Cognitive Dissonance

After discussing this article in class and with fellow pych majors, it brought a bit of question and laughter. Would you really believe a saucer was going to appear and save one from a flood, on someones elses word non-to-less? Not me. This experiement that was done in the article explained that cognitive dissonance can exists not only through thought but behavior and values that cause ones behavior.
I had brought up in class how the way that I looked at cognitive dissonance was comparing our wants and our needs. The example that I had given that heped me understand the definition of ideal and lifes actions which is cognitive dissonance, is shopping. The ideal is to save the money for long term furture needs and the actions that we preform, is the spending on things we want. This also relates to the smaller-sooner reward and the larger-longer reward that we discussed in class that relates to self-control. Saving that money will help you get the house or car you needed which is the ideal and the larger-longer reward, whereas the sooner-smaller reward are those two shirts and the flipflops you wanted.
Not saving that money in the process created stress because one is now having feelings of doubt for their future goal which is not being able to aford that car now or the guilt for wanting that goal so bad and ruining it. Changing the goal or ideal sometimes is what Festinger says will relieve the negitive feelings, like in the case with the people being told that after the first series of times waiting for a nonexistant saucer to save them, that it was a drill relieved the stree for a while. In my case making a new goal or ideal like for example maybe saving a little at a time instead of just saving may help and relieve stress, I could also change my behavior like saying that I do not need anymore clothes and posting pictures of my need around may help.
Eventually the mind will break the chain in the cognitive dissonance or dissagressing thoughts and create a feeling that is negitive and cause change to occur. Once that change occurs Festinger says the negitive feeling with dissappear! Now That I agree and believe! Not flying saucers and god messengers!