Hermit wrote:Xamonas Chegwé wrote:why am I increasingly seeing and hearing people using it to describe the polar opposite? ie.
Comfortably holding mutually contradictory beliefs.
When people mistake the meaning of cognitive dissonance in the manner you describe, they are actually referring to a collection of techniques aimed at avoiding the discomfort the dissonance creates. That collection is known as compartmentalisation. You can put that down to creeping cretinisation (Verdummung) borne of laziness.
Compartmentalization is an unconscious psychological defense mechanism used to avoid cognitive dissonance, or the mental discomfort and anxiety caused by a person's having conflicting values, cognitions, emotions, beliefs, etc. within themselves.
I first started using it incorrectly because that's how other people were already using it when I heard about it, and I didn't learn the precise definitions until later.
There is of course a very close relationship between the two, despite from one point of view being opposites. Much of the time people probably
don't walk around spending their lives feeling the discomfort of cognitive dissonance because instead they immediately and unconsciously compartmentalise. If someone is significantly compartmentalising separate contradictory beliefs then it's likely that it
is the result of cognitive dissonance. I think whether it's correct to say someone is experiencing cognitive dissonance when they are compartmentalising in this way is a matter of definitions. It could be argued that on some level they are experiencing it, and that experience manifests in the form of an avoidant defence mechanism. Are you experiencing abuse or violence if you run away from it? Or do you have to stand there taking punches in order to be considered experiencing it?
Definitions of words change all the time for all sorts of reasons, whether because of imprecision in usage or because they naturally expand to absorb other meanings. There are plenty of auto-antonyms - words which also mean the opposite of themselves. There's no reason cognitive dissonance couldn't mean the feeling of discomfort
and the methods of reducing that discomfort, if that's how people use the word.
[Disclaimer - if this is comes across like I think I know what I'm talking about, I want to make it clear that I don't. I'm just trying to get my thoughts down]
