While cognitive dissonance is often described as something widely and regularly experienced, efforts to capture it in studies don’t always work, so it could be less common than has been assumed.

The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people are averse to inconsistencies within their own minds. It offers one explanation for why people sometimes make an effort to adjust their ...

This creates a mental state known as cognitive dissonance, when “an individual’s cognitions — beliefs ... so they could assure themselves that their mistreatment of prisoners was not morally wrong.

It is common for individuals to find themselves caught in a web of connections that they know, deep down ... connections that are not working. Cognitive dissonance—a psychological phenomenon ...