But if deep down you still resent that behavior, that tension can lead to more problems over time. It explains a lot of common human tendencies, such as rationalization, justification, and why we shift our beliefs over time. The relation between inconsistency and CDS is more than a presence-absence relation and it forms a main axiom of CDT. As a consequence, to achieve cognitive dissonance addiction a test of the model and clear predictions, one must measure the degree of inconsistency or other factors responsible for its magnitude which are supposed to impact the CDS (e.g., strength, importance, centrality). This relation between inconsistency and CDS has been under-examined in the literature, and an effort must be made to operationalize inconsistency rigorously.
Distinguishing Behavioral and Cognitive-Behavioral Theory
As applied to alcoholism,1 the cognitive-behavioral approach (see box; Kazdin 1982) views the etiology and persistence of pathological drinking as learned behavior (discussed below) and has led to the application of learning-based clinical methods to alcoholism treatment. These clinical techniques include coping skills training, relapse prevention, marital or family interventions, and development of broad-based social supports for clients. These and other related methods are described in this article, along with considerations of their effectiveness. Clients also are taught strategies for coping with urges to drink and refusing offers to drink.
Cognitive Dissonance: A Internal Conflict That Leads to Psychological Discomfort
- Investigations of CDT in social neuroscience (e.g., van Veen et al., 2009; Harmon-Jones et al., 2015; Izuma and Murayama, 2019) also show similitudes in the activated areas with other theories.
- This situation created cognitive dissonance in most individuals—they believed that the task was boring, yet inexplicably found themselves arguing quite the opposite.
- For their part, Gosling et al. (2006) used the Elliot and Devine’s scale but relied on negative-self oriented affect to assess dissonance instead of their dissonance specific index.
- These people may wrestle with their uncomfortable thoughts by questioning if smoking is really that bad for their health.
“When a person is holding themselves in contradictory stances, attempting to hold opposing viewpoints, they have to expend mental energy to block out their own hypocrisy,” Curry says. Have you experienced unease when walking by someone who is homeless and not opening up your wallet — even though you feel like they do deserve help? Have you regretted cheating on a partner — even though you always swore you’d never do that?
People Experience Cognitive Dissonance in Real Life All the Time
The person gets caught between their conflicting beliefs and is unable to restore internal consistency no matter what they do. In vain attempts to restore internal peace, they go back and forth between the only two options they know – stop, drink, stop, repeat. He has worked for Elevate Addiction Services for over 2 years, and is board-certified in family and addiction medicine.
Consequences That Reinforce Drinking
When life presents you with a compromising situation that goes against your core beliefs or values it can be stressful. This situation is defined as cognitive dissonance and may present itself as part of your struggle as you work through the process of recovery from drug or alcohol addiction. The patient-treatment matching literature is still in its infancy, with relatively few empirical studies.
- Therapists teach clients to monitor and evaluate their feelings, their thoughts, and the situations in which they find themselves to identify potential antecedents to drinking.
- The predictive dissonance account proposes that the motivation for cognitive dissonance reduction is related to an organism’s active drive for reducing prediction error.
- For decades, studies have been focused only on attitude change (for historical reviews, see Vaidis and Gosling, 2011; Vaidis and Bran, 2018), but the regulation strategies can be numerous (see McGrath, 2017).
- Contingency management may be useful particularly for clients who are impulsive, who require structure, or who may be poorly motivated.
- Hence, a serious assessment of regulation strategies that avoid false negatives would have to include all possibilities.
Essentially, the internal conflict that results when you recognize the contradiction throws your mental balance (that feeling of “everything’s going well”) out of whack. You’ll naturally want to reduce the tension to return to — or close to, anyway — a happy place where things align in harmony. Once the inconsistency induction and the CDS issues are fixed—and only after that—the research could finally focus seriously on the regulation sequence and the whole model. Indeed, the genuine model considers regulation to be driven by the CDS and thus the theory expects individuals to be motivated for regulation.
Similarly, scientists should be alert to methodological flaws surrounding their models so as to confront empirical challenges serenely. Moreover, despite some flashbacks, most of the participants were able to make use of their addictive history positively. This citation illustrates both some active decision to stay sober but also a recurrent struggle not to yield to temptations, buffered by the fact that they realised that a relapse could quickly destroy everything they had been working for.
- Many experienced a challenge dealing with grief, having wasted so many years of their lives on being addicts.
- When Festinger (1957) proposed cognitive dissonance theory, the behaviorist perspective and reinforcement theory (e.g., Skinner 1938) were influential in how theorists thought about human behavior.
- Relapse prevention, however, has fostered a closer analysis of the relapse process, focusing on interventions that may be used to interrupt it and identifying behaviors that should be strengthened to maintain long-term sobriety.
Standard Assessment of Cognitive Dissonance State
A smoker, for example, who knows that smoking causes cancer, experiences cognitive dissonance if she continues to smoke. But that is difficult, so most smokers convince themselves that the links between smoking and lung cancer are not quite as strong as doctors claim (modify belief, or avoid the information). In the context of dieting, a person who intends to lose weight has dissonance because of his conflicting strong desires for fattening foods and to lose weight. After an overindulging evening in a special event, he may experience an intense feeling of discomfort (regret and guilt) for his behavior. He may reduce the discomfort by either downplaying the importance of weight loss, or engage in a rigorous exercise the day after.
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A clinical implication of such findings is that sobriety is an essential goal for personal recovery. To reach such a goal, patients must be assisted in learning to cope with personal, interpersonal and social triggers. In addition, treatment should focus on identity and reorientation, social relations and preparation for the future, considering the realisation that new challenges will appear. Abstaining from using illegal drugs was reported as being a challenge but also as a door-opener to a new life and new possibilities.