One of the great pleasures of knowing psychology is that you suddenly understand things that were not understood before and people that were not. For example, why do people not accept a little criticism from others, why do people do wrong but do not repent, why do people say things that hurt others
These phenomena relate to the same psychological pattern, which is the theory of cognitive disorders advanced by leon festig。
It is a very simple theory, but its application is rather broad. Fistig describes cognitive disorders as a state of tension that occurs when a person simply holds two psychologically inconsistent perceptions (concepts, attitudes, beliefs, views)。
Cosmetic disorders can upset people, so we'll try to reduce them. And the way to reduce it is to convince and defend itself. As the existentialist philosopher albert jamu said, it is not absurd that human beings are such a creature that they have spent their lives trying to convince themselves of their existence。
What are the main manifestations of cognitive disorders? Take the most familiar example. It is assumed that a person likes to eat sweets and then sees information that excessive sweets cause disease. At that point, she had a disorder: "i eat sweets" and "sweet is the main cause of obesity and disease"。
For this person, the wisest and most effective approach is to eat less and try not to eat sweet. But controlling the desire for food is not easy. What would she do to reduce internal inconsistencies? She would try to dilute the link between sugar and disease。
She might say, isn't nutrition specialists always changing? Today's talk about sweets is bad, and tomorrow's talk about sweets is healthy. She may find someone who also eats sweets but is thin and healthy to convince herself that sweets are not so dangerous. She may also say to herself that sweet food is not only pleasant, but also essential to relax: “i may live shorter, but i will be happier.”
By the same token, those who smoke, are addicted to alcohol or do not like sports find similar reasons to reduce cognitive disorders and become convinced of them。
Another obvious manifestation of the theory of cognitive disorders is the fact that people can justify their choices, especially the major ones, even if they are not the best. Once a decision was irreversible, people would try to make themselves happy with the choices made。
For example, before a person buys a house, he or she has more advantages or disadvantages in terms of the number of houses that he or she has to buy. Once he had bought a house, he would place more emphasis on its merits and weaken its shortcomings. The reason is that he cannot endure the cognitive disorders of “i carefully chose this house” and “this house has shortcomings”, so he has to find something to agree with。
This also explains why people always attach particular importance to what they have worked so hard to get. If you survive two overnight reports that are not endorsed by your superiors and are criticized, you will experience a serious cognitive disorder. Even if you are afraid to say so, you will defend yourself in the first place。
Cognitive disorders work more strongly when a person's concept of self is challenged. For example, when a person considers himself to be a strict, serious and highly capable person, he tends to defend himself when the boss points out that he made a mistake at work。
And, for example, there is a widespread perception that they are decent, fair and reasonable. But assuming that someone did something serious that hurt innocent people, the perception of “i'm a good person” in his heart was inconsistent with “i hurt others”。
At this time, the way to reduce the disorder for the wounded is often to maximize the guilt of the injured person — to tell himself that he deserves it, either because he did what he did or because he was a bad person。
In some cases, almost everyone can be considered the perpetrator of the abuse of innocent victims。
Normally, we all have the capacity to act rationally. But when we need to reduce imbalances, we do irrational things. Psychologists have found that humans can change rapidly and continuously between extreme rationality and extreme irrationality。
As can be seen, when a person is always anxious to reduce internal disorders, he or she constantly defends his or her behaviour, even if it is wrong. This has had a significant negative impact on the ability to make the right change and to learn from experience and progress in growth。
And when we understand this theory, we can try to reduce it. The simplest thing is that when we make a mistake, it can be seen in a “non-defensive” manner. We could say to ourselves, "well, i screwed up. See what i can learn from this experience." instead of “this means that i am a failed, stupid, incompetent or immoral person”。
The latter idea creates a strong sense of disequilibrium, thereby stimulating self-advocacy, while the former idea does not cause cognitive disorders, but only allows people to learn, improve and grow, which will undoubtedly be of great help to our lives。
Good for reading:
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Welcome back, forward, leave messages. I look forward to meeting you who love to learn, to think, to seek excellence。
