 This is lecture six in this lecture. We'll be talking about one big theory cognitive dissonance It's rather complicated theory So I think it's very good that we will spend an entire lecture on it So in the first part we will talk about what the theory is and the second part I will give you some more elaboration and applications and consequences of the theory So as human beings and we've learned this so far in in the lectures in the previous lectures We like to think that we are good people we like to value ourselves and we I think we are smart and reliable We have our people with good solid ideas, right? That's what we all like to think But sometimes these ideas are challenged. You may for example value honesty a lot, but then You find yourself telling someone else a lie. So you tell for example to your kids I tell my kids this all the time don't lie don't ever lie and then I see a colleague of mine Wearing a new outfit and she asked me so what do you think of my new dress and I'm like, ah beautiful Well, I actually think otherwise. So I am behaving in a way that is not in line with my own core Core value namely honesty In the same way you can be maybe a climate activist and then still take a private jet to a climate conference I think to yourself. Well, this climate change a climate conference was really important and then you lift off and you know Pollute pollute the air with your private jet. So these are all Behaviors that are not in line with your own core values and according to cognitive dissonance theory something happens within people the moment we are our ideas are Battling with our behaviors. So cognitive dissonance theory is a theory. That's that's first developed by Lee and Festinger in 1957 and later a lot of other researchers continue with his work and the main idea is that the moment we experience inconsistencies between two beliefs so two different types of cognitions or between cognition and behavior and this happens more often This will lead to an uncomfortable emotional state of being and this state is called dissonance Rather complicated, right? Okay, so let me give you I'm gonna give you many examples. So it will become more clear so Let's imagine you are a person with a certain belief and then you show behavior That is not in line with that belief the moment you realize this you will experience Dissonance is a very unpleasant experience It's an emotional state of being in which you sort of doubt yourself and it's also very bad for your self esteem So you value yourself less the moment you experience dissonance so an example is Let's imagine you care about the environment and then you take an airplane to your Ibiza holiday with your friends So the moment and people confront you with this and say I thought you cared about the climate And now you're taking a plane to Ibiza to party with your friends. That's a bit weird, right? Then you start experiencing dissonance or I think for anybody who smokes you experience dissonance every time you lay the cigarette because you want to be healthy, right? We all want to be healthy and then you still smoke also an experience of dissonance So if we experience this negative state, we want to get rid of it We don't want to experience dissonance and we have several ways of reducing this feeling of dissonance So there's three major ways. The first one is change your behavior Make sure your behavior is in line with your attitude with your core value Stop taking planes stop smoking very straightforward If you make your behavior in line with your attitudes, then you don't experience dissonance anymore Secondly, you can change your cognition. You can change your ideas. You can change your values I don't care about the environment anymore. Then you can take all the planes you want, right? Or you can add new conditions and this last option is what we oftentimes do But let me give you an example of reducing dissonance with smoking So if you smoke then most straightforward way would just be to quit smoking And I think any smoker agrees. This is not as straightforward as you as it sounds It will be the best option in many ways in many regards But it's also for a lot of people very difficult and sometimes even an impossible or it feels like an impossible option So changing your behavior is oftentimes very difficult Then you can change your cognition So you can say to yourself all smoking is actually not so bad at all You can doubt the theories and this is also something that politicians politicians oftentimes love love to do So in order to make our worlds more more pleasurable and for example denying climate change, it's beautiful, right? It makes us feel so good although dissonance is removed You can take planes you can eat meat who cares because the world is actually doing very very good So fake news is doing this fake news is feeding into this idea that we want to reduce dissonance and and it helps Enables us to change our cognitions But oftentimes of course the consequences are really bad for changing cognitions because these cognitions are often times quite solid These are good ideas. These are factual evidence and and we just ignore it and we put it aside So that will be change in a cognition Finally you can add cognitions. You can for example say yes I know smoking is bad, but smoking relaxes me and Relaxing is super good for my health. So because I'm less stressed. I'm actually more healthy So for me, it's really important to keep on smoking because otherwise you can never relax anymore So this third way sort of adding cognitions or and also the second way change cognitions That's what people love to do because we love comfortable lies. We love, you know fooling ourselves Rationalizing our behavior. Yeah saying something like yes, I smoke But it's just because everybody around me smokes, you know It's just my way of fitting in if I don't smoke I'll have to make new friends and that's really hard or you say to yourself. Yes smoking is bad But you know not in my family because my grandfather is now 80 years old And he smoked a package a day and he's still very much alive So from for in my family smoking is actually not so healthy. Sorry, not so harmful So these rationalizations is what people love to do We love to fool ourselves and this is just one of the many explanations that The the behavior that people show is actually oftentimes not logical and we convince ourselves of of you know Comfortable lies instead of accepting sort of unpleasant truth So the state of cognitive dissonance is something that we experience a lot and oftentimes we don't even realize it Actually, the state of dissonance is something we experience every time we make a major decision so for you you're probably first-year student or you just started a study psychology and This was a big choice for you, right? You're you're the choice for what you wanted to study and maybe last year you were still contemplating all the other options Maybe you're thinking way I also might want to study philosophy or maybe I want to be a med student or maybe I want to study history You had all these different study paths that all seemed quite appealing and psychology was just one of them the moment you choose psychology, this is actually quite a dangerous state because choosing one option means rejecting all the other choices and all these other choices were also very appealing Logically or luckily for us our mind helps us out because the moment we start making a choice Then we start devaluing all the alternatives and this is called post decision dissonance So the moment you started to study psychology then the option psychology became more attractive to you You saw all the benefits of studying psychology and that really was immediately very clear This was the best choice for you and all the other choice options became less attractive You start seeing many downside of studying history or philosophy So this post decision dissonance this state is something you see a lot in many many different domains I also because I'm a relationship researcher, of course I also love witnessing this in people in relationships So the moment that people are in a relationship in happy relationship They often also devalue the alternative student relationship So for example, they have very they have a lot of positive illusions about the partner They see their partner as really the most attractive person as way more attractive than this person objectively is or as having many You know admirable qualities qualities that other people might not even really see or maybe don't even you know really Value as much as you do so you think your choice for your partner is the best choice because your partner is the best And that is also an automatic way of protecting your relationship having positive illusions about your partner is super healthy Just as it is to have positive illusions about yourself. It helps us feel, you know comfortable in that relationship The interesting thing happens though once the relationship dissolves So if there's a breakup then you see this whole scenario changing all of a sudden everything that you thought was very Admirable of your partner all the positive things all the positive Attributes of this partner. You don't value so much anymore. All of a sudden you experience post decisional Dissonance meaning that your partner since you're no longer with this person is actually not a desirable option anymore So your our minds work really fast and oftentimes very unconsciously Sort of helping us out giving us confidence in the decision that we made So this state of post decision dissonance is something that that salesman actually also are very much aware of here See this very nasty salesman and so what we know is the moment that we make a decision Then our minds automatically start making that choice more acceptable and more, you know admirable and better for us in our minds So what sales people would love for you to do is make the decision for a product as soon as possible They want to get you on board because they know the moment you say yes to a certain product for example a car Which this nasty salesman is trying to sell you says here this beautiful car It's a great deal. You now get a discount of one thousand euro if you're trading your old car So you really this is the deal you you have to make think wow, this is a really good deal Okay, let's do it. Let's you know buy that car So you make a decision to buy a car then all of a sudden the cost starts to increase the salesman says Oh, I'm sorry the thousand euro discount. Yeah, that was that stopped yesterday. So actually that's no longer valid So you don't get the discount anymore. This is a tactic called low balling or the low ball technique so you accept one thing you make a decision and then all of a sudden the cost increase and We don't you would logically think then you just say oh, then I'm not interested anymore But because your mind already made the decision to buy it or to go for it then the yeah This this our minds already worked so hard in order to make that that choice a good choice But we still stick with it. We are committed to the decision the moment we make it and This has also been tested in the domain of research So if a researcher asks for example a participant, would you like to? Participate in my study at 7 a.m. In the morning It's not really, you know something you would love to do but then still 24% of the people say yes, okay? I'll I'll do your study at 7 a.m. In the morning What if you use low balling so then what would that look like then you can say something like this You can first start by asking the question. Would you like to participate in my study? Full stop okay, you wait for the answer then people say yes. Yeah, I want to participate in your study Oh, it starts at 7 a.m. In the morning then 56% of the participants agree so even though you know It's it's the same question, but then post differently You've basically trapped people once they say yes, they will stick to that choice And yeah, you can use low balling in order to make people consent or agree with buying a certain product So the key here is that the moment we make a decision One of the routes to resolve dissonance is blocked. That's the root of changing your behavior So the behavior you already show the behavior, so you're gonna stick with that You then only the only thing that's left for you to do is change in your cognitions and That's sometimes really really hard and you see that in the following examples. Let's imagine you decided to join the army and Joining the army is a choice with many consequences because you have to go through very intense training Of course, it depends a little bit for where you go to go to the army But oftentimes you have a period in which there's really intense training. It's really nasty. You don't sleep much You have to work out all the time and it's very Nasty circumstances you have to go through the training so you have to show behavior That's really effortful and it's actually logically you would think why would anyone on earth do this same thing with hazing So let's imagine you decided to join a fraternity or maternity Then what you then see is that people often go through a period in which they Have to do very weird or stupid or tragic stuff. For example, these guys over here are drinking probably beer in a diaper outside somewhere Showing this is really weird Extreme behavior and it's unpleasant, right? It's something that we really don't like to do So our minds have to work really hard to justify this effort if you have to go through a period of this Like hazing like joining the army our minds is just working like crazy trying to add cognitions in order to Justify this for us. So we know that actually Ironically going through these periods of hazing is actually psychologically very smart because what we then see happening is After this period of showing this very effortful Nasty behavior you start liking the army or the fraternity more So ironically because you have to you went through such an intense period you had to do so we such things that were outside of your comfort zone Your mind starts to justify this by saying that this is really the best The best workplace for me or this is really the best fraternity in the entire world And that's actually why this is still happening. So this we know from research that fraternities where there's hazing that then the members become really committed They really they would never want to leave the fraternity They feel like the fraternity is super important for their identity much more than fraternities where there's no hazing So even though it's very weird. It's very silly sometimes really dangerous even it does work because it makes people more committed And that's what our minds do so in order to justify this this behavior to us So here you see again an example of the way our mind is fooling with us And it's to make us believe that we are rational you and beings while we actually not So this is the basic summary of the cognitive dissonance theory