Cognitive dissonance is a psychological state

Position 1: Researchers have since extended Festinger's original framework to fields as diverse as consumer behaviour, political psychology and health communication.

Position 2: Leon Festinger, who first described the phenomenon in 1957, proposed that this internal inconsistency generates a form of mental discomfort that motivates the individual to seek resolution.

Position 3: This tendency has far-reaching implications for behaviour, helping to explain why individuals often rationalise poor decisions rather than acknowledging their mistakes.

Position 4: Cognitive dissonance is a psychological state that arises when an individual holds two or more contradictory beliefs simultaneously.

Position 5: To reduce that discomfort, people typically either change one of their conflicting beliefs, acquire new information that reconciles the contradiction, or minimise the importance of the conflict.