"Cognitive Dissonance" is where our beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes are in conflict, and to avoid the discomfort, we use minimizing and coping tactics to deal with this "disharmony." For example, those who "text while driving," where many know it's dangerous, but proceed to do it anyway.
Following along the same lines:
If you held strong moral and political beliefs that aligned with a particular political candidate you supported, or one already in a position of power, and knew they had a long history of corruption or views that marginalized and hurt others, would you:
A) Continue to support that person, and either say nothing or defend them 100%.
B) Default to "they have evolved or will evolve, and they are not the same person," knowing they have not.
C) Continue to support them, but question and hold them accountable for their actions, hoping they will evolve.
D) You have had enough and start to speak out, making sure they are never elected (or re-elected), but risk alienating those who align with your moral and political beliefs.
Good morning Hein (PST)! I'll be using this as part of my practice as research phase coming up. I have to remain objective with personal socio-political beliefs, so for this thread, I'm leaving it to what someone's personal views are. With my testing, I'l be inserting scenarios from the current news cycle for participants to respond to. It's a bit general and your question validated, so for this thread's sake, here's an example: "Do you feel the Russians tried to interfere with the US Presidential elections?" Yes, No, On The Fence, No Answer. You don't have to answer as I'm showing you a random example.
Jed Alexander Dear Jed, thank you for the explanation. It always depends on the context of a theorem. I can only assume that you are referring to the theory of L. Festinger, a historical theory that was very popular at the time, but which has also experienced strong relativizations in part due to other developments of political theories and their reception. A dissonance can be so great that it is more practical to "get out of the field" (to apply Kurt Lewin's social theory here), a psychic dissonance can be so small that you prefer to endure it if the "harmonization" is associated with undesirable effects that your expectation previously considers a possibility. So, one should prepare the theoretical field well in order to achieve optimal results later with such an RG action.
Jed Alexander (continuation)
I would also like to draw attention to the fact that other theories treat the subject of innerpsychic dissonance in a different way and come to different results than Festinger. In the 1960s to 1990s, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School dominated in Central Europe. Its aim was to uncover social discrepancies, but its aim was not to overcome them through inner-psychic adaptation, but through protest and action. Here, the experience of conflict is stylized as a positive normal case of a "critical" view of the world - and the inner-psychological "adaptation to the given conditions of late capitalist society" is rejected as immoral.
I myself regard Karl R. Poppers' Critical Rationalism as a good initial theory for dealing with social-scientific questions. The possibility of contradicting plays the main role here. Festinger's theory functions in such a way that the subject usually does not notice that its own behavior is controlled by striving for harmony. This has its justification in an energetic context, as used by Freud and expressed by the biologist Bertalanffy in the idea of "flow equilibria".
Of course, I can think up all possible small conflict situations in Festinger's sense and act as if I had experienced them myself. That's why such a collection of narratives doesn't seem to me to be particularly controlled, but in the run-up to the actual research one can of course try out what comes out of it.
Thank you for your detailed response! And yes indeed I am referring to Festinger or what I've learned about him. I am in no way a psychologist or training to be one, but I am consulting those in the field regarding my PhD work, and applying some of that and what you've mentioned to exercises and testing I'm developing in a creative field such as mine. Your feedback is much appreciated including additional individuals to look further into. One psychologist had responded to me when I questioned whether Festinger's theory actually works and measuring behavior. They said they were confident it does, but that's tough since one overall theory cannot be applied to different types of personalities within a control group carrying out the same exercise.