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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 a state of tension that occurs when a person simultaneously holds two cognitions, thoughts or beliefs that are psychologically inconsistent with a person’s behavior. Cognitive ...

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 ...

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 ...

I’ve been academically intrigued in recent months to see so many political references to “cognitive dissonance.” As a social psychologist who has taught and conducted dissonance research for over 20 ...

Do you keep second-guessing your decisions after you’ve made them? Immobilizing yourself? Berating yourself when you finally decide on something? This can be a normal albeit painful way to make ...

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 ...