Question

Why does making a decision tend to generate dissonance, how is this dissonance reduced, and under what conditions is post decisional dissonance reduction the greatest?

Answer 1

Cognitive dissonance happens when there is a conflict between ones belief and ones behavior. Cognitive dissonance occurs in decision making no matter what the decision is taken, as when a person is taking a decision, he commits to that particular option and behavior while missing out on the other. For Example: A teenager who is very good at baseball and also good in math, has to decide if he wants to pursue baseball as a career or focus on his studies, whichever decision he makes, he is going to miss out on any one, viz. becoming a baseball player or making making a career in math, and so dissonance is going to be there.

Dissonance can reduced by changing the behavior and also changing the cognition associated with dissonance by convincing oneself that the decision which they are taking is the best, in this method post decisional dissonance reduction is the greatest. For Example. The child could change his cognition by thinking that he is very good in baseball, but might not have what it takes to make it big, so he may have a reduction in dissonance this way. Another way is called the "spreading apart the alternatives." In this the value and the attraction of one decision is elevated and the other is decreased. The 'effort justification' method is the concept that when we put in more effort into a certain pursuit, we tend to give it most value.