Psychology Revisits One of Its Most Famous Ideas
A new paper puts cognitive dissonance back in the spotlight.
Updated May 6, 2025 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
You’ve undoubtedly heard of the concept of cognitive dissonance , a term from social psychology that frequently makes its way into the media, including numerous references in popular movies and television shows. All you have to do is Google the term, and your search will be flooded with countless videos, explanations, and social media posts. However, what does the term really mean, and how does the experience of cognitive dissonance in real life affect people’s well-being?
The Story of Cognitive Dissonance
As covered in a new review paper by University of South Wales psychologists Eddie Harmon-Jones and colleagues (2025), the simplest way to understand cognitive dissonance is that it occurs when people hold two inconsistent beliefs, leading to a negative emotional state. You can probably think of some examples right off the top of your head, perhaps drawing from recent news events. People in government or other sensitive areas of employment who formerly espoused one set of beliefs now state that they hold the opposite set of beliefs.
As covered in the original experiments by famed social psychologist Leon Festinger (e.g., his 1957 book), this situation would be seen as reflecting the influence of external forces. The person whose beliefs shift due to outside pressures would therefore not be as likely to experience a negative emotion as would someone who acted or thought inconsistently all on their own.
You can probably conjure up your own examples from your personal life. Maybe you decided you would go more often to the gym, promising your potential gym buddies that you’d show up for an early morning workout three times a week. However, the weeks go by, and you have yet to make an appearance. Every time one of your friends reminds you of your lapse, you feel a twinge of discomfort. In this case, the dissonance is between your commitment and your actions. To reduce the discomfort, you would have to come up with an excuse or change your belief (you don’t really need those early morning sessions). This type of cognitive dissonance fits into the “hypocrisy” paradigm as studied in the lab.
Harmon-Jones and his colleagues point out that whether or not people change their beliefs to reduce dissonance, the state of emotional discomfort that they experience may or may not correlate with undifferentiated negative emotions. The problem with prior research, the authors maintain, is that the “undifferentiated” emotions may actually be composed of separate types of reactions, including guilt , frustration, anger , regret, sadness, or even surprise, humor , and relief. The purpose of their paper was to disentangle the emotions to see what more could be learned about the process of holding discrepant beliefs or being a hypocrite.
The Many Possible Dissonant Emotions
The starting point for the analysis is recognition that dissonance can be induced by a variety of situations. Tying each type of emotion to the situation that causes dissonance could be helpful not only for coping with the negative range of reactions but also for avoiding them in the first place. Here, then, is the list of emotions and situations that can produce them:
Using Dissonance to Make Life Less So
Now that you’ve seen the possibilities for dissonance to produce a wide range of emotions, the question is, how you can use this information to your benefi? Among the many implications of their analysis, the authors note one in particular that could be helpful. This involves shifts in your perspective on dissonance-producing situations, and specifically includes making “self- affirmations ,… feeling personally responsible for producing aversive consequences, … and perceptions of choice over having engaged in the counter-attitudinal behavior.”
The connecting idea among these mental adjustments is that you dig into your own sense of control over your own behavior. Once you do so, you will be less buffeted about by external factors such as pressure to conform to beliefs you don’t agree with. You might also have to own up to your own hypocrisy, as in the gym example. Thinking back on those self-ideal self discrepancies and violations of life rules, the more you can behave in ways consistent with your own identity, the less you’ll become stressed by decisions or actions that challenge that identity.
Not included by the authors, but certainly implied by their analysis, dissonance can also become a source of mental boosts in your life. Let yourself play with, rather than become disturbed by, the kinds of innocent norm violations that form the basis for so many humorous situations in daily life.
To sum up , emotions can have many sources. Using cognitive dissonance research and theory as a way to understand your own can help move you from discomfort to self-acceptance.
Harmon-Jones, E., Willardt, R., & Harmon-Jones, C. (2025). Discrete emotions of dissonance. Motivation Science. Advance online publication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/mot0000389
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Row and Peterson.
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Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. , is a Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her latest book is The Search for Fulfillment.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.