Quotes & Sayings About Cognitive Dissonance

Compartmentalization is an unconscious psychological defense mechanism employed to avoid cognitive dissonance. — Zack Love

One believed what one was told to believe, what it made sense to believe. Unless one was a foreigner, of course, or a philosopher. — Iain M. Banks

Dallas Willard explains: The world has succeeded in opposing intelligence to goodness. . . . And today any attempt to combine spirituality or moral purity with great intelligence causes widespread pangs of "cognitive dissonance." [As with Jesus,] Mother Teresa . . . is thought of as . . . nice, of course, but not really smart. "Smart" means good at managing how life "really" is. — Jared C. Wilson

A bad song for a night such as this, mayhap, but her heart went its own way without much interest in what her head thought or wanted; always had. — Stephen King

When we apologize for something we've done, make amends, or change a behavior that doesn't align with our values, guilt - not shame - is most often the driving force. We feel guilty when we hold up something we've done or failed to do against our values and find they don't match up. It's an uncomfortable feeling, but one that's helpful. The psychological discomfort, something similar to cognitive dissonance, is what motivates meaningful change. Guilt is just as powerful as shame, but its influence is positive, while shame's is destructive. In fact, in my research I found that shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we can change and do better. — Brene Brown

The greater our cognitive dissonance, the more creative our rationalizations, and the more important we will make the goals that we are pretending to accomplish. — Hugh Howey

Reclamation is hard work. Finding the value in your group's characteristics means always having to confront the darkness in those characteristics. For example, it is acceptable, and productive, to think of America as a great nation. It has many great characteristics, from the freedom it grants its citizens to the cultural contributions it has fostered and rewarded. But by unearthing America's good qualities, you will also find its destructive qualities. The way it has interfered internationally and created death and misery for countless citizens of other nations, its history of genocide and slavery, and so on. It is possible to know America's destructive power and still think it is a great nation. But some prefer not to look at all, so as to avoid the cognitive dissonance. It — Jessa Crispin

I did grow up in a military family but lacked the perspective to grasp the cognitive dissonance carried by most people who serve in the armed forces or the circumstances that push lots of folks into the military. I don't blame G.I. Joe or Rambo for that atmosphere, but they certainly reflected the final stage of a two generation cultural myth. — Nate Powell

America has long raised political and cultural cognitive dissonance to an art form. We are capable of living with enormous inequality and injustice while convincing ourselves that we are in fact moving toward what Churchill called the "broad, sun-lit uplands." — Jon Meacham

For too many women in America are becoming sick with exhaustion and stress as they try to do things that can't be
shouldn't be
done. Too many are eaten up by resentment toward their husbands, who are not subject to the same heartless pressures. Too many are becoming anxious and depressed because they are overwhelmed and disappointed. Too many are letting their lives be poisoned by guilt because their expectations can't be met, and because there is an enormous cognitive dissonance between what they know to be right for themselves and what they're told is right for their children. Too many feel out of control. — Judith Warner

Wisdom is tolerance of cognitive dissonance. — Robert Thurman

The vast majority of Americans, at all coordinates of the economic spectrum, consider themselves middle class; this is a deeply ingrained, distinctly American cognitive dissonance. — Ellen Cushing

I think it started to feel like home when I stopped maintaining any pretense that I was ever going to be in the movie business. I went there like many writers - I had a screenplay deal and I would go to these meetings and it was the typical thing. And I hated it. I was not interested in writing screenplays, actually. But I kept feeling like that was what I was supposed to do. It was just this horrible cognitive dissonance. — Meghan Daum

A good title holds magic, some cognitive dissonance, a little grit between the teeth, but above all it is the jumping-off place into wonder. — Barbara Kingsolver

You'll be pleased to hear, Christopher, that I am no longer a Muslim liberal but an atheist [ ... ] I find that it obviates the necessity for any cognitive dissonance. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

When you get down to it, though, explaining what you believe isn't all that easy. If you say that you believe something to be true, you might mean one of two things - that you're still weighing the alternatives, or that you accept it as a fact. I don't logically see how one single word can have contradictory definitions, but emotionally, I completely understand. Because there are times I think what I am doing is right, and there are other times I second-guess myself every step of the way. — Jodi Picoult

True believers are continually shown by reality that their god doesn't exist, but have developed extensive coping mechanisms to deal with this cognitive dissonance. — Mark Thomas

If we could tax Americans' cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incompatible things, they're human beings, and they want high services, low taxes, and an omnipresent, omniprominent welfare state. — George F. Will

I continue to live inside a dichotomy: what was and what shall be. The pain in my skull is me trying to mesh the two. — Chila Woychik

Wind passed again; the iris shuddered about the diamond chip. — Samuel R. Delany

Creative ideas make people uncomfortable. It turns out that, at least subconsciously, we can have a hard time recognizing ideas as both new and useful at the same time. This cognitive dissonance between creativity and practicality may actually create a subtle bias against creative ideas. — David Burkus

Women can only see beyond what their fragile heart wants to believe when they are in love. — Shannon L. Alder

Normality may lie in being a selectively deaf self-righteous victim of your own cognitive dissonance...but then again...who wants to be an open minded but self-doubting fence-sitter paralyzed by internal conflict? life eh? — Tweedy Peanut

I tend to work on the principle that much humour relies on cognitive dissonance - on the foreground not matching the background, on the protagonist's response to a situation being inappropriate, and so on. — Charles Stross

We'll get fired for tardiness, or for stealing merchandise and selling it on eBay, or for having a customer complain about the smell of alcohol on our breath, or for taking five thirty-minute restroom breaks per shift. We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we're not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves to solve the cognitive dissonance - the broken connection between the world we see and the values we preach. We — J.D. Vance

I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief. — Paul Beatty

What we're left with ... is the distinctly uncomfortable sense that much of what we call culture jamming achieves the same effect as traditional marketing. Both rely on the bedrock principle that branding works. Yet marketing has moved on from branding toward a more direct emotional connection to our reptilian brains, which makes it immune to the cognitive dissonance culture jamming creates. In the meantime, the brans being promoted by some activists retain the full integrity of their original message, — Anne Elizabeth Moore

I believe that I have created a lot of cognitive dissonance in the minds of people who are comfortable with stereotypes. — Hillary Clinton

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are
presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new
evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is
extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it
is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize,
ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief. — Frantz Fanon

Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today - the age of science - science fiction is our mythology. — Michael Shermer

A visit to Israel is always an experience in cognitive dissonance. The Israel you personally see and hear is so completely different from the Israel you read and hear about in the media. — Alan Dershowitz

It is a happy faculty of the mind to slough that which conscience refuses to assimilate. — William Faulkner

I suppose it's no surprise that we feel the need to dehumanize the people we hurt - before, during, or after the hurting occurs. But it always comes as a surprise. In psychology it's known as cognitive dissonance. It's the idea that it feels stressful and painful for us to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time (like the idea that we're kind people and the idea that we've just destroyed someone). And so to ease the pain we create illusory ways to justify our contradictory behavior. — Jon Ronson

I suspect that a lot of the stress we see around us arises from the cognitive dissonance set up by one side of the brain hearing very plausible spin while the other side knows it just ain't so ... — David Palmer

I practiced law for five years and that gives you insight into a certain mind-set that maybe a lot of writers haven't had firsthand access to. There's an almost casual cruelty, a very low level of overall awareness, but sometimes there's also knowledge that real damage is being done - this attitude of "Oh, what the hell," this kind of moral cognitive dissonance. These are people who have never missed a meal. It's an unknowingness, an unawareness ... Many people were operating from a very narrow range of experience, and yet they had complete faith in it. Their way was the correct way, the only way. They had virtually no awareness of any other way of life except in terms of demonizing things ... It's an extremely blindered experience of the world. — Ben Fountain

After a while, if you're committed, you start to believe in the things in which you're praying. It's just cognitive dissonance. You can't live a completely religious life and not start to have it sink in. — A. J. Jacobs

I don't know if what I'm seeing are worms, or where they come from, or what they might be if they're not worms, or whether I want them to be worms or not, or what I have to believe about this woman if they aren't worms, or about the world or human bodies or this disease if they are. — Leslie Jamison

We need only in cold blood ACT as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. — William James

Marya Morevna, we are better at this than you are. We can hold two terrible ideas at once in our hearts. Never have your folk delighted us more, been more like family. For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter. — Catherynne M Valente

They declare that it is unpatriotic and disruptive to question the workings of authority
but patriotic to institute harsh and regressive policies that benefit the wealthy, undermine social programs that serve the needs of the great majority, and subordinate a frightened population to increased state control. — Noam Chomsky

For Satan, as for Marx, religion was an impediment to the grand design of transforming humanity from a collection of free-willed, autonomous individuals into a mass of self-corralling slaves who mistake security for liberty and try to keep the cognitive dissonance to a minimum in order to function. — Michael Walsh

Because of propaganda induced cognitive dissonance, most people hate themselves and don't even know it. — Bryant McGill

It's a shame cars don't run on cognitive dissonance. — Lewis Black

We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we're not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves to solve the cognitive dissonance - the broken connection between the world we see and the values we preach. — J.D. Vance

What I do is create a lens through my work that corrects my readers' cognitive dissonance and says: you will see all of it - not what you want or what makes you comfortable, but all of it. And you will not erase what displeases you. — Chris Abani

Every single day the world seems like it is on the brink of falling apart. But then I look outside my window, and things look about the same as they did a week ago. It's almost a form of cognitive dissonance. — Moby

Am I the only one who can't seem to reconcile the grand canyon of cognitive dissonance I feel when people with much more important jobs than I have manage to score much lengthier times off? — Kevin Bleyer

The role of social media is critical because it helps to spread cognitive dissonance by connecting thought leaders and activists to ordinary citizens rapidly expanding the network of people who become willing to take action. — Simon Mainwaring