Now listen to part of a lecture about this topic in a Sociology class.
Professor (male)
This is a true story from my own life. In my first year in high school, I was addicted to video games. I played them all the time and I wasn't studying enough. I was failing Chemistry that was my hardest class. So this was a conflict for me because I wanted a good job when I grew up and I believed, I knew, that if you want a good career you gotta do well in school. But I just couldn't give up video games! I was completely torn.And my solution was to change my perspective. See, the only class I was doing really badly in was Chemistry. In the others, I was OK. So I asked myself if I wanted to be a sociologist. So I told myself my chemistry class didn't matter, because sociologist don't need to know chemistry. In other words, I changed my understanding of what it meant to do well in school. I reinterpreted my situation. I used to think that doing well in school meant doing well in all my classes. But now I decided that succeeding in school meant only doing well in the classes that related directly to my future career. I eliminated the conflict, at least in my mind.
Using the example discussed by the professor, explain what cognitive dissonance is and how people often deal with it.
One way people use to deal with the contradiction between their action and their belief is called cognitive dissonance. And the professor illustrates this with his own experience. When he was a freshman in high school he was addicted to video games, and he didn't study very much. So he failed his chemistry class that was difficult for him. He was caught in a dilemma between his belief and his action, that is, on the one hand, he understood that he could only find a good job if he did well in school, while on the other, he just couldn't give up video games. The professor's solution was to change his perspective by thinking that the only thing he was bad at in school was chemistry, and since he wanted to become a sociologist rather than a chemist, it didn't really matter if he could do well in chemistry. Being successful, to him, was just doing well in subjects related to his future career, and this was how cognitive dissonance helped the professor eliminate the conflict in his mind. (184 words)
