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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Cognitive Dissonance and Substance Abuse
Robert C. Sipes
California Lutheran University

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Introduction
Hundreds of thousands of Americans die every year from diseases caused by
cigarette smoking and millions more are adversely affected by this dangerous
behavior. “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
cigarette smoking results in more than 480,000 premature deaths in the United
States each year—about 1 in every 5 U.S. deaths—and an additional 16 million
people suffer with a serious illness caused by smoking.” (N/A, 2016, p.1) The part
that most of us scratch our heads about is why is this happening, and also why do
these people decide to pick up smoking knowing the dangers?
Along with the destructive habit of smoking cigarettes, people across the
world are also abusing alcohol and drugs at alarming rates. According to the CDC,
“In developed countries, typically 70-90% of adults consume alcohol, and has been
increasing dramatically over the last 10-20 years.” Across the country there are over
100 million smokers and according to a World Health article 46% of adults have
admitted to abusing some type of illegal narcotic. Knowing the risks of illness and
sometimes-even death, it is staggering that such a high percentage of the world
population chooses to indulge in drugs, alcohol and tobacco. There are many
rationales or excuses people develop in order to reconcile their self -destructive,
and often out of character, behavior. They may be wanting to fit in with their peers,
or are trying to present a particular image of themselves to others. Whatever it may

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
be, there is a cognitive process, which allows people to make poor decisions even if
they are knowledgeable of the scientific truths and consequences of their actions.
Purpose
Every single day humans have thousands of opportunities to make
decisions, they can vary from insignificant to life changing. It can be as simple
as deciding to have oatmeal in the morning instead of a bagel, or taking a bath
instead of a shower. However it can be as extreme as being late to work or
risking your life by running a red light. Most of these decisions happen
subconsciously, without even thinking about it, while the more extreme ones
might take days or weeks of thinking over before making a decision.
As a senior in college I have seen what the “party culture” is and what
this term actually means. It’s fair to say that most college students along with
past graduates, parents, and even college professors do as well. Each one of
these groups could link their college years to binge drinking and
experimenting with different drugs. Meanwhile each group would also agree
that binge drinking and drug use is very harmful to our bodies and should be
avoided if at all possible. Binge drinking can do a lot of harm to the body. It
can lead to alcohol poisoning, which can be lethal, and to long-term liver
damage, while drug abuse can permanently damage to the brain, and
cigarette smoking can lead to diseases and cancer of the lungs. Looking ahead
at further research the reader will see the reasoning behind making the

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
choices to drink and use drugs. In addition to that we will look for the process
of making those choices and how people justify their choices.
Definitions
For this research study, there are three terms that need to be defined:
Cognitive: relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (as
thinking, reasoning, or remembering)
Dissonance: iinconsistency between the beliefs one holds or between one's
actions and one's beliefs
Substance: a drug that is considered harmful and whose use is controlled by
law or made illegal
Nature and Limitations
If one were to use qualitative data there could be multiple weakness when
looking at the data. When using qualitative data researchers often have to take
opinion and biases into considerations. Also, it is difficult to get a result that may be
applied to the general public because through an in person interview process data
may often lean towards the population the researcher used. In other words, the
location the researcher chooses may determine how the questions are answered
because of their geographic location. For example, people who answer a question in
Southern California may answer completely different than people who live in the
south.
However using this type of research has its strengths as well. When in a face-to-face
interview one will receive more detailed and specific answers than if one were to
have the participant answer questions on a survey. With qualitative research you

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
are able to ask follow up questions that you would not be able to get in quantitative
data.
Methodology
Research Perspective
This study will be best explored using qualitative research, because to best
understand people’s reasoning and how they justify their actions, there has to be an
in person interview. To best understand this study the Cognitive Dissonance Theory
would be the best way to fully comprehend this occurrence. “Cognitive
dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors.
This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes,
beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance etc.” (MCleod,
2008, p.1). In other words, people make decisions to partake in different activities,
and when these activities interfere with their personal beliefs or values they will
attempt to justify what they did to reduce their discomfort or anxiety with what
they did.
I personally like this theory because we all have done things in our lives that
we are not proud of, that we know do not align with our character and values. Yet
each time we have acted out of character we tend to look back at it and try to justify
why we did it in order to make ourselves feel better. This theory is very relatable to
myself and most of the world, so looking more into the theory and understanding
why we do this and how the process happens in our heads will be interesting.

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Meta-theoretical Assumptions
The Meta -theoretical assumptions of Festingers Cognitive Dissonance
Theory are the following. Ontology relates to this research in the way that our
actions are pre- determined. This action will take place outside of our will. Meaning,
we all make our own choices, however the reaction to our choice will happen no
matter what we do. This theory is seen to be value neutral, because it trying to
predict instead of control and also does not look for social change. Lastly, the
epistemology would relate to looking at quantitative research data, and also looking
at the research and believing the single truth that drug, cigarettes and alcohol are
unhealthy for the human body. To finish up, the traditions that this theory and
research would be associated with would be the phenomenological tradition. Mostly
for the reason that we are looking at individual people and their perception and
interpretation of their own lives.
Literature Review
In order to better understand the cognitive dissonance theory, and how it
affects us on how and why we choose to justify our bad habits, we will look at six
different scholarly articles that will help readers grasp the theory and its meaning.
The following articles will all relate to our dilemma and how the theory relates to
our decision-making.

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
To begin, the reader must understand the science behind a habit. The basic
way a habit works is best explained a habit loop. This loops includes three aspects of
a habit. The first being a cue, which is “a trigger that tells your brain to go into
automatic mode and which habit to use” (Duhigg, C. 2012, p.19). The next step
includes the routine, which is doing the action such as abusing a substance. The last
step is the reward, which makes your brain remember the action and keeps it
coming back for more. “The problem is that your brain can’t tell the difference
between bad and good habits, and so if you have a bad one , it’s always lurking there
waiting for the right cues and rewards” (Duhigg, C. 2012, p.20).
The author or creator of the theory is Larry Festinger. In 1957 he wrote a
book explaining the theory, which gives readers an old but useful understanding of
the theory. Festinger refers to two main ways humans reduce their dissonance. The
first way is changing their cognition of the behavior. Festinger uses the cigarette
smoker as his primary example. “In this instance if the subject no longer smokes,
then his cognition of what he does will be consonant with the knowledge that
smoking is bad for their health” (Festinger, 1957, p.5). In most cases the
hypothetical smoker will find it too painful to quit and continue to smoke. However
this attempt to quit reduces their dissonance. The second way of reducing
dissonance is to change the knowledge of the matter. In Festingers smoker example,
“the smoker might simply end up believing that smoking does not have any
deleterious effects, or he might acquire so much ‘knowledge’ pointing to the good
effects it has that the harmful aspects become negligible” (Festinger, 1957, p.6).
There are different ways smokers might go about this. The smoker will try to find

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
different facts or even the opinions of others to back up their own idea that what
they are doing is not that bad after all. One last way we see smokers reduce their
dissonance is by accepting that smoking is very unhealthy for their bodies and
continuing smoking knowing the risk.
In Mills and Harmon-Jones book, Cognitive Dissonance: progress on a pivotal
theory in social psychology, the authors had some insight on how to better
understand and advance the theory. The authors discussed how self-esteem could
effect how someone feels or deals with dissonance. The idea that self-esteem can
affect the theory not only advances it, but also gives readers a new perspective,
which is beneficial for all. Through various experiments Mills and Harmon-Jones
found that “people with high and fragile self esteem, in their zeal to maintain their
belief in their own competence and virtue, often boast about their achievements,
trying desperately to convince themselves and others that they are terrific.” (Mills &
Harmon-Jones, 1999, p.122) On the contrary, people with high and well-grounded
self-esteem do the exact opposite. “Instead when they fail, or make mistakes, they
can look at their failures and mistakes and learn from them.” They understand that
just because they performed a “stupid” action does not make them a stupid person.
Relating to substance abuse, this self-esteem idea shows how some smokers
might go about dealing with their dissonance. Smokers with high but fragile self
esteem deal with dissonance will have a harder time quitting because they will
defend their self image instead of directly dealing with the issue. On the other hand
smokers with a high and well-grounded self-esteem try to quit they will take a more
direct action to quitting. The smoker will understand that they have picked up an

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
unhealthy habit, but know that this does not make them a bad person. “They will
look at it and ask themselves how might I decrease the possibility that they will
screw up in similar way again.” (Mills & Harmon-Jones, 1999, p.123)
In a 2016 study, researches looked at why pregnant mothers still choose to
smoke cigarettes during their pregnancy. Smoking cigarettes is one of the most
deadly bad habits that people can have, and smoking during a pregnancy has been
proven to be not only dangerous for the mother and also the unborn child. The
authors gave an example that mothers who decided to smoke during their
pregnancy have the conflict or dissonance of trying to be a good mother but also
partaking in this unhealthy habit. In some cases mothers would accept the fact that
they are not capable of quitting and accepting the fact that their habit will have a
negative effect on their unborn child. This conflict causes a discomfort and anxiety
within the mothers that caused them feel this way until they are once again being
consistent to their beliefs and morals. Constituently, mothers who fail to quit deal
with the conflict and then modify their perspective so that they feel better about
themselves and stay consistent in their morals and beliefs.
The authors found two main themes in their research that shows why
mothers choose to continue their bad habits. “The first main theme includes
convictions that undermine the need to break the nicotine addiction and the
positive aspects resulting from quitting. The second main theme comprises beliefs
that question the possibility to abstain from smoking and exaggerate the barriers in
the process of quitting” (Goszczyska, E., Knol-Michaowska, K., & Petrykowska, A. ,
2016). The mothers used multiple excuses to undermine the need to quit. “Some

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
pregnant women restricted the number of cigarettes they would smoke believing
that by reducing the amount would help the health of the baby. Other mothers said
that smoking in a particular trimester is okay as well.” (Goszczyska, E., Knol-
Michaowska, K., & Petrykowska, A. ,2016, p. 15). Mothers believed that smoking is
safe during the first trimester because possible harm to the fetus will be
counterbalanced before delivery. Another “belief” is that because the placenta has
not fully formed during the first trimester, nicotine does not affect the baby.
Lastly, some mothers did not have faith in themselves to quit on their own.
“For some smokers, this belief stemmed from having failed to quit several times.
They were depressed by the defeat” (Goszczyska, E., Knol-Michaowska, K., &
Petrykowska, A. ,2016, p. 18). According to Festinger’s work, readers can conclude
that, even though the mothers could not quit the deadly habit, the mothers would
have to either change their cognition on smoking, or change their knowledge of
smoking in order to feel they are being consistent with their morals.
We see similar results in A First Look at Communication Theory, Griffin and
contributing authors also had insight on cigarette smoking and the cognitive
dissonance theory. The authors explain Festinger’s three mental mechanisms to
ensure their actions and attitudes are in harmony. These mental mechanisms
include selective exposure, post decision dissonance, and minimal justification.
Selective exposure is when the person will have the tendency to avoid any
information that would create dissonance. Post decision dissonance refers to when
people make those close-call decisions, and how they can create a huge amount of
dissonance. These close-call decisions can be affected by the importance, the time it

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
takes, and difficulty of making the decision. The last mechanism is minimal
justification, this is when there is “A claim that the best way to stimulate an attitude
change in others is to offer just enough incentive to elicit counter attitudinal
behavior.” (Griffin, E. A., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. G. 2015, p.204) They use the
example of Marlboro Man. The cigarettes companies had to convince an ex -smoker
dying of lung cancer to quit bashing the cigarette companies. They had to make an
offer that was “just enough” so he would listen to their request. By doing this we
saw a communication behavior change which left him less angry with the cigarette
companies. This behavior change would also reduce his dissonance. From this
information we can see how these mechanism relate to how people who abuse
substances, and how they go about coping and moving forward.
The last source is much different from the others. It offers a more broad
understanding and perspective of the theory. In an experiment published in 2013,
researchers looked at college students and how they dealt with the dissonance of
plagiarizing assignments in their classes. “Research has shown that students know
that plagiarism is an academic misconduct but they still use citation and other
strategies which violate academic integrity” (Law, L., Jerome, C., & Ting, S. 2013,
p.279). They found multiple reasons or excuses to why they would continue the
behavior. They vary from because the easy opportunity to cheat or the high
performance pressure that comes with school. “A recent study has revealed that
students who cheat tended to condone the behavior. Woodbine and Amirthalingam
conducted a controlled experiment in which a visiting lecturer inadvertently
disclosed the answer to a test question. The experiment showed that despite earlier

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
lectures on professional ethics, the experimental group of students took advantage
of the slip-up. Instead of exhibiting less dishonest behavior than the control group,
the experimental group justified their behavior as more acceptable to reduce the
cognitive dissonance caused by the situation.” So although it may be academic
dishonesty instead of substance abuse, we see the same actions of dealing with
cognitive dissonance. No matter the issue, people will continue the behavior and
justify their reasoning.
Conclusion
Not much has changed since Festinger created the Cognitive Dissonance
Theory. As stated in all the sources, no matter what the issue is, people will always
go through this cognitive dissonance process. When a smoker, or drug abuser
realizes that their actions aren’t matching with the their morals they will be
selective on what information they expose themselves to, find other people with
similar thoughts, and justify their action with various type of excuses just to reduce
their dissonance. In some cases their self-esteem could be a factor on whether or not
they can learn from their mistakes and overcome their addictions. With more
knowledge of the cognitive dissonance theory maybe people can help themselves
out and kick their habits and live a healthier lifestyle.

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Running head: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Références
Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business.
New York: Random House. 101-110
Festinger, L. (1957) A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford California: Stanford
University Press. 1-10
Goszczyska, E., Knol-Michaowska, K., & Petrykowska, A. (2016). How do pregnant
women justify smoking? A qualitative study with implications for nurses' and
midwives' anti-tobacco interventions. Journal Of Advanced Nursing, 72(7), 1567-
1578. doi:10.1111/jan.12949
Griffin, E. A., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. G. (2015). A first look at communication
theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
N/A. (2016). Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products. Retrieved October 03, 2016,
from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/cigarettes-other-
tobacco-products
Law, L., Jerome, C., & Ting, S. (2013). Cognitive dissonance in dealing with plagiarism
in academic writing. Retrieved October 28, 2016, from
http://www.sciencedirect.com.bjdgm.cn/science/article/pii/S1877042813036793
Mills, J., & Harmon-Jones, E. (1999). Cognitive dissonance: Progress on a pivotal
theory in social psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
109-113
McLeod, S. (2008). Cognitive Dissonance. Retrieved October 03, 2016, from
http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html