How Cognitive Dissonance relates to Alcohol Abuse

You may be pressured into allowing those actions to continue or participate in those actions yourself — and that can leave you with some significant discomfort, so you end up questioning exactly how you should feel about the situation. Psychologist Kia-Rai Prewitt, PhD, explains https://ecosoberhouse.com/ how to manage this feeling of discomfort, what’s known as cognitive dissonance, and how it can affect your mental health and other relationships when left unchecked. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people are averse to inconsistencies within their own minds.

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Typically, when we feel psychological dissonance, it’s because one of these patterns of thought is being challenged. Unfortunately, though, there’s no flashing red light that tells you when you’re not in alignment with your values — it’s all internal. As we mentioned earlier, many people know that smoking is harmful to their health — yet they continue to do it. Festinger proposed this hypothesis in his 1957 book, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.

How to Resolve Cognitive Dissonance

• Sometimes, we can even get caught up in behaving or reacting a certain way that doesn’t necessarily align with how we really feel — and then we end up feeling lost.
• These defense mechanisms protect their deep-rooted beliefs about themselves and substances.
• The effects may relate to the discomfort of the dissonance itself or the defense mechanisms a person adopts to deal with it.

Several behavioural strategies are reported to be effective in the management of factors leading to addiction or substance use, such as anxiety, craving, skill deficits2,7. But sometimes, we have feelings of dissonance and we don’t understand — or can’t trace — where they came from. In cases like these or for more complex changes, you’ll benefit from additional accountability and support.

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Additionally, the study found that self-efficacy negatively regulates the effect of cognitive dissonance and the impact of information overload, service overload, and user addiction on cognitive dissonance. Users with high self-efficacy are more likely to regulate the discomfort caused by cognitive dissonance and make behavioural decisions based on their cognitive and regulated emotional state. Conversely, users with low self-efficacy are more prone to discontinuous usage intention, potentially leading them to uninstall the platform. Recent literature supports the study’s findings on cognitive and affective dimensions in user behaviour. Zhang, Zhao, Lu, and Yang [79] research showed that information overload and service overload could lead to cognitive dissonance and negative emotions, resulting in discontinuous usage intention.

Cognitive reframing of lapses, coping imagery for craving and life style interventions, such as physical activity are used to help develop skills to deal with craving and broaden the patient’s behavioural repertoire. Cognitive restructuring techniques are employed to modifying beliefs related to perceived self-efficacy and substance related outcome expectancies (“such as drinking makes me more assertive”, “there is no point in trying to be abstinent I can’t do it”). Integrating awareness of cognitive dissonance into addiction treatment plans can be a game-changer. By understanding the role cognitive dissonance plays in maintaining addictive behaviors, individuals can develop more effective strategies for overcoming their dependency. The long-term consequences of unresolved cognitive dissonance in addiction are far-reaching and profound. Beyond the physical toll of substance abuse, individuals may experience a erosion of self-esteem, damaged relationships, and a distorted sense of reality.

It’s common for addictive behaviors to include lies, distortions, and denial because they’re all the person’s attempts to “correct” the repercussions of their behavior in their head. They want to feel better about what cognitive dissonance addiction they’re doing, even though they know it’s wrong, so they lie about it, deny it, and minimize its severity. Established studies have highlighted the relationship between nomophobia and addictive behaviors [43,44,45].

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• We want to give recovering addicts the tools to return to the outside world completely substance-free and successful.
• As you can imagine, participant’s attitudes toward this task were highly negative.
• Subjects participated voluntarily during both measures and were free to withdraw at any time.

The present study demonstrates a significant positive relationship between Type D personality and smartphone addiction among Chinese college freshmen. This finding supports Hypothesis 1 and aligns with the component of the I-PACE model that suggests personality factors play a role in the development of addictive behaviors. While our results do not provide a comprehensive validation of the I-PACE model, they do substantiate the model’s proposition regarding the influence of personality on addictive behaviors.

• However, the person may do this with the belief that their behavior makes total sense.
• It consists of a total of 20 items and includes four dimensions, i.e., not being able to communicate, losing connectedness, not being able to access information, and giving up convenience.
• Social skills training (SST) incorporates a wide variety of interpersonal dimensions15.

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