7.2 Cognitive Dissonance and Cognitive Bias

• The avoidance of cognitive dissonance using cognitive biases.
• Cognitive dissonance: the feeling of discomfort when a person acts in a way that is inconsistent with their attitudes or perception of themselves,. Cognitive dissonance can motivate someone to make their thoughts or attitudes align with their actions.
• To reduce their cognitive dissonance, they may seek out examples of heavy smokers who have lived long lives and highlight the positives of smoking for them, such as smoking helps them to relax.
• •Forced compliance – when you perform actions that you would not perform on your own.

  •New information – when you get information that affects what you do or know.

  •Decisions – when you have a choice to make where the options are similar.
• cognitive dissonance

  
• effect of cognitive dissonance on behaviour

  • Avoidance – you avoid the

   action/thoughts that have led to cognitive

   dissonance

  • Reduction - you reduce the level of what you have done to cause cognitive dissonance
  • Rationalisation - you rationalise the two dissonant ideas and explain away the differences to yourself
• responses to cognitive dissonance

  • Change beliefs - you can change your beliefs on the topic. This is the most effective way, but also the hardest to remove cognitive dissonance
  • Change behaviour - you can change the way you do the task, or the fact you do it to remove the cognitive dissonance
  • Change perception - you change the way you view the action
• •The level (or magnitude) of cognitive dissonance can be influenced by:

  •The importance of the belief to the person – the higher the importance, the higher the magnitude

  •The number of dissonant beliefs the person holds – the more beliefs, the higher the magnitude
• Limitations

  •We cannot physically observe cognitive dissonance and cannot objectively measure it.

  •There can be some ambiguity about what ‘dissonance’ is – perception, feeling, or feeling about a perception?

  •Not everyone is affected by cognitive dissonance at the same level – anxious people are highly affected, while others can live with some level of cognitive dissonance.
• Actor–observer bias

  Tendency to attribute your own behaviours to external (situational/

  environmental) factors while attributing other peoples’ behaviours on internal (dispositional) factors.
• Anchoring bias

  Tendency to rely on the first piece of information offered (the ‘anchor’)

  when making decisions. Example, if you first see earbuds that costs AUD 500 – then see a second one that costs AUD 75, what would be your (initial) attitude toward the 2nd  earbud?
• Attentional bias

  Tendency to focus on particular stimuli while overlooking or ignoring other relevant pieces of information. For instance, if a person is on a long road trip and is hungry, they may pay more attention to the billboards of delicious-looking food rather than the directions or other important signals.
• Confirmation bias

  When people focus on and favour information that supports them while ignoring contradictory information or views. Examples?
• False-consensus bias

  Tendency for people to assume that their attitudes, beliefs and behaviours are relatively common and are more widely shared by others than is the case. Examples?
• Functional fixedness

  Tendency to believe an object or item can only be used in a particular way

  (its intended use). Examples?
• Halo effect

  When the positive evaluation we hold about one quality of a person influences our beliefs and expectations regarding other qualities of that person, Examples?
• Hindsight bias

  When a person believes an outcome to have been more predictable than they did before it occurred, Examples?
• Misinformation effect

  Occurs when a person demonstrates poor recall of events following exposure to additional information after the event took place. Examples?
• Optimism bias

  Our inclination to overestimate our likelihood of experiencing positive events and underestimate our likelihood of experiencing negative events
• Self-serving bias

  A tendency for a person to attribute a positive outcome to internal (dispositional) factors yet attribute negative outcomes to external (situational) factors. Examples?
• Dunning-Kruger effect

  Occurs when people with low ability at a task overestimate their own skill set, and people with high ability at a task underestimate their own skill set. Examples? Apply to school context. How is it expressed, and how can it be managed?
• social identity theory

  
• •Social identity is a person’s understanding of him/herself based on the groups they are members of.
• •We categorize people in to ‘us’ and ‘them’.

  In doing so, we exaggerate the similarities and differences between their group and ours
• Social Categorisation

  •We categorise people to understand them and help identify them – black, white, Christian, Muslim, student, bus driver, professional, etc

  •We define our behaviour based on the category we belong to and identifying others in our category.
• Social Identification

  •adopt the identification of the category we have aligned with.

  •act, dress and behave as expected for that categorisation.

  •self-esteem then gets bound to that group membership.

  E.g. your school sports team loses, which makes you feel bad
• Social Comparison

  •Finally, you begin to compare your group with others.

  •If your group compares favourably with others, then your self-esteem is maintained.

  •If you identify another group as a rival, then you will be forced to compete to improve your self-esteem.