Cognitive Dissonance is the discomfort one experiences when one holds two contradictory beliefs, and in my opinion is one of the most incessant and impactful things we (or at least, I) experience every day.

There are two main types of cognitive dissonance that arise in day to day life. The first is cognitive dissonance that impacts others. For example, when I walk past a homeless person begging in a tube station, I experience friction between my steadfast belief that homeless people should be helped, and the fact that I have just walked past them without sparing a single penny. Another example may be a lazy housemate, who decides to create a perilous tower of coke cans rather than tie up the bin bag and throw it out, knowing that the other, perhaps slightly more noble housemate, will inevitably have to deal with the mess when the pile loses its structural integrity and scatters across the kitchen floor.

The other form of dissonance is dissonance that impacts oneself. Perhaps you threw your pyjama top across the bedroom rather than neatly add it to the laundry pile, or you decided to scroll Instagram Reels instead of going to bed, knowing that you'll have to sacrifice breakfast to make it to work on time the next day. In any case, there is a friction here between the understanding that our actions will cost us additional effort, time, or even pain further down the line, and our choice to take the action anyway. In fact, I'm sure there's something that you yourself are putting off right now to your own detriment, which you likely should be doing instead of reading this article.

So what causes this phenomenon? If we look at it purely rationally, it makes no sense to make these choices that cause us or others small harms every single day. Yet the phenomenon persists. Hundreds of people will walk past that same homeless person during rush hour whilst on their way to their white collar jobs. Roommates around the world will continue to stack coke cans in rubbish bins, and millions will continue to scroll one of the many vertical video apps, consciously eroding their synapses. Obviously, the problem is not a purely rational one.

There are many factors that cause us to make these sorts of decisions, but in my opinion the most affecting one is that we decide the cost - either to someone else, or to ourself - associated with taking the 'right' action is too painful in comparison to the small pain of taking the 'wrong' action. In fact, to make the right decision would oftentimes be an acknowledgement of our own previous wrongdoing. If you were to give that homeless person 2 pounds one morning, you'd be implicitly admitting to yourself that every single other time you walked past them, you were doing something wrong. And not only that, but you'll also be shouldering the burden of continuing down the 'righteous path' that you've now forced upon yourself - when you see that homeless person again, you've created an expectation between you and that person that you'll give them money. Even if this expectation is never verbalised, or brought into being outside of your own mind, it'll still be felt.

The simple fact is, actions create expectations. If you're able to put down the phone once, you may feel even worse the next time you fail to manage your scrolling. And so, combining the threat of these expectations with the actual cost of making the right choice, we decide: no, I'd rather not. The patterns of behaviour continue, the homeless person's cup remains empty, the bin remains overflowing. And the world keeps turning.

Of course, the cost associated with this pattern of behaviour is not immediately felt, but rather built up over time. These small frictions increase, and increase, and increase in magnitude, until we decide we can't take it any more, and we take some sort of drastic action. We delete the app, never to be seen again, we wash, iron, and fold the laundry, we give the homeless person a 20 pound (!!) note, and we may even empty the bin before it gets too full. (However, there is the possibility that these frictions are so small that we never reach this point, and we continue tolerating and reinforcing them for the rest of our lives.)

Yet, this is not enough. The underlying issue is not solved, the patterns of behaviour not unlearned. Because, ironically, the pain of making the right choice becomes too much to bear. We throw ourselves into the deep end, without ever having learned to swim in the first place. You open your phone, itching for something to do, and your thumb instinctively reaches for where that app once was. And perhaps the 5th, 10th or 15th time it happens, you find that you've redownloaded it again, and are happily swiping along.

What I've described is essentially the Region-Beta Paradox. The paradox is this: more intense feelings of discomfort actually help us recover quicker and make better choices, whereas less intense feelings of discomfort leave us worse off overall, and less motivated to improve our situation. In other words, if the pain associated with the actions you're taking is not painful enough, you are psychologically inclined to repeat them, rather than to take action in the opposite direction.

To overcome the paradox, the first step is to acknowledge it instead of ignoring it. In order to start making the right decisions, you have to first acknowledge that you're making the wrong one. And in many cases, you don't have to have some sort of transcendental revelation, or go on an ayahuasca retreat to realise this. Half of the issue is that you do have an underlying understanding that you're doing something wrong - you now just have to admit it.

Then, there's the process of doing the 'right' thing. This will take time, and is best done incrementally. Rather than delete the app, try catching yourself when you open it, and limit the number of swipes you'll allow yourself. Perhaps, eventually, you'll find the urge to swipe has diminished, and by some miracle, the app disappears almost on its own. Bad habits are much harder broken than created, so be kind to yourself, but honest.

Of course, some people's struggles extend beyond seeking a dopamine rush when they're bored, and generic self-help advice is not enough to fix their issues. If you are one of those people, perhaps suffering from clinical depression, bipolar disorder, or the like, I do wish you the best of luck, and I'm sorry that whatever god's up there decided that you had to have it harder than the rest of us.

I hope you found this article somewhat useful, and if not, I hope it was at least a bit interesting to read. And if not even that, then let me know how I can improve my writing. Thanks! ✿