cognitive dissonance

noun

: psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously

Examples of cognitive dissonance in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The line, uttered by Melanie Griffith’s Tess, sums up the cognitive dissonance women face trying to make it in a man’s world. —Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 9 Mar. 2024

To portray cognitive dissonance requires something unexpected. —Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times, 3 Mar. 2024

In particular, she’s been praised for her delivery of the movie’s climactic speech, which illustrates the cognitive dissonance of being a woman. —Joey Nolfi, EW.com, 23 Jan. 2024

No amount of cognitive dissonance can convince us otherwise. —Ted Rall, Orange County Register, 27 Jan. 2024

There certainly appears to be some cognitive dissonance, agreed The Independent's Rowan Pelling. —Richard Windsor, theweek, 11 Jan. 2024

To escape the humiliation of deferring to their critics and the cognitive dissonance produced by seeing themselves as incompetent failures, Bush and his senior advisers reframed the situation. —Gideon Rose, Foreign Affairs, 20 Feb. 2024

But the biggest challenge of the show for every actor was the cognitive dissonance of the horrors the men faced in the air juxtaposed with their rather more cosmopolitan nightlife. —Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 18 Dec. 2023

There is a kind of cognitive dissonance built into the idea of co-regulation. —Jessica Winter, The New Yorker, 25 Jan. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1957, in the meaning defined above

Medical Definition

cognitive dissonance

noun

: psychological conflict resulting from simultaneously held incongruous beliefs and attitudes (as a fondness for smoking and a belief that it is harmful)