Consonant and Dissonant Cognitions Define Consonant and Term Paper

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Consonant and Dissonant Cognitions

Define consonant and dissonant cognitions:

Leon Festinger developed the theory of cognitive dissonance based on the "relationships among cognitions" (Rudolph, Ithaca.edu). A cognition is described as a "piece of knowledge" which may be a certain behavior, a value, an emotion or an attitude, according to Frederick M. Rudolph at Ithaca College in New York State. (Dissonance is defined simply as a state of conflict, tension or disagreement.) Meanwhile, a typical cognition could be just the fact that a person prefers the color blue; the knowledge that blue is a favorite color is a cognition. The knowledge that a person just caught a long pass for a first down in a football game is another cognition and the knowledge that the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people in the "Citizens United" case is another cognition. In other words, a neighbor has a cognition (i.e., is cognizant of the fact) that his neighborhood is a drug dealing zone; and the mother of a down syndrome child has a cognition (is cognizant of the fact) that her child is intellectually disabled.

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A person may have several cognitions at the same exact time and Rudolph explains that these cognitions "…form irrelevant, consonant or dissonant relationships with one another" (p. 2). Two cognitions are dissonant if "one cognition follows from the opposite of another"; and moreover, an individual with dissonant cognitions is "…said to be in a state of psychological dissonance…[an] unpleasant psychological tension" (Rudolph, p. 1). Professor Nico Frijda explains that "…dissonant relations between cognitions" are potentially the cause of "negative affect[s]" and that provides motivation for a person to try and "…reduce or eliminate the discrepancies between cognitions" (Frijda, 2000, p. 186).

A consonant dissonance (consonant literally means being in agreement with something) or cognitive dissonance as it is often referred to, tends to lead the person towards a reduction of dissonance. When dissonance occurs, the person will use certain "pressures to reduce it," according to Festinger (Festinger, 1957, p. 3). In that case, the person who experiences dissonance will be motivated "..to try and reduce….....

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