Steel Notes Magazine October "Halloween" Issue 2016 | Page 92
Steel Notes Magazine
October 2016
Alessia Bastianelli –
Italy
Venice 9.20.2016
Do we tell ourselves the
whole truth?
Often in life we experience some conflict
situations that arise because of the need to
choose among an array of possible choices.
Important decisions, such as moving to
another city, buying a house or separating
from a partner, may involve difficult,
sometimes painful, options. In these
situations, before making a decision we
experience inner conflict, due to the fact that
each choice has advantages and
disadvantages.
Some people complete long lists of pros and
cons in order to facilitate the decision. Others
prefer to embrace one of possible choices
with closed eyes, hoping that everything goes
well. Sometimes the inner conflic t persists,
even after making the decision. To relieve the
sense of discomfort, our brain activates a
particular mechanism that consists of trying to
justify the choice we made by highlighting the
advantages and minimizing the disadvantages.
We need to feel consistency in the way we
think and act. We want to be recognized by
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others as such. When we perceive coherence
between our behavior and our beliefs, we feel
a sense of inner harmony, of assonance
between our actions and our beliefs. In
contrast, when we act in a way that is in
contrast to our beliefs, we experience the
inner discomfort—to simplify, we could call
it a sense of guilt. This discomfort is known
as cognitive dissonance.
Why do we experience this dissonance?
Usually we feel it because we are aware of
both the positive aspects of the rejected
choice and the negative characteristics of the
chosen one. Thus, our inner harmony is
damaged and our brain automatically wants to
restore it in order to find consistency between
our behavior and beliefs. A way to reduce the
dissonance is through change. This change
can occur in several ways, through our
behavior—we can retract the decision we just
made—or, alternately, through our thoughts
we can reevaluate our beliefs and attitudes.
For example, if the doctor orders you to
eliminate meat from your diet for important
health reasons, you can follow his medical
opinion and stop eating meat. Alternatively,
you can re-valuate his prescription and
convince yourself that it cannot be really that
bad to eat a steak, so you think “We all
have to die sometime.”