In 1957, a man by the name of Leon Festinger toyed with the idea that we, as human beings, desire to maintain peace within our cognition. If that peace is disturbed or disrupted, we experience this idea called “dissonance.” Festinger then developed the cognitive dissonance theory, which is defined as: “the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.”
The idea behind this is that we have many cognitions (thoughts) that run through our minds and constantly affect our behavior. When our behavior (based on our cognition) is threatened by a contradicting thought, we undergo an uncomfortable experience called “dissonance” which disrupts the peace in our cognition. When this disruption happens, we try to do anything that we can to satisfy and solve the dissonance in order to restore peace to our cognition.
If this sounds incredibly confusing, that’s okay. This theory really confused me for a long time, but then I began to understand it. I’ll give an example to try and help relate this theory to practical situations:
Say you smoke. You’ve smoked for years! Your cognition says you need it because it calms your nerves. You get riled up and you need to take a break and smoke a cigarette. Smoking is great! You love it and don’t know what you would do without it.
Enter the contradicting thought. “SURGEON GENERAL WARNING: Smoking causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and May Complicate Pregnancy.”
Those are all awful things! You don’t want any of that! Congratulations. You just experienced cognitive dissonance.
The behavior was smoking. Your cognition told you that smoking was good for you, but the contradicting thought was that smoking is (incredibly) bad for you. You experience cognitive dissonance because now you have to somehow solve these two contradicting thoughts. How can you continue smoking and think it’s good for you when you now know otherwise?
Now, since these opposing thoughts make you uncomfortable, you feel motivated to satisfy the two cognitions in any way you can. This can be done many ways--some ways are rational while others are irrational.
For example, a rational way to satisfy these thoughts would be to quit smoking. “I know it’s bad for me, so I will quit!” This can be harder than just saying and doing it, but I digress. The point is, you satisfy the dissonance by quitting your smoking, and thus the opposing thought “smoking is bad” becomes your new cognition.
An irrational way to deal with it is to deny the warning and continue smoking as if you never knew that it was bad. Naturally, this is a bad way to cope because a few years down the line you could develop lung cancer and, well, you should have heeded the warning.
Sometimes different situations where you experience cognitive dissonance can have multiple ways of solving the dissonance. Sometimes, like the smoking example, there’s really only one way to satisfy it (and if you know of another, I’d like to know!).
Is it starting to make sense? Yes? Good. My question now is:
Is this a new idea or have we always known this?
God gave us this ability to know right from wrong and when our thoughts compete with others, we have always experienced dissonance.
In the story of the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve were created and given dominion to rule, God also gave them the ability to know right from wrong:
“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in that day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2.16-17).
Man knew that the right thing to do was to stay away from that tree. God told him so! If God told him so, it’s the right thing to do. Then entered the contradicting thought. The Serpent came to Eve and said, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3.4-5).
The contradicting thought was that God was not letting them experience everything they could be experiencing. Everything was perfect except that one tree. They could eat whatever they wanted, except from that one tree. Now Eve is in a dilemma. God said one thing, but the serpent said another. Now she has to somehow solve this dissonance.
She chose to disobey God and eat of the one tree she wasn’t supposed to. She satisfied the dissonance with the wrong choice, but she satisfied it nonetheless. When God created us, He gave us the ability to know right from wrong, thus setting us up to experience dissonance.
Skip to the New Testament and we see that Paul addresses this issue again but in a much different way:
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Gal 5.16-17, emphasis added).
I find it interesting that Paul recognizes the difficulty of a Christian's walk: “. . . to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” Paul recognizes that there is an uncomfortable situation that arises between pursuing the Spirit of God and the fleshly desires. What does each of these paths look like? He lays out a lot of examples:
The desires of the flesh include sexual immorality, impurity, anger, malice, slander, idolatry, sorcery—the list goes on and on. The desires of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These two opposing forces are fighting for your response given through your behavior. If someone does wrong to you, are you going to love them anyway and show them kindness, or are you going to get angry and harm them in some way or another?
Paul knows that his readers will fight this battle. Our cognitions will always be battling new and challenging cognitions. I could argue that what Paul is alluding to here is the idea of a conscience. Is it right for me to hate them? I feel kind of bad that I hurt them… This is cognitive dissonance. Your original thought was what you held to, but a challenging thought (guilt, conviction, conscience, etc.) disrupted and now you have to satisfy this imbalance in one way or another.
Cognitive dissonance is not a new concept. It’s been around since the creation of Man. It only took until 1957 for someone to come along and give a name to it. God is the ruler of everything, even what we see as the work of progress in the psychological and scientific world.
