Have you ever felt yourself in a negative emotional state when someone told you something you didn't want to hear or accept? Maybe this resulted in you ignoring, denying or rejecting what they had to say, even if it was valid or true. You were likely in a state of cognitive dissonance.
If you're familiar with Orwell's 1984, you can relate cognitive dissonance with double-think. It's also similar to self-justification because it's a process where we justify a position based on personal subjective motivations like emotional discomfort or attachment to a belief.
Reality Negotiation
In the negative sense, cognitive dissonance is a form of reality negotiation, a process where we are negotiating with reality in order to sustain our conformity to beliefs in falsity through the construction of illusions.
We will often reject reality as it ‘is’ when new information is presented. We opt to "feel-good" about ourselves by holding onto the old or current way of seeing things -- our self-view, our worldview. We remain attached to falsity or belief previously believed to be "true". We lie to ourselves, and create an illusion or false image of ourselves (self-view) and reality (worldview).
Perceptual Misalignment
Rather than bring our perceptions in alignment with reality, we fight against that positive state of equilibrium, and remain in disequilibrium with truth/reality/existence.
Unfortunately, this is a default protection mechanism. Many of us live by this automatic process unless we are aware of it and how it functions, then we can work to overcome this involuntary modality of being.
Justifications
Rejecting reality promotes a counter-reality belief, illusion or unreality. This is often used in order to justify and excuse our behavior as well, whereby we tell ourselves everything is "right" and "good" with the world and ourselves, even though it isn't. This way, we can go back to "feeling-good" about ourselves and how we think things are, to feel secure and comfortable, and therefore no change is needed. Things can simply go on as they were before.
Face the Mirror
Facing the negative reality of the world is hard, but facing the negative reality of our own behavior -- of ourselves -- is even harder.
Looking into the mirror and seeing the darkness within our "hearts" (consciousness) is a troubling. It generates emotional turmoil, tension, friction, interference and conflict within ourselves.
Emotional Cues to Pay Attention
Cognitive dissonance is when a contradiction exists, and it often manifests as emotional stimulus like anger, anxiety, discomfort, guilt, shame, embarrassment, stress, etc. These are emotional cues to get us to pay attention to a conflict or contradiction that is happening with old vs. new info, or between our desires and reality.
Emotion and thought are linked. Feelings can affect our thinking through emotional mind control.
Here is a short 5-minute video that explains an aspect of cognitive dissonance, as a negative conformity to falsity:
It also relates to feeling negative emotions as a pressure to conform to a social situation:
Asch Conformity Experiment
Everybody's Doing It
Fooling Ourselves
Cognitive dissonance is important to understand in relation to how beliefs fool us because we want to believe they are "true".
Fooling and lying to ourselves is quite easy. We prefer a comfortable lie to an uncomfortable truth. We are often our own worst enemies.
Feeling-good
Beliefs often lull us into a false perception of reality because they "feel-good" to have. Our erroneous self-views and worldviews can be maintained this way, because we gain value and meaning from beliefs even if they are wrong. We need to have more care, courage and will-power to face reality as it is, and drop many of our false beliefs that can be known to be such, and stop purporting others to be "truth" when they are only a belief.
Know the definition and meaning of words as they were created to reflect aspects of reality (etymology is a good place to start). Beliefs do not equate to truth, no matter how much we want, wish or desire our beliefs to be true.
Think More, Look Closer
The feeling of cognitive dissonance can also be a positive process (if we understand it). We can use the emotional cues as a signal to get us to think more. We can look more closely at what is going on within us and properly resolve the conflict and contradiction we are having in order to bring us into greater alignment with truth and reality -- rather than reject, deny or ignore it.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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Too much Orwellian reality has my equilibrium at all time lows.
It's difficult to align our morals, basic, human morals, with the reality we have created through our collective shrugs at the issues facing our world.
Thanks for opening this line of thought and making it understandable for people who may be, like me, out of balance.
You're welcome :) Thanks for the feedback.
I notice this in everyday conversations. People tend to side step or flat out reject topics they know will contradict their internal beliefs knowing they are either right or wrong. It's interesting to think about how deeply this affects us aside from the emotional cues. I opt to use it as a positive process. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah... it's powerful. Good to hear you use it as a positive :)
Reading your article sparks something in me that usually happen when studying my bible and i caught a powerful word something will resound deep in me and those words below, are thought provoking
Thanks @krnel
Resteemed
Thank you for the appreciation and support of the work :)
I think we should learn to accept the truth, we should never jump into conclusion in any case without having a concrete evidence , you have said it all sir and i think have also learn from this
Indeed, we need to process and understand by reflecting on the new information first, instead of outright rejecting it. Thanks for the feedback.
This is very true and i can relate with every bit of it. I recently found myself negotiating reality but i found out reality is just as it is and my wishful thinking to probably turn back the hands of fime wouldn't change anything. I eventually had to face the mirror and face the situation heads-on.
Bravo :D
Thank you for this insightful post @krnel
Interesting and I agree with you. I'm sure everyone has experienced it, whether in childhood, teenagers or adults and even parents who can specifically say already have experience of life or termed a lot of eating salt life. In childhood, there is no right other than to obey his wishes or else we must get ready to hear a great cry. At the same time teenagers, something we are sometimes embarrassed to do but they feel proud to do it. At the age of childhood and adolescents are still considered to be still in the stage of the process of living and improving patterns fikir. But it is not the case with adults (especially parents) that sometimes the pattern fikirnya more to self-justification (not the truth), but there are also in certain conditions (forced) to do so. Usually things are also conditional, the influence of power (position, wealth and also ability) that give rise to excessive selfishness. Feeling his power is able to justify his thinking, his behavior and his actions. In my opinion, it is all selfishness (justifying itself to cover its shortcomings)
LOL
fun read.
:D
LOL. The flip side is when the postmodernist, subjectivist or solipsist says "everyone's opinion is just as valid as another"
OMG, thats going to be here soon.
LOL
Feelings and anecdotal perspectives have taken over the the world of actual definitions, logic and reason.
Do you think everybody can gain a skill of not rejecting reality?
We can all improve our ability to think better, recognize cognitive biases, and not let ourselves fall into the trap of negative cognitive dissonance to reject reality when it's presented, yes. We all have potential to learn self-knowledge.
My mother loves me.
My mother beats me every other day, but it is for my own good.
I try to do nothing wrong, but I get punished often, therefor I am bad.
Contradictions forming false conclusions ;)
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
I’d like to think that I am able to sit with unresolved cognitive dissonance longer than anyone I know.
Sure, but not hold them both as true, using them to validate or justify certain situations when convenient, which is what double think means.
Absolutely, that is manipulation.
Several people have asked me whether using psychological concepts is being manipulative. I only see the manipulation in having that knowledge, if it is used for relatively immoral purposes. But, in that is the word relative--who judges how someone handles that knowledge...what actions the person takes. How are we to know if they are purposely being manipulative for ill will, learned or necessary self protection, or attempting to have a multi-faceted approach?
In my original statement, I guess I am talking more about being able to understand that truths on one side can be falsehoods, when looked at from a different perspective. Personally or culturally.
But, yes. We must all check ourselves, before we wreck ourselves ;)
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