Cognitive dissonance, in its simplest expression, is the result of holding two competing ideas in the mind at the same time. The difficulty of sustaining competing thoughts generates a need to resolve them, one way or another. The inability to resolve competing thoughts leads to a buildup of stressful energy. This energy must be displaced, either by resolving the conflict, or by channeling the stressful energy into distracting activities such as eating, exercising, pornography, chores, gambling, and indulging in mind-altering substances.

It is the relieving of tension through displacement that leads to behaviors becoming compulsive and addictive. If you become used to eating as a compulsive reaction to stressful situations, you can become addicted to eating. The criteria for addiction are pretty well established:

• It must be an activity that is causing you harm.
• It must be an activity you want to curtail but are unable to.
• Withdrawal from the activity causes severe physical and emotional pain.

The majority of scientists describe the process of addiction similarly: By relieving tension, stress, and anxiety, the activity provides a reward signal, usually dopamine, that helps temporarily resolve the cognitive dissonance. Problem solved! Or masked, or avoided.

Pretty soon, the body becomes accustomed to that dopamine pop and wants it every day, whether or not there is cognitive dissonance. That leads to compulsive behavior, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If one compulsively has breakfast every day to relieve hunger, that is not perceived as addiction. If one drinks alcohol every day, it can be compulsive and a dependency, but that doesn’t mean it’s an addiction. If there is no apparent self-harm from the activity, and you have no desire to quit doing it, it is not an addiction; it’s a compulsion or a dependency.

People resolve cognitive dissonance all the time without careening into addiction. They practice cognitive tools for dissipating stress: deep breathing, breath counting, and counting to 10. They practice physical routines to displace stress: yoga, walking, jogging, swimming, exercise machines, bicycle riding, tennis, dancing, team sports, etc. These activities can become compulsive, but that rarely crosses the line of self-harming addiction.

One way people deal with stressful situations is by avoiding them or minimizing them. They can remove themselves physically from a place of conflict, if possible, or avoid people and places known to generate cognitive dissonance. Dieters can rule out anything from a drive-thru lane. Alcoholics can avoid going into bars. Gamers can self-impose quiet hours to keep their habits in check.

All sorts of harmless activities can become compulsive, and they make excellent substitute activities for people trying to kick a bad habit. People get hooked on sewing, woodworking, drawing, painting, collaging, fishing, hunting, gardening, word games, math games, trivia games, jigsaw puzzles, hobbies, crafts, and pastimes. Even watching television can become a compulsive habit that causes physical and emotional pain when withdrawn, yet I cannot recall ever reading about a case of genuine TV addiction.

A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance was written by Dr. Leon Festinger, a social psychologist, in 1957. Dr. Festinger taught psychology at The New School in New York from 1968 until his death in 1989. His work showed that the conflict between beliefs and actions — or beliefs and beliefs — causes cognitive dissonance and results in discomfort. Dr. Festinger further showed that the greater the cognitive dissonance, “the greater is the pressure to reduce dissonance.” 

Dissonance theory has come a long way since Dr. Festinger. Just this year, a group of scientists from Australia reviewed the history of cognitive dissonance and were able to pair it with specific negative emotional states:

[I]ndividuals can hold cognitive discrepancies for years and these can create long-term negative affect such as depression and anxiety.

The researchers found that sustained cognitive dissonance is associated with “anxiety, sadness, guilt, regret and anger.” They describe some of the emotional tools used by people to get out of the pain of cognitive dissonance:

1. denying responsibility for one’s actions
2. reducing the perceived aversiveness of the consequences of one’s actions
3. engaging in self-affirmations
4. psychologically avoiding the dissonance or situation
5. accepting the new information or behavior and changing the attitude or belief

It’s important to note that substance use disorder is considered part of D., above, meaning it’s psychological avoidance, according to these researchers.

In April of this year, Allison Christine Tanner, a psychology doctoral student at Alfred University, published her dissertation connecting cognitive dissonance with specific emotional states and academic performance. She recruited 175 students through a blind process managed by professors at three universities. Students participated in two online questionnaires that were numbered but anonymous.

The first test is DISS-R (Dissonance Test — Revised), consisting of 200 true/false statements. The second test is PANAS, the positive and negative affect schedule, with 10 positive items and 10 negative items. The goal, according to Tanner:

Using surveys, this quantitative study explored how chronic cognitive dissonance is connected to levels of negative affect and positive affect among undergraduate college students as well as how these factors impact a student’s academic performance.

Of the 175 students recruited, 122 completed the process and were included in the pool of tabulated results. After some very sophisticated bivariate analysis, Tanner teased out the following conclusions:

• Chronic cognitive dissonance demonstrated a significant positive relationship with negative affect, but also a significant negative relationship with positive affect.

• These three variables — chronic cognitive dissonance, positive affect, and negative affect — resulted in a statistically significant improvement in predicting academic performance.

• Negative affect by itself was not tied to lower academic performance, but positive affect by itself was associated with greater academic performance.

Now that you see the dramatic role that cognitive dissonance plays in fostering emotional states that can propel us to success or failure, prepare yourself for a brave new world of neurotic, compulsive robots. That’s right, new research shows that ChatGPT-4o “displays behaviors consistent with cognitive dissonance.” I’m not kidding! 

Due to the cognitive dissonance, AI, just like humans, behave irrationally. “Moreover, the effect sizes obtained with GPT-4o were significantly larger than those typically obtained with humans.” We are breeding an army of robots with emotional problems many times worse than our own! Maybe you can take some comfort in the thought, next time you experience cognitive dissonance, that it could be worse: You could be an AI.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published July 1, 2025.

Sources:

“An Introduction to Cognitive Dissonance Theory and an Overview of Current Perspectives on the Theory,” American Psychological Association, 2019.

“Discrete Emotions of Dissonance,” Motivation Science, March 10, 2025.

“Kernels of selfhood: GPT-4o shows humanlike patterns of cognitive dissonance moderated by free choice,” PNAS Computer Sciences, May 14, 2025.

Image Copyright: dolgachov.