Friday, September 25, 2009

FFT Friday

How much cognitive dissonance are you able to tollerate? I've been thinking it about it lately in regard to work and other activities. Is it possible to love and hate something at the same time? Or can you participate in activities that are good in some respects and not others?

For reference, I'm thinking about things like how hard I want to work to get my team to improve their performance when I'm not sure I'll be able to give them raises at the end of the year (not is it OK to lie or cheat). They want that as a reward for the extra effort they put in, which is totally fair, but I may not have the option to give that to everyone. This is one of the fights that goes on in my head.

There are many more, but sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one who thinks about this stuff. It first came up in a Victorian literature class and it's been somewhere knocking around since then. It's fairly normal to have some cognitive dissonance, but we also naturally do things to decrease the cognitive dissonance in our lives. Usually, we either disavow ourselves of some notion or we lie to ourselves about it.

So, is there any aspect of your life where you live with cognitive dissonance? I'm curious.

1 comment:

boisegrammy said...

For some reason I think this is my world. Maybe not all the time, but is sure wreaks havoc with your head. We need to talk about it sometime.