Cognitive dissonance is a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. The clashing cognitions may include ideas, beliefs, or the knowledge that one ...

Do you keep second-guessing your decisions after you’ve made them? Immobilizing yourself? Berating yourself when you finally decide on something? This can be a normal albeit painful way to make ...

A discussion on how turn-earning at ski areas presents a unique setting, and a complicated psychological landscape, for the human-powered skier.

MOST OF US have experienced conflicting beliefs at one time or another. For instance, you know that drinking too much alcohol is bad for your health, but you pour yourself a second glass of wine ...

Cognitive dissonance, or having conflicting attitudes, beliefs and behaviors, is affecting how people respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a recent article for The Atlantic, social scientists Elliot ...

The holidays can be joyful, but social pressures, clashing cultural and family traditions, overeating and overspending invariably also leave many of us with a “cognitive dissonance hangover” once all ...

Sign up for the Concord Monitor’s morning newsletter for essential news each day, and our contests and promotions list for special offers and giveaways ...

Cognitive dissonance is what happens when a person holds two sets of beliefs at odds with each other. The human brain doesn’t like logical inconsistencies, so someone experiencing cognitive dissonance ...

A police officer once told me that most crimes are solved because the criminal mind, as he put it, was “stuck on stupid.” At Stanford back in the late ’50s, Leon Festinger developed theories and tests ...

This is the 14th article in the Behavioral Finance and Macroeconomics series exploring the effect behavior has on markets and the economy as a whole and how advisors who understand this relationship ...