Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Racism

Since the field of sociable psychology first began its probe into the phenomenon of racism and prejudice, a add of significant theories have been constructed in an attempt to effectively have a bun in the oven prejudice and provide suppositional insight into the various slipway in which we as a society, unmarrieds, and psychologists be to help mixture this sizable global issue. much(prenominal) social psychological theories acknowledge: Authoritarian Personality Theory, The licking Aggression Hypothesis, Realist Conflict theory, companionable Identity Theory, Social education theory, Social Cognition and cognitive racquet theory. Each of these theories has provided metaphysical insight into various inherent factors that are applicable to the formulation, maintenance, and normal of prejudice. However, of all the social psychological theories that have attempted to effectively conceptualize prejudice and in so doing develop shipway of reducing its grossly baneful e ffects on the individual and society, Festingers (1957) theory of Cognitive Dissonance seems angiotensin converting enzyme of the more or less relevant to the clinical applications of working with racialist individuals, primarily because the theory provides clinicians with dickens significant conceptual and practical(a) insight into two of the special psychological elements that are most relevant to the process of comp atomic number 53nt clients change their racist or prejudicial viewpoints in treatment, videlicet the relational process that exists in the midst of an individuals cognitions and the behavioral consequences that discover as a result. \nThe theory of cognitive dissonance, according to Festinger (1957), postulates that pairs of cognitions can be either related or unrelated to one another. If two cognitions are related to one another, they are considered then to be either harmonical or dissonant. For two cognitions to be consonant one must follow directly from the other; they are considered dissonant if the inverse of one cognition follows from the other....