4."When the pandemic started, a friend of mine got really obsessed with the fact that you can't leave your home or go near people without a mask — but it never reflected in his own actions. He judged ...

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 ...

With the expanding knowledge of neuropsychology, what was previously speculation is now being confirmed through the use of imaging studies such as functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) to track brain ...

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 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Cognitive dissonance occurs when new information that conflicts with someone’s deeply held beliefs causes that person to feel mental discomfort. It is prevalent in people who believe sweeping false ...

Thomas Plante (@ThomasPlante) Augustin Cardinal Bea, SJ professor of psychology at Santa Clara University, is a faculty scholar with the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and an adjunct clinical ...

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 ...

After Mass on Sunday, our priest took a moment to relay a message from our bishop regarding the upcoming off-year elections here in Virginia. The Church, of course, goes to great lengths to avoid ...