Cognitive dissonance and cognitive biases

Cognitive dissonance

The psychological tension that occurs when our thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviours do not align with one another.

Example of cognitive dissonance

A person knows smoking cigarettes is bad for them (thought) might still smoke at a party (behaviour). 

When does cognitive dissonance occur?

Cognitive dissonance only occurs in certain situations, such as when you're aware of consequences but still act, can't justify your behaviour, or when effort and outcome don't match.

Cognitive biases

Unconscious, systematic tendencies to interpret information in a way that is neither rational nor based on objective reality.

Factors of cognitive biases

• Confirmation bias

• Actor-observer bias

• Self-serving bias

• False-consensus bias

• Halo effect

Confirmation bias

The tendency to search for and accept information that supports our prior beliefs or behaviours and ignore contradictory information

Example of confirmation bias

Climate change denial, seeking alternative research and debunked theories.

Actor-observer bias

The tendency to attribute our own actions to external factors and situational causes while attributing other people’s actions to internal factor

Example of actor-observer bias

when someone else litters - “people are so inconsiderate”, when you litter “I couldn’t find a bin”. 

Self-serving bias

The tendency to attribute positive success to our internal character and actions and attribute our failures to external factors or situational causes.

Example of self-serving bias

when you do well on an assessment “you’re so smart!”, when you didn’t do so well, “my teacher was rubbish”

False-consensus bian

The tendency to overestimate the degree to which other people share the same ideas and attitudes as we do.

Example of false-consensus bias

Under the impression everyone is accepting of ideas regarding sexuality, because your friends think this way. 

Halo effect

The tendency for the impression we form about one quality of a person to influence our overall beliefs about the person in other respects

Example of the halo effect

Thinking that a political candidate who is confident must also be intelligent and competent