Cognitive harmony, a way of life

The famous Aesop’s tale of the Fox and the Grapes had been part of our growing up. When the fox sees high-hanging grapes, he wants desperately to be able to eat them. However, once he finds out that he cannot reach them, the fox convinces himself that his object of desire is worthless, for the grapes are likely unripe and sour. The fox has adapted his internal thoughts to the situation or in other words, fox has established cognitive harmony.

Whenever we hold conflicting thoughts, our biological system shows signs of stress due to internal neurochemical chaos, a state of incongruence, and it is best prevented by adapting to cognitive harmony. When a person knows that smoking is bad for health yet continues with the habit, then it creates a state of cognitive dissonance, due to lack of harmony with one’s conscious thoughts. Consequently the person convinces himself that his Grandfather smoked two packets everyday till 90 years, so one or two per day will not do serious harm, in order to reduce the dissonance. But by quitting smoking, the person would have dismissed the dissonance altogether and would have established cognitive harmony. 

There are a lot of animal lovers who relish meat even though it’s common knowledge that the animals are kept in inhuman conditions before being processed as meat. By buying cage-free eggs and promising themselves to replace the meat purchases of each shopping trip with tofu and the like, they try to bridge a gap between their love for animals and their diet, thus establishing cognitive harmony.

Again, it’s common knowledge that politicians make empty promises, yet people vote for them. In order to avoid dissonance, we generally minimize the importance of the political assurances and learn not to expect big changes. Cheating while on diet is resolved by the promise to oneself of a work-out session later. Also, we tell white lies either in our social interaction (I didn’t see your message yet) or to create a magical world to a child (Santa Claus, tooth fairy), where the intent is benign and positive. 

Our feeling of security comes not from other’s opinion about us. The solid principles deep within our heart and mind aided by spirituality and cognitive harmony elevates
our self-esteem. In essence, everyone achieves cognitive harmony 
when the beliefs match up with everyday actions.