Cognitive Dissonance

Question 1

Human Mind Does Not Like Inconsistency

Answer 1

Question 2

Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 2

Sometimes we are faced with inconsistencies between

• Our actions and our attitudes
• Our diferent attitudes
• Our different actions

Most relevant type of cognitive dissonance is between

Waning to be a good person, and Doing something not so good (either in our minds, or in actuality)

Question 3

Cognitive Dissonance Helps Protect Our-Self Image

Answer 3

People are really good at making themselves feel ok about what they do.
This is an important fact to watch out for in day to day (and work) life.
Most of us have examples of this.

Question 4

Ways of Reducing Ethical Dissonance

(that do not help you improve)

Answer 4

• Decide the action was not that bad
• Decide it was bad, but not your fault
• Decide that it was just the “business you” who did it, not “real you”
• Decide that in the larger sense, you did the most moral thing possible “desparate times call for desperate measure”

Remain “willfully ignorant” so you can’t be expected to be ethical (because you “had no way of knowing” what was going on)

etc.

Question 5

Equal but Different Problem

Answer 5

Question 6

Equal but Different Problem:

Dissonance’s role

Answer 6

Question 7

Results of Dissonance Reduction in Favor of Unethical Possibility

How it makes us feel

Answer 7

We feel a lot better
We get to keep thinking of ourselves as good people
We can move on through our day without thinking about the issue any more.

Question 8

Results on Ethics

Answer 8

We do not develop an accurate sense of our actual behavior/culpability/guilt
We can’t learn from the experience
At least not anything helpful to avoid being less than our best selves in the future…
D.R. can effectively get between us and our best selves
Imagine a lifetime of allowing yourself this sort of dissonance reduction

Question 9

Mistakes

Answer 9

Everyone makes mistakes. This is acceptable if you constantly strive to overcome and repair them.

Question 10

How do you fight Dissonance Reduction?

Answer 10

Change one of the elements.
In order to stay ethical, you have to reduce the effectiveness of the D.R.

Question 11

Talking Yourself into Ethicality

Answer 11

Question 12

Motivated Memory

Answer 12

Dissonance reduction happens in memory, too
We like our memories to be consistent
Once we believe something we’d like to keep believing it

Question 13

Summary: Dissonance Reduction

Question 14

Summary: How to Resist the Negative Effects of Dissonance

Question 15

Resisting Neg. Effect, Cont

Question 16

Punchline: Dissonance

Question 17

Types of Legal Systems

Question 18

Civil Codes