León Festinger, a prominent social psychologist, warned through his studies that human beings need coherence between their behavior, beliefs and actions, to avoid any kind of contradictions between these aspects. However, in the absence of such coherence, there is a risk that these conflict, that is, that our beliefs do not coincide with the way we behave, which causes a high level of discomfort, anxiety or tension. What can happen is that, to avoid this discomfort, people with cognitive dissonance deceive themselves, often modifying their behavior or defending their attitudes.
Many have been the concepts that scholars of the subject have arrived at, however, there is a common factor, and that is that, despite the fact that we hypothetically know what is most convenient for us at a certain moment or, in another case, we have certain values on a personal level, we act completely in the opposite direction.
This happens because there is for these people a certain conflict between ideas that are not related to each other. It's like setting a goal and not carrying out the action plan. It is true that any of these difficulties, on a personal level, can imply an opportunity to grow and develop, although it could also imply the possibility of continuing to experience similar events in different contexts.
Many times our attitudes are justified in order not to feel this discomfort of not acting coherently based on the beliefs and values that we develop in life. For this, it is recommended, for example, to take this situation as a way to learn something, encouraging reflection and self-knowledge in order to discover the emotions that are being experienced.
There are numerous cases that could be mentioned as an example of cognitive dissonance: the student who knows the importance of studying and getting better grades and who, nevertheless, remains without touching a book or a note, or the case of people who know how important it is stay physically active and still don't exercise. You can also cite the case of smokers who know how harmful tobacco is and continue to smoke permanently. That is cognitive dissonance.
The person usually justifies all these attitudes in one way or another. However, while he deceives himself and justifies himself, he postpones a decision as if the issue had a solution on its own, and that is how he stagnates.
This, of course, affects the person, although each case is different. The damage lies, as previously mentioned, in the fact that the dissonance generates discomfort, annoyance, stress and other unpleasant emotions, and can trigger other adverse effects in the long term if it persists.
In these circumstances, the person does not progress in the direction in which they really want or need, preventing them from having a conscious way of life over time if they persist in self-deception, while stress recurs until the conflict is resolved. that is living, so a high emotional exhaustion arises when spending so much energy trying to solve it and it can even affect the self-esteem of the individual.
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