How to Reduce Cognitive Dissonance

All of us experience cognitive dissonance. It’s the tension that arises when we think one way but act another way, or when we hold two opposing views at the same time. You want to lose weight, but you “cheat” and eat a chocolate doughnut. You believe we all should reduce our carbon footprint but struggle to break free from internal combustion engines and luxury SUVs.

“All of us — and I mean all of us — have something we have dissonant beliefs and behaviors about,” says Alauna Curry, MD, a trauma psychiatrist based in Houston.

Some of that dissonance can be a good thing, but too much (or too much unresolved tension) means we’re constantly at conflict with ourselves. And that tension and conflict can make us feel stressed, irritated, and unhappy if we let them fester for too long. Here’s what you need to do to go about reducing and reconciling the cognitive dissonance in your life.

Some Cognitive Dissonance Can Help Us Grow

Cognitive Dissonance Can Be Harmful, Too

Recognizing and reconciling cognitive dissonance is not always a feel-good experience. Spotting dissonance in our own lives can be painful, embarrassing, and anxiety-inducing, too. And it can be troubling and mentally exhausting to deal with, Curry says.

“The tension that gets created when you hold certain beliefs or values but act in a way that conflicts with your belief systems generates an internal discomfort that most people have to subconsciously work very hard to ignore,” Curry says.

Consider if you’re working in a job you hate, suggests Michele Leno, PhD, a Michigan-based licensed psychologist and founder of DML Psychological Services. You have a pit in your stomach every morning, and you’re counting down the hours until it’s time to leave. And yet, you go every day. Living with that dissonance probably means you’re fairly stressed out and angry every day.

And sometimes reducing the dissonance can be as easy as reframing your thinking.

Maybe not feeling so negative about that job is a matter of recognizing its benefits, Dr. Leno says. Such as, “earning a salary and a pension is the responsible thing to do” or “I don’t respect my boss, but I’m learning a lot.”

How to Reduce Cognitive Dissonance

Since it’s unlikely that any of us can avoid cognitive dissonance completely, it’s important to spot it and resolve or reduce it. Remember: It’s the resolution of dissonance in our own lives (not letting that tension fester) that allows us to grow, Noulas says.

That said, there are some ways to resolve or at least minimize dissonance, starting with these three basic routes, according to Richard Hall, PhD, a professor of information science and technology at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla.

1. Change your belief. This is the simplest option, but it also is more difficult to pull off when the belief is important to you or it’s resistant to change.
2. Change your actions. Whatever you did might have caused so much guilt and shame that you swear you’ll never do it again. Changing your future actions could resolve cognitive dissonance and make you feel better about the situation.
3. Change how you perceive your actions. By altering the way you regard your actions, you can talk yourself into believing that your actions aren’t in so much opposition to your beliefs. Let’s say you’re a fervent environmentalist, but you buy disposable water bottles when you travel. You might rationalize a behavior you know is not helping the environment by telling yourself it’s okay if you do it only occasionally or by considering the other actions you take as more important (such as volunteering to plant trees or using solar power for electricity in your home). Buying those water bottles and your beliefs still may contradict one another, but you no longer struggle with that opposition, so you protect yourself from the stress that conflict would otherwise cause you.

It’s also important to know when to challenge your own beliefs. Many young people inherit their belief system from parents or caregivers growing up, but it’s possible to outgrow these beliefs as a young adult.

All of those routes help you get back to a mental state without conflict, where you feel like your beliefs, values, and actions are all in harmony. But each way of reducing dissonance requires that you recognize what feelings you have and do something about it, Curry adds.

It can help to view the situation you’re in from the outside, stepping back so you can see the big picture. “Give equal weight to how others experience you, and using others as a mirror, begin to identify places where your belief systems and behavior do not align,” Curry says. “Then ask yourself why you behaved as you behaved.” This can help you see how you got into the situation and hopefully you can see a way to resolve it.

Preventing Cognitive Dissonance in the First Place