Cognitive dissonance
![After someone has performed dissonant behavior, they may find external consonant elements. A snake oil salesman may find a justification for promoting falsehoods (e.g., large personal gain), but may otherwise need to change his views about the falsehoods themselves.](/Images/godic/202501/05/Clark_Stanley's_Snake_Oil_Liniment5817.png")
![](/Images/godic/202501/05/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_199945817.jpg")
![An educator might introduce topics by challenging students' intuitions. For instance, a student may be more willing to learn the real cause of the seasons after wrongly guessing that it has something to do with changes in the distance of Earth's orbit from the Sun.](/Images/godic/202501/05/Four_seasons5817.jpg")
![A lawyer may experience the negative tension of dissonance if they must defend, and call](/Images/godic/202501/05/Honoré_Daumier_0185817.jpg")
In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas, or values, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.