Final answer:
People experience cognitive dissonance when their beliefs, feelings, and behaviors are incongruent, leading to psychological discomfort. This is resolved through changes in behavior, beliefs, or the introduction of new justifications to achieve consistency.
Step-by-step explanation:
When people experience an incongruity between their beliefs, feelings, and behaviours, they experience cognitive dissonance. This is a term used to describe the psychological discomfort that arises from holding two or more inconsistent attitudes, behaviors, or cognitions. Cognitive dissonance highlights the desire for consistency among our personal cognitions and the discomfort we feel when we act in ways that are contrary to our beliefs or values.
Psychologist Leon Festinger proposed the concept of cognitive dissonance, stating that when our actions, attitudes, or beliefs conflict, especially when they threaten our positive self-image, we feel mental discomfort. This can lead to physiological arousal and the activation of regions in our brain important for emotions and cognitive functioning. To alleviate this discomfort, individuals may change their behavior or beliefs, or justify their behavior by adding new cognitions to make their views and actions more congruent.
For instance, a person who smokes cigarettes, while knowing they are harmful to health, must reconcile this behavior with their belief, possibly through behavioral change such as quitting smoking or changing their belief by discounting the evidence about the risks of smoking.