Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1957, developed and apparently coined by U.S. social psychologist Leon Festinger (1919-1989).
Wiktionary
n. (context psychology English) A conflict or anxiety resulting from inconsistencies between one's beliefs and one's actions or other beliefs.{{reference-book | last =
Wikipedia
In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.
Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance focuses on how humans strive for internal consistency. An individual who experiences inconsistency (dissonance) tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and is motivated to try to reduce this dissonance—as well as actively avoid situations and information likely to increase it.
Usage examples of "cognitive dissonance".
It was more subtle than that, just a quick moment of total and complete cognitive dissonance.
Well I am ostensibly because I'm marketed as a science fiction writer, but what I really do is look at what passes for contemporary reality and select the bits that are most useful to me in terms of inducing cognitive dissonance.
He appeared, saying, 'The case of Peters, with his mild punishment, gratifies our liberal instincts but represents a case of cognitive dissonance, the disjunction between reality and one's ideas.
Provoke the kind of cognitive dissonance that will cause them to crumble from within.
And how did people like Miles, who had been off-world maybe fifty times, handle the cognitive dissonance?
It was her unconscious solution to the cognitive dissonance of having one foot planted on Barrayar, the other on Beta Colony.
Canada had much more of a mirror-world thing going on, when I first came here, the finest frissons of cognitive dissonance being provided, for your American boy, by trade with the USSR and China.
He pulled in, dressed in casual clothes and wearing a baseball cap, which alone generated enough cognitive dissonance to make me start drooling.