How to Reduce Cognitive Dissonance

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.

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.