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I'm trying to make out the meaning of this expression. So far I've seen meanings in several websites but I couldn't give it a closure (I couldn't fully understand the meaning). I'd be glad if someone could help me with this and if so, put it in a cohesive way.

The concept of cognitive dissonance, social psychologist Leon Festinger's primary claim to fame, is a powerful description of human behavior which has a wide, possibly universal, application to the human species. Though relatively easy to define and describe, the concept has generated more academic research, technical papers, and scholarly articles than perhaps any other scientific descriptor of how the human psyche functions in real-world situations.

The primary assumption behind the concept of cognitive dissonance is that people have difficulty juggling two conflicting ideas in their minds at the same time without feeling ill at ease, uncomfortable, and in short: dissonant. Consequently, rather than live with the discomfort the ideas generate, people tend to choose one idea over the other and try to live as best they can with their decision.

For example (and with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek), where sanity is concerned, most normal people don't think it 's possible to be both sane and insane at the same time. They tend to choose one over the other and pretty much stick to that choice. To believe both at the same time simply causes too much dissonance (read: discomfort).

One of my favorite illustrations of the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance involves gambling. You name the game: craps, slots, 21, poker, roulette wheel, or whatever. They all involve a particle of risk (to quote Mr. Merriweather, a character in the film "Little Big Man"), and wherever risk rears its ugly head, poignant human emotions are sure to follow.

Take the gambler who enters a casino with a thousand dollars in his pocket. That is all the money he is willing to risk. Of course, he hopes to double, or triple, or quadruple that amount, but if they're not terribly "lucky" that day they're willing to sacrifice the thou'.

Three hours later our gambler is tapped out. The thou' is gone. Now the sensible thing to do is to leave the casino, lick his wounds, and find another entertainment to occupy his time. Some gamblers, however (and not just gamblers), don't do the sensible thing. Their thought process at this point might go something like this:

Well, I know that I told myself a thousand bucks was my limit, but I really think my luck will improve if I just get a breath of fresh air and then give it another try. I do have a cash reserve in my bank account, and if I take another thousand from that account, I just know my luck will change and I'll get the original thousand back and then quit. Yeah, that's the plan, and this time I'm sticking to it.

Now a normal person would not likely have gone into a casino in the first place with a thousand bucks to blow on gambling. A problem gambler, however, is not your normal person. Rather than admit defeat and move on, which is what most normal folks would do, he refuses to admit defeat because to do so causes too much mental dissonance. Normal people "cut their losses" to banish the dissonance; gamblers "double down" to recoup what they've lost, and in so doing simply compound the dissonance when they lose again.

It's very sad, really. Again, there's sanity and there's insanity. The normal gambler says to himself, "I really blew it, but I'll get over it and I'll try not to make the same mistake twice." The problem gambler, on the other hand, rationalizes his mistake and in an effort to prove the legitimacy of his rationalization engages in the same destructive behavior again and again.

Lest you think cognitive dissonance is always a bad thing, I assure you it is not. If you are ever on the brink of helping yourself to a piece of jewelry in a department store without first paying for it, then cognitive dissonance might just keep you from getting arrested. The same goes for living beyond your means with the help of a plethora of credit cards.

Another point I should make is that some people can live with a great deal of dissonance, whereas some other people cannot. What causes you cognitive dissonance might cause barely a ripple in the psyche of someone else. I guess, however, that in the psyche of a psychopath, nothing causes dissonance--nothing immoral or illegal, that is. If anything, the sociopathic murderer might feel dissonance by not having killed more people than he did before he got caught!

By the way, have you ever gotten the urge to get really serious about exercising and getting physically fit? Perhaps you've gone out and spent $850 on the best running shoes and all the best accouterments money can buy that prove you are really serious about getting fit. Your plan is to jog five mornings a week. You'll start with short distances and gradually increase the distances until . . ..

NEWS FLASH

I just felt cognitive dissonance for having spent this amount of time writing an answer to your question. I'm tempted to scrap the whole answer and move on to something else, but . . . I've already spent an hour writing what I've written, so I may as well see it to its conclusion. But then again . . . maybe not. I really do need to focus on something else, and I promised my wife I'd clean the garage . . .. What to do? What to do?

Get the point?

There are two meanings to the term Cognitive Dissonance.

The first, or original meaning, is a technical term from the field of psychology. Cognitive dissonance here is the feeling of mental discomfort or anxiety one feels when one has conflicting beliefs. Cognitive Dissonance theory predicts that someone in such a state will try to resolve the dissonance as quickly as possible.

The second, more common meaning of cognitive dissonance is the phenomenon of believing two contradictory things at once. There is no particular suggestion of mental discomfort. So, to say someone has cognitive dissonance is simply to say that they have contradictory beliefs. This meaning is incorrect insofar as it is a misuse of a technical term, but since it is the most commonly used meaning, it would be a losing battle to try to resist it. Personally, I avoid using this meaning and use the term doublethink instead.