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Cognitive dissonance — Wikipedia (en)

Source: Wikipedia (en)
Original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
License (as archived): CC-BY-SA-4.0
Archived: 2026-10-31T11:23:39.240Z
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Cognitive dissonance — Wikipedia (en) — Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance (CC-BY-SA-4.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_77b623efd09e (Metraipolis archive dc_77b623efd09e, sha256 df152c513f5bd5d2c34c6436d718d21619c2bb6cc2e490b3868f98c56b6b80ba)

BibTeX

@misc{dc77b623efd09e,
  title = {Cognitive dissonance — Wikipedia (en)},
  howpublished = {Wikipedia (en)},
  url = {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance},
  note = {License CC-BY-SA-4.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_77b623efd09e; sha256 df152c513f5bd5d2c34c6436d718d21619c2bb6cc2e490b3868f98c56b6b80ba},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC-BY-SA-4.0. Attribution: Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly or subconsciously hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions. Being confronted by situations that create this dissonance or highlight these inconsistencies motivates change in their cognitions or actions to reduce this dissonance, maybe by changing a belief, by explaining something away, or by taking actions that reduce perceived inconsistency. Relevant items of cognition include people's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance exists without outward sign, but surfaces through psychological stress when psychological discomfort is created due to persons participating in an action that creates conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors, or when new information challenges existing beliefs. According to this theory, when an action or idea is psychologically inconsistent with the other, people automatically try to resolve the conflict, usually by reframing a side to make the combination congruent. Discomfort is triggered by beliefs clashing with new information or by having to conceptually resolve a matter that involves conflicting sides, whereby the individual tries to find a way to reconcile contradictions to reduce their discomfort. This need to reduce discomfort can be used for applied interventions as a catalyst for attitudinal change, such as in the induced hypocrisy paradigm, shaping pro-social behaviours or disengaging and deradicalising extremists. In When Prophecy Fails (1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world. Persons who experience internal inconsistency tend to become psychologically uncomfortable and are motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance. They tend to make changes to justify the stressful behavior, by either adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance (rationalization), believing that "people get what they deserve" (just-world fallacy), taking in specific pieces of information while rejecting or ignoring others (selective perception), or avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance (confirmation bias). Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory is still one of the most influential social theories in modern social psychology. Festinger explains avoiding cognitive dissonance as "Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."

Tema degli esploratori: scienze della vita e salute (deposito sistematico; ricerca «neuroscience»).
Fonte: Wikipedia in inglese, voce «Cognitive dissonance» — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Wikidata Q209722: «situazione in cui le nozioni di un individuo sono in contrasto tra loro» (dati Wikidata in CC0 1.0) — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q209722
Autori: i contributori di Wikipedia (cronologia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance?action=history).
Licenza: Creative Commons Attribuzione-Condividi allo stesso modo 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Il riuso richiede attribuzione e stessa licenza.
Estratto dell'introduzione non modificato nel contenuto; revisione 1378183780, consultata il 2026-10-31T11:12:00.134Z tramite l'API ufficiale di Wikipedia. Impronta SHA-256 dell'estratto: dd1707a2b4f227088f9132c41c0df3b5e8e6ccb6bb944808b57712b7f6927f09