Cognitive Dissonance - Your Thoughts

As I have always struggled to look past what I want to believe or my own preconceived ideas I'm interested to hear of other peoples experiences. Do you ever feel like you have struggled with it or it has effected your life in some way? Do you have personal strategies to try and overcome it or do you embrace it instead? I have an eager ear wanting to listen and learn.

Link included for completeness:

Cognitive Dissonance Wiki

In my own experience, cognitive dissonance can be unavoidable in some cases, but generally it is the result of one choosing to be inflexible. Allow me to explain.

A law enforcement officer who has sworn to protect and serve may be forced to use lethal force in the line of duty. To this officer, killing someone is wrong. However, it was necessary. This will still create a situation of cognitive dissonance that can be hard to overcome. It is why law enforcement and military personnel often suffer from PTSD. Our brains are not always equipped to make sense out of such disruptive events.

On the other hand, some people make a choice to hold on so tightly to one set of information that they refuse to accept that there could be any alternative. People who actively deny the possibility of any reality other than their own create an environment in which cognitive dissonance thrives. It is how cults work. It is how many wars have started. People become so uncomfortable with the internal conflict in their minds that they act to completely destroy one side of the conflict to create consonance. It can explain why some homosexuals exhibit extremely homophobic behavior or some religious devotees become extremely violent in the name of a peaceful religion. It is all in the name of removing the internal conflict and relieving the stress by lashing out at those around us.

It's a very interesting topic, and thank you for raising it.

SeventhSL wrote: As I have always struggled to look past what I want to believe or my own preconceived ideas I'm interested to hear of other peoples experiences. Do you ever feel like you have struggled with it or it has effected your life in some way? Do you have personal strategies to try and overcome it or do you embrace it instead? I have an eager ear wanting to listen and learn.

Link included for completeness:

Cognitive Dissonance Wiki

Got a personal example? wikipedia covers a lot of ground making it hard to narrow down a response.

Read the fable "The fox and the grapes".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKFKLPI6zGk

Thanks for the input guys. Thought that fox had those grapes with the stone idea. So so close.

Ok so a little more information. I first stumbled over my own cognitive dissonance when my partner pointed out what a bad memory I had. Of course I didn't believe a word at the time but a week later I found myself to be in complete agreement and somewhat staggered at how I hadn't noticed this before. When I retraced how I'd come to this place it turns out I'd been pretty active with self justification and ignoring conflicting information. Though the passage of time I found that my capacity for self deceit (didn't have the term cognitive dissonance at that stage) went from mildly amusing to somewhat terrifying. When I started to see this in others it just became very sad. After all like Senan says it is responsible for starting wars.

So fast forward to today and I have developed a couple of personal strategies to help at least limit it. I'm not pretending these are anywhere near 100% effective but they have certainly lead to some amazing results. My most recent success was helping to bring some peace to the lives of a couple of children going through a really messy divorce. To cut a long story short it helped clear my own emotion, understand both parties and in this case turn one parties strong cognitive dissonance against them. Two years of court rooms turned into an out of court settlement but most importantly two much happier and stable children now they had parents with a working relationship as far as sharing custody was concerned.

Please don't miss understand me. I have no desire to tinker with other people's lives especially given I have enough trouble controlling my own. Sadly at this junction my motives are very self centred. I'm more than willing to share my strategies if people are interested but I'm really hoping to hear other people stories and experience so that I can learn from them.

Well it seems to me knowing yourself: likes, dislikes, desires and expectations would be helpfull? Then knowing your limits while working to expand them would keep dissonance to a minimum? I think it's all about: living, learning and becoming a better person. Don't get hung up on your flaws and keep on keeping on.