The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance.
Psychologists
Leon Festinger
American social psychologist (1919-1989) who originated the theory of cognitive dissonance (1957) and social comparison theory (1954), turning mid-century social psychology decisively toward laboratory experimentation while keeping field research alive. His 1956 book When Prophecy Fails was the first experimental evidence of belief perseverance, drawn from his team's covert infiltration of a doomsday cult predicting an apocalyptic flood. Trained under Kurt Lewin at Iowa, he taught at MIT, Michigan, Minnesota, Stanford, and the New School, abruptly leaving social psychology in 1964 for visual perception and later for human prehistoric archaeology. Following Skinner, Piaget, Freud, and Bandura, Festinger was ranked the fifth most cited psychologist of the twentieth century, yet the ethics of his cult fieldwork and replication debates over dissonance experiments remain live controversies.
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Leon Festinger's Other Quotes
When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance.
There exists, in the human organism, a drive to evaluate his opinion and abilities.
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
Research can increasingly address itself to minor unclarities in prior research rather than to larger issues; people can lose sight of the basic problems because the field becomes defined by the ongoing research.
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