There are many people who love animals but have you thought why are they still non-vegetarians. How sure are you that the animal rights activists won’t eat non-vegetarian food? For a life to survive, it must kill other life. Life consumes another life to live. Humans have the habit of creating artificial categories of what to consider as life and what not to consider as life. Some think that plants and trees are nonliving things, and some believe egg is not life. We are doing this unconsciously to get rid of the perceived guilt, and some people go to the extent of blaming it on others.
In psychology, if there is any difference between what one belief and what one does, it is called as mental conflict or cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive Dissonance
When we are faced with a choice and we opt for one, we often have some regrets about the one which we did not choose. There are times we do or say things against our convictions. Both these are examples of conditions that create feelings of discomfort caused by conflicts between various beliefs or attitudes that we hold. Sometimes the conflict arises due to the inconsistency between attitudes and behavior. For example, some people love animals but still are non-vegetarians;.
Dissonance is the struggle a person experiences when inconsistencies occur between attitudes that we hold, or between our attitudes and actions. Dissonance can be seen as a motivational state. Individuals experiencing dissonance are motivated to reduce it as it produces a feeling of discomfort. There are three ways to reduce dissonance
Change your attitudes or behavior so as to make them consistent. For example, if one married to a person one does not like. Change the attitude towards the partner and start believing that he/she is not unlikable or walk out of the marriage. Both these processes would lead to a reduction in the conflict.
Obtain or recruit new information that supports one’s attitude or behavior. For example thinking that so many of my friends have divorced and ended a bad marriage. So there is nothing wrong about divorce.
Minimize the importance of conflict. For example thinking that you have lived for ten years with someone whom you did not like. For the rest of our life, thinking that these conflicts do not matter, and you will manage it somehow for the rest of your life.
One of these three ways would reduce the dissonance and bring in a sense of balance. Aronson, Fried and Stone (1991) carried out a series of studies involving forced compliance. It meant getting people to do or say something they did not believe in. They used health related issues for inducing hypocrisy or lying like safe sex. A group of participants had to encourage others to practice this responsible sexual behavior. Simultaneously, they were reminded that they have not always practiced what they are advocating. This would generate dissonance. This can be reduced by changing their attitude towards safe sex. This was revealed when 85 percent of these participants bought contraceptive devices the next time they engaged in sex. This reduced their lying hypocritical attitude besides their actions.
Arson and Mills gave large and small rewards for engaging in behavior that was counter to their held attitudes. The experiment consisted of two sets of female college students. One group had to undergo a severe embarrassment test to join the group. The set of women were put through a milder test of embarrassment. Finally, the members of both the groups were told they cleared the test and were allowed to join. The severely embarrassed group seemed to enjoy the task for which they enrolled with difficulty. The other group that went through milder difficulties to enter the group did not find the task that they had to perform interesting. The tasks that both the groups had to perform were dull and uninteresting. The severely initiated group had a lot of dissonance because of the following two inconsistent attitudes they held:
A)underwent a severe initiation
B)Had to perform a dull task at the end
The severely embarrassed group changed their attitude towards the task and perceived it as not so boring. In this way, dissonance was reduced. The mildly initiated group had less dissonance because the intensity of the two attitudes that they held was low. In this case, the dissonance was less, so they did not have any motivation to change their attitude towards the task, they were required to perform. Hence, they were able to view the work as dull because they put less into the situation. So people who suffer more, justify it by thinking that they like what they have. In real life, also, one gets to see knowledge rewards lead people to believe that they like what they are doing. People working in corporate offices that are demanding and leave little or no time for personal life justify their lives on the ground that they enjoy the work hours, lifestyle, etc. Here the attitude is changed, so as to reduce the conflict that rises by not having time or leisure for self or family.
