Cognitive Dissonance In Research

Excuse making is part of your auto-pilot meta-programming. In fact, excuses are red flags, revealing what you TRULY believe, what your most closely held TRUTHS and beliefs are. The reason we make excuses is called cognitive dissonance in psychology. Cognitive dissonance is when our behavior and actions conflict with our attitudes and beliefs. According to Saul McLeod, in Simply Psychology, “It is the feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.” (Like when you know eating cakes, pies, cookies and ice cream (behavior) and you know all along that eating those things leads to obesity and health issues (cognition).
In 1957, Leon Festinger’s research led him to propose that
Or digging deeper into the hole they have already dug, not climb out.
Festinger’s initial investigation into cognitive dissonance arose out of studying a cult which believed the end of the world was going to happen on a certain date and time. When it didn’t happen, the members admitted they were wrong and silly to believe such a thing and changed/adapted, right? WRONG! They doubled and tripled down, citing a re-interpreted view of their “evidence” to show that they indeed were right all along, and the earth was saved because they were faithful and they had, in fact, saved the planet. YAY!

Along with Cognitive Dissonance and Self-Justification, there is one final piece to the excuse making meta-program, it is the blind-spot that falls over our own integrity. “I would NEVER!” And because your delusional self would NEVER – then it must something or someone else’s fault. Without your Internal Identity statement program running, you default to delusional and excuse