I attended a leadership summit yesterday where one of the speakers shared stories about what happens when our minds are challenged. The premise is people act in ways where they expect consistency between what they know to be true relative to the environment around them, and their own behaviors. When conflicts between the two arise, the resulting effect is known as cognitive dissonance … or a feeling of discomfort between the two conflicting points of view.
Cognitive dissonance plays a role in many value judgments, decisions and evaluations. Continue reading