of changes and the movement is influenced by several factors.
What Influences Cognitive Dissonance?
When faced with conflict, you may experience cognitive dissonance if you make a decision to lessen potential conflict between you and other people, but it’s not necessarily a decision you fully believe in. When faced with a deadline, you could even cut corners to accomplish a task, but then experience discomfort when it’s done because you value hard work. Research into the changes in cognition that accompany addiction and the neural substrates of learning and addiction is still in its infancy but has potential to reshape views on addiction. For example, a recent discovery that has generated excitement in the addiction field is that smokers who suffered damage to the insula often lost their desire to smoke (Naqvi et al., 2007).
A person with cognitive dissonance experiences mental conflict and may take steps to try to resolve it. This could include changes in behavior or attempts to ignore information that contradicts a goal or desire. For example, a smoker might quit smoking or instead rationalize their behavior by saying other habits are just as dangerous.
Half of the participants were given a ready excuse for telling this lie––they would be paid $20 to tell the lie. Those with a clear justification ($20) for lying experienced no dissonance and, as one would expect, later reported that the task was really rather boring. She has strong communication skills, compassion for others, and a drive to provide the best services we can to each client and their family throughout their experience with Elevate.
The composite reliability value represents the internal consistency of the construct indicators, and a value of 0.7 is acceptable [86], with a recommended value of 0.6 or higher [87]. Factor loading analysis measures the correlation between individual variables and factors. The factor loading ranges from −1 to 1, and its square represents the percentage of variation that the factor can explain. In research, a threshold of 0.7 is commonly used as the standard, with values greater than this being acceptable [88].
If the disparity involves a belief that is important to the individual, they will experience stronger feelings of dissonance. That’s why people often struggle when encountering information contradicting their deeply held beliefs and values. Cognitive dissonance theory, proposed by Festinger, cognitive dissonance addiction focuses on the discomfort felt when holding conflicting beliefs or attitudes, leading individuals to seek consistency. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.
Cognitive Dissonance: Theory, Examples & How to Reduce It
The use of WeChat red packets as a reward was chosen for their ease of use and accessibility to the participants. Overall, these measures were taken to ensure the data’s quality and accuracy and promote high participation rates. In this study, 425 questionnaires were collected from July to October 2022 through an online questionnaire platform (Questionnaire Star, a Chinese professional platform that provides service of online questionnaire survey), and 11 invalid questionnaires were excluded. A total of 15 questionnaires were excluded, and finally, 391 valid questionnaires were collected, with the effective rate of 92%.
