There are many factors that affect the individual in social life. Human behavior occurs as a result of the perception and evaluation of these factors, especially their relationships with other people. He remains under the influence of numerous thoughts that are compatible or contradictory with each other. Despite all these factors, individuals carry out their social relations within certain thought patterns, that is, within the framework of an intellectual integrity. This intellectual integrity is called "attitude" in social psychology.
Attitude is people's display of a certain attitude towards a situation, event, object or person. Our personality traits, the social and cultural environment we live in, our knowledge and life experiences affect our attitudes. And as a result of these attitudes, we decide how we will behave in human relations and social life. Attitudes are the guiding forces behind our behavior.
For example, let's think of a person who finds lying behavior wrong due to his past experiences and upbringing. We expect this person to be meticulous about not lying in his friendships, business life or marriage and will try to be as honest as he can. But what happens if he is not being honest and his attitudes and behaviors are not compatible?
Cognitive Dissonance Theory was put forward by Leon Festinger in 1957. Our behavior is influenced by our past experiences, the attitudes we adopt, our religious and political views or moral values. Festinger suggested that we seek harmony between our attitudes, which affect our behavior, and our behaviors resulting from attitudes. People need to be cognitively consistent. However, our attitudes and behaviors are not always compatible. In such situations, we feel psychological tension.
This negative motivational situation that occurs when we experience Cognitive Dissonance disturbs the individual and motivates the individual to get rid of this negative situation and emotion. The feeling of discomfort may be of low or high intensity. If we are experiencing a low level of cognitive dissonance, we do not take any action. However, the feeling of high level of cognitive tension requires the individual to get rid of this negative feeling. It causes things to follow different paths. Festinger talks about four different ways on this subject:
1) One can change one's own behavior.
2) One can change one's own attitude.
3) One can change one's own attitude and behavior. can obtain new information to support it.
4) The person can reduce the importance of this inconsistency (cognitive dissonance) he feels.
We can demonstrate what we have explained theoretically so far with a simple example. Imagine you are a smoker and you have the following beliefs: “Smoking is dangerous for my health. It can cause lung cancer and heart disease. "When I smoke, I cough and my teeth turn yellow." However, even though you think about these, you smoke 2 packs of cigarettes a day. In this case, your attitude and behavior towards smoking are in conflict. According to Festinger, this person will feel uncomfortable because of his inconsistency. This situation pushes the individual to do something. According to this theory, the individual in question follows one of the following paths:
1) He can change his behavior, that is, he quits or reduces smoking. In this way, he behaves in accordance with his attitude.
2) He can change his attitude towards smoking. He argues that smoking is not such a bad thing and that it has little effect on causing health problems.
3) He can find new information to support his own behavior. For example, he can read magazines prepared by cigarette companies that argue that smoking does not cause much harm and use this information to justify his behavior.
4) In order to reduce the negative feelings within him, he can reduce the importance of the cognitive conflict he experiences. For example, he may believe that smoking, among other problems, is not that important.
Festinger claims that this system, which is carried out at the cognitive level, is done unconsciously. The example I gave at the beginning of the article of a person who does not approve of lying but lies will choose one of these confirmations and censor opposing views to protect their beliefs.
Although it was put forward approximately 60 years ago, the theory is still being studied and remains valid. It is possible to explain many situations we encounter in life with cognitive dissonance theory. �turn it off.
In the proverb 'The cat calls the liver it cannot reach unclean', we can say that the cat changed its attitude because it knew it could not have the liver. We can say that the person who feels indebted and starts voting for party X after receiving financial aid from party This theory can also be explained by this theory, where a person who belongs to an oppressed, minority community but does not react to this situation finds an excuse for his passivity by saying "I don't speak out, why do they?" to those who belong to the same group but speak out against injustice. The fact that we tend to ignore the negative characteristics of the people/jobs/statuses that begin to emerge over time, to which we work hard and suffer to obtain, has also been discovered within the framework of this theory. Because it would create a great contradiction to accept that someone in whom we had positive beliefs enough to work so hard would disappoint us.
We can force ourselves to like people who are similar to us because if we don't like someone who is like us, we won't like ourselves either. In this case, we either force ourselves to love that person, or we try to see our differences so that we don't think we are similar to that person.
In short, we not only act as we think, but after a while our behaviors begin to determine our thoughts. The familiar advice of Mevlana, who we know lived about 700 years before the Cognitive Dissonance Theory was put forward, also supports this theory;
'Either appear as you are or be as you appear'
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