Cognitive dissonance

Overview

Cognitive dissonance refers to the psychological discomfort you feel when your beliefs, attitudes, and behavior contradict each other. It's a theory proposed in 1957 by Leon Festinger and is one of the leading theories explaining how people's attitudes change.

For example, someone who wants to stay healthy but keeps staying up late is experiencing cognitive dissonance. To resolve this discomfort, people choose either to change their behavior (go to bed early) or to change their belief (justify it with "Being a night owl suits me better"). In many cases, changing a belief is easier than changing behavior, so the latter tends to be chosen.

Question boxes and cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance can come up when running a question box too. It happens when you want to answer anonymous questions sincerely, yet notice that you're actually skipping the annoying ones. Or when you say publicly that "question boxes are fun," yet don't want to admit that unpleasant questions are actually wearing you down.

A particularly tricky case is when your past answers contradict what you think now. You once declared, "I'll answer any question," but now there are more questions you don't want to answer. Admitting this contradiction is painful, so you tend to blame the senders: "The quality of questions has gone down lately." This is one pattern of resolving cognitive dissonance.

Resolving dissonance in a healthy way

Cognitive dissonance itself isn't a bad thing. In fact, it's useful as a chance to notice your own contradictions. The problem lies in how you resolve it.

An unhealthy way to resolve it is to distort reality and pretend the contradiction isn't there. Examples include conveniently interpreting things as "I get unpleasant questions because I'm famous," or being trapped by sunk costs with "I want to quit my question box, but quitting means losing."

A healthy way to resolve it is to honestly admit the contradiction and adjust your behavior. Openly announce, "I used to say I'd answer everything, but I've changed my approach." Be honest about your feelings: "My question box has become hard on me, so I'm taking a break." Admitting a contradiction isn't weakness; it's the maturity to accept that you've changed.