The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in Decision Making Introduction When making decisions humans commonly fall victim to errors in logic and reasoning. Since the inception of the study of the mind, psychologists have endeavored to isolate the characteristics and causes of errors in human thinking. Researchers and theorists have developed categories of such errors: representativeness heuristics, availability heuristics, memory and hindsight biases, etc. . . . In other words, to err is human. In 1957, Festinger identified another phenomenon …showed first 75 words of 2230 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2230 total…higher moral reasoning. Psychological Reports, 71, 287-290. Plous, S. (1993). The psychology of judgment and decision making. New York: McGraw-Hill. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Sideris, J. (1993). Emotional expression and the reduction of motivated cognitive bias: Evidence from cognitive dissonance and distancing from victims' paradigms. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 64, 177-186. Wright, E. F., Rule, B. G., Ferguson, T. J., & McGuire, G. R. (1992). Misattribution of dissonance and behaviour-consistent attitude change. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 24, 456-464.