Wow!! Just read the following
examples:
1> Anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or like, as when one likes a person but disapproves of one of his or her habits.
2> You go to the store at lunch time when you're already hungry
and a little cross. You snap at the sales person, perhaps calling her a really
unkind name and use hurtful adjectives. Your belief about yourself, however, is that you're a good person, and good people don't hurt
or belittle the sales help. You and many people--in fact
most--solve the uncomfortable situation by demonizing the sales clerk. "She was stupid and
not doing her job at all. She deserved it because she's a bad person. I'm still a good person,
but she was awful and deserved my ire." You have self justified and made her the bad guy.
Mistakes were made, but not by you.
There
is a term to describe this feeling, and it's called Cognitive Dissonance. This is
exactly what I've been looking for for a long long time. This just explains so many
things going on in my personal and professional life!
CD for me is a close cousin of Confirmation Bias. CB is when you read or like to hear things that confirm your beliefs. Believe it or not, CD and CB go beyond this, it's also used by marketing professionals to explain consumer behavior! More to follow soon.
