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Design principle: Cognitive dissonance
The war of thoughts inside the user’s head.
This week’s article is about the mental discomfort experienced by humans and foxes, who hold two or more contradicting thoughts or/and beliefs at the same time. Let’s look at what is cognitive dissonance and see how it relates to design.
What is cognitive dissonance
The fable of “The Fox and the Grapes”, by Aesop, can be seen as an example of cognitive dissonance.
Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine, but was unable to, although it leaped with all its strength. As it went away, the fox remarked “Oh, you aren’t even ripe yet! I don’t need any sour grapes.”
It seems the fox held two incompatible thoughts simultaneously, Desire and Frustration. The criticism used by the fox was a way to neutralize this dis-balance and reduce mental conflict.
Humans subconsciously strive for internal consistency. Experiencing inconsistency leads to psychological discomfort. This leads to the higher motivation to avoid information that can contradict our own beliefs and values. Thus, we can stay in balance and be happy.
Most of the time, people try to reduce their cognitive dissonance in four ways:
- Change the behavior or cognition. “I don’t eat meat anymore.” — said the vegetarian
- Justify the behavior or the cognition, by altering the conflicting cognition. “I can have a cheat day with meat once a week.” — said the failed vegetarian (myself)
- Justify the behavior or the cognition by adding new ones “I’ll go for a run to burn out the extra calories, I will eat now” — said the guy who didn’t do it later.
- Ignore or deny information that conflicts with existing beliefs “This meat is organic, so the animal must have had a good life.” — said the failed vegetarian (myself)
