Cognitive Dissonance In Smokers

By Author: Henry Ford
Total Articles: 189
Comment this article

Dissonance is when one experiences an inconsistency that is logical amongst his or her cognitions. Cognitive dissonance is therefore a feeling usually unpleasant and uncomfortable that occurs when one simultaneously holds two ideas that are contradicting. The ideas can be an attitude, a belief or even a fact. This theory therefore proposes that people have a drive usually motivational to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs and behaviors or by justifying their attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. It occurs when these cognitions are inconsistent. And because this feeling is unpleasant, the individual will try to reduce it e.g. by changing their belief, cognition, attitude or behavior. (Weick, 1964)). Cognitive dissonance can then be said to be the mental conflict that occurs to people when they are presented with evidence that their assumptions or beliefs are wrong. (Steele, 1983)).

The theory was first proposed by Leon Festinger in 1957.
The inconsistencies which are called dissonance among individuals’ ideas make people very uneasy and uncomfortable in that they have to alter these ideas so that ...
... they will agree with each other. It is argued that the attitude statements which comprise the major dependent variables in the dissonance experiments can be said to be interpersonal judgments whereby the observer and that being observed are the same individual and hence it becomes unnecessary to postulate an aversive motivational drive towards consistency to account for the change in attitude observed (Daryl,

Various studies have been carried out from 1957 when Festinger first proposed this theory. However there are those who have criticized the theory either mildly (Asch, 1958); (Bruner, 1957); (Kelly, 1962); (Osgood, 1960); and (Zajonc, 1960) or severely (Chapanis &Chapanis, 1964). There are also alternative interpretations that have been proposed to account for the results of various studies carried out on cognitive dissonance. Examples are those proposed by Chapanis & Chapanis (1964), Janis &Gilmore, (1965), Lott (19630 and Rosenberg (1965). But all in all there is no alternative theory to dissonance has been proposed.

Recent studies have been carried out on the knowledge, beliefs and attitudes on smokers, non-smokers, and ex-smokers. A study was carried out in Australia and 186 respondents participated by completing a questionnaire that asked them about their smoking habits, knowledge of the effects, beliefs about smoking and knowledge of the risk of lung cancer to themselves. The smokers accepted the fact that their risk of contracting lung cancer was greater than non-smokers (McMaster, 1991). Other studies have been done by Chapman (1993) to examine the role of self-exempting or cognitive dissonance-reducing beliefs about smoking and health. The study was carried out in Sydney, Australia on smokers and non smokers. The study concluded that fewer smokers than ex smokers accept the fact that smoking causes diseases and it is the smokers that hold more self exempting beliefs. Other studies have been carried out on the perceptions of immunity to disease in adult smokers. This study was carried out by Lee (1989). In this study, smokers and non smokers rated the risks to themselves and to the average Australian smoker. The study found out evidence of denial in that the ratings of smokers on the average smoker were lower than the ratings of the non smokers. This denial is what undermines the efforts of anti smoking campaigners.

Dissonance among smokers
Smokers are likely to be forced to deal with two opposing thoughts that may be “I smoke” and “smoking is dangerous”. When this happens they are likely to alter one of them by deciding to quit. Alternatively this dissonance can be diffused and thereby reducing its importance. In this regard, the smoker will be discounting the evidence against smoking and adopting the idea and views that smoking will do him no harm.
Cognitive dissonance is described as the uncomfortable feeling between what one holds to be true and what one knows to be true. Most smokers experience this state whereby they know the harmful effects of smoking, but then in a way to try and reduce the stress caused by this reality, they can opt to either reduce the rate of smoking or give up smoking completely or they can start rationalizing to justify their continual smoking habits. The anti smoking campaigners uses this theory of cognitive dissonance to remind smokers who rationalize that what they hold to be true is not. Many smokers use excuses like “I’ll lose or gain weight if I stop smoking, and this is bad as well.” This prompts the smoker to back into a state of cognitive dissonance, which may lead them to take the alternative path to rationalizing, which is to reduce or stop smoking. If the smoker does not rationalize but instead completely denies that there is anything wrong with smoking, then they will not experience the inconsistency of beliefs and only hold what they think as true. Therefore the smoker will not experience cognitive dissonance and will not think about quitting. Smoking is usually postulated as good example of cognitive dissonance since it is widely known that cigarettes can cause lung cancer, and yet everybody wants to live a long and healthy life. In accordance to the theory, the desire to live a long life is dissonant with doing something (smoking) that will shorten one's life. The uncomfortable feeling produced by these contradictory ideas can be eliminated by either quitting smoking, denying the reality of lung cancer, or justifying one's smoking.

Conclusion
The smokers rationalize their smoking behavior by concluding that it is only a few smokers who become ill, that it only happens to the heavy chain smokers or that if they do not die from smoking, something else will kill them. Though addiction to chemicals may be said to control many smokers, together with cognitive dissonance, upcoming smokers exhibit a simpler case. This case of dissonance could also be interpreted in terms of a threat to the self-concept. The thought, "I am increasing my risk of lung cancer" is dissonant with the self-related belief, "I am a smart, reasonable person who makes good decisions." Because it is often easier to make excuses than it is to change behavior, dissonance theory leads to the conclusion that humans are rationalizing and not always rational beings. More research should be carried out on this issue because the reason that the smoker may find it hard to quit may be because of the addiction to chemicals and not necessarily due to cognitive dissonance. Hence future studies should point out and try to differentiate between cognitive dissonance and chemical dissonance.

The author is associated with

The author is senior writer at https://www.allacademicanswers.com