The False Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

The New Yorker magazine reports:

It’s hard to overstate how influential the theory is today. “You almost certainly can’t get through an introductory psychology class without hearing about cognitive dissonance,” Adam Mastroianni, writer of the psychology Substack “Experimental History,” told me. The phrase has been invoked to explain why environmentalists eat meat and why some Trump supporters play down the President’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein.

The article explains the contrived origin of the theory, and how attempts to replicate studies have failed.

Wikipedia defines:

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly or subconsciously hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions.[1][2] Being confronted by situations that create this dissonance or highlight these inconsistencies motivates change in their cognitions or actions to reduce this dissonance, maybe by changing a belief, by explaining something away,[2] or by taking actions that reduce perceived inconsistency.[3] ...

Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory is still one of the most influential social theories in modern social psychology.

Of course people do try to resolve conflicting evidence and beliefs. No issue there. It is the psychology theorizing about this that is dubious. If you ever hear someone say that something is explained by the theory of cognitive dissonance, the explanation is almost certainly incorrect.