CONTRADICTORY THINKING
The best way to explain this concept is to tell you a story—actually, a fable. You probably remember this Aesop’s fable. There once was a fox who tried in vain to reach a cluster of grapes dangling from a vine above his head. Although the fox leaped high to grasp the grapes, the delicious-looking fruit remained just beyond his reach. After several attempts, the fox gave up and said to himself, “These grapes are sour, and if I had some, I would not eat them.”
This fable illustrates what former Stanford University social psychologist Leon Festinger called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance (or contradictory thinking) is the distressing mental state in which people “find themselves doing things that don’t fit with ...
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