The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in Decision Making
Introduction
When making decisions humans commonly fall victim to errors in logic and reasoning. Since the inception of the study of the mind, psychologists have endeavored to isolate the characteristics and causes of errors in human thinking. Researchers and theorists have developed categories of such errors: representativeness heuristics, availability heuristics, memory and hindsight biases, etc. . . . In other words, to err is human.
In 1957, Festinger identified another phenomenon in human cognition--cognitive dissonance. Festinger theorized that humans experience negative emotions when performing behaviors that are contrary to their attitudes. These negative emotions, collectively called "cognitive dissonance," have been shown to influence people's attitudes and behaviors in myriad situations. Is it possible that cognitive dissonance plays an important role in directing the illogical or irrational decisions that people......
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Approximate Word Count: 2291
Approximate Pages: 9 (260 words per double-spaced page) |