Cognitive Dissonance & Bias 🪴

What is cognitive dissonance?

When a person holds two contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, or participates in an action that goes against a held belief, idea, or value and experiences psychological stress

What is a belief? 

• State or habit of placing trust or confidence in another 
• Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, and validity of something 
• Something believed or accepted as true 

It’s interesting that beliefs have a kind of truth value to them.  Such as when we speak….

• I believe in you. 
• I have a belief that.. 

But… Is that just to do with the vernacular and the way that people classify what a belief is?

What is an idea?

• Something, thought or conception, that is the product of mental activity
• Opinion, conviction, or principle
• Plan, purpose, or goal 

In my opinion, these definitions are pretty vague. I think it would be interesting to study what ideas are and how they come to be. What are the mental processes that occur when ideas are formulated? Another thing that is interesting, is that conviction is embedded within the definition but there is also opinion within the same definition. 

What is a value? 

• broad, desirable goals that motivate people’s actions and serve as guiding principles in their lives 
• denotes the degree of importance of some thing or action, with the aim of determining what actions are best to do or what way is best to live 
• broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of actions or outcomes 
• reflect a person’s sense of right or wrong ~ Mind & Morality

Where to take this next…

• Understand how beliefs, ideas, or values represented within the brain? Are they expressed / formed through the wiring/conditioning/synapses? Are there specific brain regions correlated with brain activity? 
• Explore what the The Biochemistry of Belief is