Talk:Cognitive dissonance

I thought I'd put this link that appeared on WIGO:blogs here too, as it's related. http://www.badscience.net/2010/05/evidence-based-smear-campaigns/ 23:49, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

The need for CD?
"As harmful or restrictive cognitive dissonance can be, it may be a vital function of sentience. Would it be so normal for any person to completely dismiss their current interpretation of reality for another based on a claim then science would be virtually impossible to practice. Better to have stubborn idiots that can slowly change their mind through experience than gullible idiots who won't make a mind to change in the first place."

While this seemed to be going somewhere, in the end I couldn't follow what it means. What does CD have to do with improving or altering one's worldview based on new information? 22:54, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the key is in the first and last sentences: CD is good (the paragraph says) because it (a) may be a vital part of the way our minds work and (b) because it's better to be stubborn than wishy-washy. Not sure I agree. 23:53, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * As usual, the best solution is probably a combination. While being totally and unyieldingly stubborn isn't helpful, neither is being "open minded". The issue is whether CD is actually a defence mechanism for memetic self-preservation, it would make some sense to put it that way. Certainly an interesting idea. 00:17, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * If only there was a way to quantify being stubborn so that we could get the best mix of both stubbornness and skepticism. Oh wait, there is. (Too bad it's damn near impossible in practice...) 00:31, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... "Quantifying Stubbornness" has a familiar ring to it... However, I think you may have confused the terms there, skepticism and stubbornness, in the context we're talking about are the same thing - well, sort of. Stubbornness prevents you from changing your mind, but skepticism keeps out those pesky "new" ideas until they've been proven, thus achieving the same effect (although by different methods). Unless you mean skepticism to automatically include "open minded consideration and thorough appraisal", in which case you may not need to balance it with stubbornness at all and just have skepticism! 00:51, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * * facepalm* Oh dear, I just pulled an Andy without realizing it. I had taken "skepticism" to mean extreme indecisiveness in this case (that is, the opposite of CD-style stubbornness). But yes, the other kind of skepticism is clearly important, haha. 00:54, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Nevertheless, I still know what you're talking about. It's a balance between sticking firmly with what you know works, whilst still being willing and eager to dump it when necessary. Bad things happen when you do one or the other for the wrong reason. 01:01, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

cognitive dissonance vs. CD and religion
Question: this article is kinda scattered right now, with what seems to be a blend of emphasis on CD as an actual biological function necessary for survival, and the focus on religion/cults/etc, making it read kinda of awkward from a scientific/cognition point of view. Do you all think the science should be emphasized first, or the more mundane relevance of "how the hell can you make the world 6000 years old, when there are stars?"Godot     Warning, chocolate will make your clothes shrink 14:20, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It does need a bit of a scrub, I think. Certainly emphasise the history of it because the experiments with cults is fascinating. Then go into the specific examples below. ADK ...I'll untie your dystopia! 14:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * You got it. Theory of Mind, here I come!  :-)  [[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot      Warning, chocolate will make your clothes shrink 14:35, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Schizophrenia
Googling around with this, it seems like an interesting connection and there are some questions about it. But is there enough research to suggest that there's a strong connection between the two? It's just that the section on cumulative CD seems very dramatic. I'm not aware enough about the psychology of schizophrenia to really assess it myself. d hominem 21:48, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Last paragraph is nuts
The last paragraph of this article cites no supporting evidence for its claim that:

"...a human being who would actually go through such an event without that protection would end up in a state of complete inability to accept himself/herself and to choose the “right” actions for even the simplest situations, making it impossible for him/her to continue living."

There is no evidence that cognitive dissonance makes it 'impossible to continue living'. Has an extreme bout of CD caused someone to commit suicide? Probably, but the VAST majority of the time CD occurs, nobody kills themselves over it, or is suddenly unable to do 'simple tasks' like obtaining food and shelter, in order to 'continue living'. The whole article is of poor quality, but this is the worst part. In the real world, by far the most common result of CD is that someone catches themselves BSing and feels a little sheepish over it.

And what's with the 'note' that seems to not be coherent?? Is that some kind of lame attempt by the author to look like a reference??


 * I agree completely, the last paragraph is incoherent, and I came to the same conclusion about the notes that you did. The whole article is very weak conjecture, which is surprising for such a popular term. FairDinkum (talk) 08:07, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

This article needs work - it's a citation desert
This article needs serious work. There are only three citations that are not from Wikipedia, one of which is an attribution of a quote while the other two simply establish that cognitive dissonance is a term and who coined it. Much of what this article refers to as 'cognitive dissonance' is actually plain old delusion, rationalization, or paranoia. I would like to see a lot more academic citations, because I don't think this article gives an accurate description of cognitive dissonance, or at least a good portion of it doesn't, and as the article progresses it approaches gibberish. The notes are unnecessarily unwieldy as well, and should be integrated in the article if they are sound. I think the notes might be an attempt to mimic the appearance of citations. I might consider re-writing this myself, with proper citations and no conjecture. FairDinkum (talk) 08:04, 26 October 2022 (UTC)