Cognitive Dissonance: A Deep Dive

In 1957, Leon Festinger published A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Along with a collection of compelling experiments, Festinger changed the landscape of social psychology. The theory, now referenced constantly both in and outside of academic circles, has taken on a life of its own. And it’s still informing new research and analysis more than 60 years later.

For the grand 20th episode of Opinion Science, I want to give you an insider’s look at the theory–its inspiration, the people involved, the classic studies, and the remaining controversies.

Throughout the show you’ll hear from people who have studied cognitive dissonance and who knew the infamous Leon Festinger: Elliot Aronson, Joel Cooper, Jeff Stone, April McGrath, and Mike Gazzaniga.

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Opinion Science is a psychology podcast exploring the science of our opinions, where they come from and how they change. Each week I talk to social scientists and professional communicators about how the work they do reveals key insights about public opinion and persuasion.

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[pdpUU]

Found your podcast because I was interested in this topic. You do a great job explaining it, but I just had to comment on how great your production and overall writing for this episode was! A lot of longform stuff I find can be kind of dry, but you really did a great job incorporating sound and stories. Very engaging stuff!

[racist_in_recovery]

THANK YOU! This has pointed me toward great resources in my work to understand unconscious racism and the misalignment of conscious vs unconscious minds, which is the reason behind the protective and defensive psychological systems and strategies. I hope to show that these protective systems were put in place by a "protective inner child" hiding in the subconscious. Which makes introspection nearly impossible!

[cezary]

19:00 "APRIL MCGRATH: I think sometimes, you know, when people learn about cognitive dissonance theory, it’s brought up as this example of how irrational people are. And it’s like, Oh, look at how silly we are. And we do all these things to justify our behavior. But, you know, lots of dissonance researchers have made the argument that this is actually an adaptive process"

You see what happened here? :) Ms Mcgrath has cognitive dissonance about cognitive dissonance! She's going for option number 2 and in order to remove the dissonance she adds another belief/thought into the equation. She feels bad about cognitive dissonance(which shows how irrational/silly people are) and then finds a reason why this theory would actually be helpful to us.
The fact is that humans are often irrational and silly, and we just have put our pride aside and accept it and then learn from it and become more rational human beings.
We would have a much better world if it wasn't that people don't change their action(option #1), but instead go for option #2 (rationalizing) or option #3 (trivializing).

[cezary]

What about an episode about cognitive dissonance and religion? :)

[siesiehaycraft]

Am taking a cultural in criminal justice course, this is so informative!

[OMGASL]

Added to my Watch Later playlist. Would greatly appreciate it if more of your full episodes get uploaded onto YouTube. :)

[LondonCinematographer]

Fascinating content. Thank you for making it.

[redsparks]

Great talk. The background music is creating some "pleasant" dissonance :)

[makarios]

Is this a history lesson or a deep dive into the actual theory, my comment is that you focus more on the idea and less on the person. While giving credit to the owner of the theory is good, making it all about him really takes away from our objective

[Irshadgbl]

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[SeniorFeliz]

This lecture or study or class is about as boring as the experiment they did in the class with the students I experienced
Cognitive dissonance while listening to this video I keeped telling myself this would be worth it is informative but bored myself to death as I got further into it. A lot of this stuff is intuitive I can't believe they spend their time like this in big schools Like Harvard or Princeton or wherever that school was.what a waste.