Do you ever feel a nagging sense of discomfort when your actions don't match your beliefs? For example, you might tell a small white lie even though you value honesty. That uneasy feeling is known as ...

Cognitive dissonance refers to the psychological discomfort that arises when an individual holds two or more conflicting cognitions—attitudes, beliefs or behaviours—simultaneously. This tension drives ...

Cognitive dissonance is the motivational mechanism that underlies the reluctance to admit mistakes or accept scientific findings even when those findings can save our lives. The cognitive dissonance ...

In 1934, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake hit eastern India, killing thousands and devastating several cities. Curiously, in areas that were spared the worst destruction, stories soon spread that an even ...

A recent New Yorker article, “Is Cognitive Dissonance Actually a Thing?”, strongly implies that the answer to that question is “No.” The article arrived at this answer by considering a 1956 ...

Cognitive dissonance emerges when consumers experience a clash between their beliefs or expectations and their purchasing decisions or outcomes. Originating from social psychology, the concept has ...

This is the 14th article in the Behavioral Finance and Macroeconomics series exploring the effect behavior has on markets and the economy as a whole and how advisors who understand this relationship ...

Jocelyn Solis-Moreira is a New York-based science journalist whose work has appeared in Health, Live Science, and Discover Magazine, among other publications. She holds a master's degree in psychology ...

New research has deepened our understanding of why pescetarians choose to eat fish but not the meat of land animals. The perceived distance between marine life and participants in the study was a key ...

Members of Heaven’s Gate, a religious cult, believed that as the Hale-Bopp comet passed by Earth in 1997, a spaceship would be traveling in its wake—ready to take true believers aboard. Several ...

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