Is Cognitive Dissonance Actually a Thing?

Cognitive dissonance might be psychology’s most ubiquitous concept—the idea that when our beliefs clash with reality, we’ll twist our thinking to resolve the discomfort. Leon Festinger developed the theory in the 1950s, partly by infiltrating a doomsday cult called the Seekers. But newly released archives reveal something troubling: the researchers didn’t just observe the cult—they influenced it. Half the attendees at some meetings were paid infiltrators. So what happens when the science behind an idea that feels intuitively true turns out to be shakier than we thought? Shayla Love with The New Yorker has the full story that opens the question.

Shayla Love

The New Yorker

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