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Cognitive dissonance may help you make positive changes in your life, but it can also be destructive, especially when you look for ways to rationalize and continue harmful behaviors. If you’re experiencing cognitive dissonance, it’s best to ask yourself if the strategies you’re using to cope with it will result in a positive long-term outcome. A person with cognitive dissonance experiences mental conflict https://ecosoberhouse.com/ and may take steps to try to resolve it. This could include changes in behavior or attempts to ignore information that contradicts a goal or desire. For example, a smoker might quit smoking or instead rationalize their behavior by saying other habits are just as dangerous. For example, a small 2019 study notes that dissonance-based interventions may be helpful for people with eating disorders.
The “Go-NoGo” task presents a stream of “Go” stimuli (often simple letters or shapes) that require a rapid button press, while infrequent “No-Go” stimuli require ‘withholding’ the button press65. “Stop-Signal” tasks require the inhibition of a motor response that is already underway66,67, with reaction time (to stop) as the primary measure. Though these motor tasks are simpler than “real-world” situations requiring inhibition (e.g., resisting drug use), poor performance in these tasks is generally well-correlated with higher-order failures of inhibition, such as drug relapse68. Addiction is characterized by a strong attentional preference for drugs and drug-related cues18–20. Whether established through positive or negative motivation, attentional bias can then drive drug seeking26, reflected in a shift of salience for drug-related cues, and directing behavioral resources toward the goal of drug consumption. To reduce cognitive dissonance, individuals should seek accountability and support, challenge their distorted reasoning, and be open to absorbing new information.
Response Inhibition
The reviewed evidence supports the central role of cognition in SUD symptomology,clinical prognosis, and potential therapeutic targets. Growing evidence about therelevance of attention, impulsivity, and decision-making for prediction andmoderation of the outcomes of different cognitive and pharmacological approachessuggests that cognitive phenotyping and modulation will impregnate future treatmentoptions. Future research is warranted to evaluate if this line of research can pavethe way cognitive dissonance and addiction to precision medicine approaches. In the interim, we propose a tentativemodel(Figure 1)in which deep phenotyping of cognitive processes can lead to phenotype-matchedcognitive and pharmacological approaches and putatively better SUD treatmentoutcomes. Current evidence suggests that cognitive approaches involving CBM, WMtraining, and Goal Management Training can be optimally suited for patients withstrong automatic biases, high impulsivity levels, and deficient decision-makingskills.
In one study, researchers asked participants to give speeches that would encourage the audience to take a certain positive action. If a person finds themselves in a situation where they have to do something that they don’t agree with, they’ll experience discomfort. Since they can’t escape the action, they attempt to re-establish their reasons for doing it in a way that makes the action acceptable. Learning what cognitive dissonance is, why it’s so powerful, and how to manage it can put you back in the driver’s seat. Group therapy, for example, enhances recovery by tapping into one’s natural social instincts. When considering and administering therapy for addiction recovery, it’s essential to evaluate different therapeutic methods.
What is cognitive dissonance and how do you reduce it?
The factor loading ranges from −1 to 1, and its square represents the percentage of variation that the factor can explain. In research, a threshold of 0.7 is commonly used as the standard, with values greater than this being acceptable [88]. Another method used in this study to test composite validity is the Average Variance Extracted (AVE), which represents the proportion of the observed variable values that the latent variable can measure.
- Post‐hoc tests revealed that only patients using alcohol performed significantly worse on the MoCA total score than those using cannabis (Table (Table1).1).
- Similarly, people who are in the throes of inconsistency in their social life are driven to resolve that inconsistency”.
- Addiction is characterized by a strong attentional preference for drugs and drug-related cues18–20.
- Mindfulness based interventions or third wave therapies have shown promise in addressing specific aspects of addictive behaviours such as craving, negative affect, impulsivity, distress tolerance.
- Metacognitive therapy has been described a hybrid of cognitive-behavioral therapy and psychoeducation153,154 and has shown to be efficacious in reducing schizophrenia-related anxiety and depression symptoms155,156.