- Identify and describe instances of the following:
- Cognitive Dissonance
- Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving
conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. This produces a
feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the
attitudes, beliefs or behaviours to reduce the discomfort and
restore balance, etc.
- Example
- Someone who smokes will find the information 'smoking causes
lung cancer; smoking is injurious to health' difficult to process.
It will cause cognitive dissonance.
- He will use the following statements to reduce the dissonance.
- A person could convince themselves that it is better to live
for today than to save for tomorrow
- Research has not proved definitely that smoking causes lung
cancer
- Denial
- Denial is the refusal to accept reality or fact, acting as if a
painful event, thought or feeling did not exist.
- Example
- A person who is a functioning alcoholic will often simply deny
they have a drinking problem, pointing to how well they function
socially
- Overgeneralization
- It is a course of thinking where you apply one experience and
generalize to all experiences, including those in the future.
- Example
- It’s important to never let anyone down
- Other people should always let me down
- Conformity
- It is informally defined as the tendency to act or think like
members of a group.
- A higher level of respect for company executives by an
executive-level employee in a formal manner, such as addressing the
company president as "Ms. Gispert" instead of simply
"Isabella."
Also, how about the Rules Know the Context, Know Yourself, Don't
Take Yourself Too Seriously.
Do these rules apply in evaluating the failures of reasoning and
judgment discussed here?
Yes. When an individual is aware of the situation and the people
involved (context), the individual is aware of his own emotions and
perceptions, an individual is less likely to engage into such
behaviours.