Free Term Papers on Cognitive Dissonance

OPPapers.com Essay Index >> Psychology >> Cognitive Dissonance

We have many free term papers and essays on Cognitive Dissonance. We also have a wide variety of research papers and book reports available to you for free. You can browse our collection of term papers or use our search engine.

Essays from FratFiles.com
  1. Cognitive Dissonance Theory

    Cognitive Dissonance Theory. ... These are the three basic ways of reducing cognitive
    dissonance (Aronson, Wilson, and Akert, 1998, P. 192). ...

  2. Cognitive Dissonance

    cognitive dissonance. Cognitive Dissonance is a psychological discomfort caused
    by inconsistency among a person's belief, attitudes, and or actions. ...

  3. Cognitive Dissonance

    Cognitive Dissonance. "Your best friend is having a beer bash tonight. ... This state
    of uneasiness or tension is easily understood as Cognitive Dissonance. ...

  4. Cognitive Dissonance

    Cognitive Dissonance. Cognitive Dissonance How do human beings make decisions? ... Cognitive
    dissonance can be broken down into a number of elements. ...

  5. Is The Purpose Of Advertising To Create Cognitive Dissonance?

    Is the Purpose of Advertising to Create Cognitive Dissonance? Introduction ... One
    such extension is the theory of cognitive dissonance. The ...

View More Papers...

Cognitive Dissonance

Submitted by oppapers on September 19, 2000

Category: Psychology
Words: 1351 | Pages: 6
Views: 868
Popularity Rank: 8,015
Average Member Grade: N/A (Add a Comment / Grade this Paper)

"Your best friend is having a beer bash tonight. Everyone you talk to indicated their positive intentions of going to the best beer bash of the millennium. However, you have a Psyc 135 final next morning that you haven't studied for. Your midterm scores have been low going into the final, but everyone claims that the final is easy every semester. Should you stay home and study for the final or go to this millennium beer bash and merrily consume alcohol?"
Above stated scenario raises several questions in my mind and lands me in a state of psychological tension. Having a choice of attending a social event or studying for the final exam puts me in a dilemma as to what to do next. Deciding to stay home and study for a test may very well anger my friends, but may also cause a terrible sense of well being of missing out on a social event. While deciding to go to the party instead, it leads me in a state of tension as the party time can be well spent on studying for the final exam next morning. This state of uneasiness or tension is easily understood as Cognitive Dissonance.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory, developed by Leon Festinger (1957), is concerned with the relationships among cognitions (Festinger, 1957). In this context, cognition can be perceived as a piece of knowledge that may inscribe an element of an attitude, an emotion, a behavior, a value, and so on (Festinger, 1957). For example, the knowledge that you like the color blue is a cognition. People hold a multitude of cognitions simultaneously, and these cognitions form irrelevant, consonant or dissonant relationships with one another.
Cognitive Irrelevance probably describes the bulk of the relationships among a person's cognitions. Irrelevance simply means that the two cognitions have nothing to do with each other. Two cognitions are consonant if one cognition fits with or is consistent with the other. People like consonance among their cognitions. We do not know whether...

You must Login to view the entire paper.
If you are not a member yet, Sign Up for free!