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Research shows that justifications give people the impression that they made a careful decision. In the face of temptation (problematic desires), we need to dispute rationally our distorted reasoning and the judgments that follow. After all, it takes only a single moment of weakness during a high-risk situation for a recovering addict to reconsider drug use and relapse.

Addiction and Cognition

A smoker, for example, who knows that smoking causes cancer, experiences cognitive dissonance if she continues to smoke. But that is difficult, so most smokers convince themselves that the links between smoking and lung cancer are not https://ecosoberhouse.com/ quite as strong as doctors claim (modify belief, or avoid the information). In the context of dieting, a person who intends to lose weight has dissonance because of his conflicting strong desires for fattening foods and to lose weight.

• The study identifies information overload as a critical factor contributing to cognitive dissonance, leading to discontinuous usage intentions among platform users.
• For example, long-term cannabis users have impaired learning, retention, and retrieval of dictated words, and both long-term and short-term users show deficits in – time estimation (Solowij et al., 2002), although how long these deficits persist is not yet known.
• Subjects were placed in either a dissonance- based eating disorder program or a more traditional education intervention, (in which they received educational materials).
• Luqman et al. [33] verified the fatigue psychology of Facebook users who stop using it and introduced the effect of technical stress.

Treatment strategies in the relapse prevention

The factor loading ranges from −1 to 1, and its square represents the percentage of variation that the factor can explain. In research, a threshold of 0.7 is commonly used as the standard, with values greater than this being acceptable [88]. Another method used in this study to test cognitive dissonance and addiction composite validity is the Average Variance Extracted (AVE), which represents the proportion of the observed variable values that the latent variable can measure. AVE is used to evaluate the reliability and discriminant validity and is considered good when its value exceeds 0.5 [88].

How Does Cognitive Dissonance Affect Behavior?

Two commonly used methods for testing internal consistency reliability are Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient (CA) and Construct reliability (CR). This study used Cronbach’s α coefficient to measure the consistency of the questionnaire as a pre-test reliability measure. The α coefficient ranges from 0 to 1, with a value greater than 0.7 indicating that it is trustworthy and a value greater than 0.9 representing very high trustworthiness. The composite reliability value represents the internal consistency of the construct indicators, and a value of 0.7 is acceptable [86], with a recommended value of 0.6 or higher [87]. Factor loading analysis measures the correlation between individual variables and factors.

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF ACUTE DRUG ADMINISTRATION

Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds two related but contradictory cognitions, or thoughts. The human brain continues to develop and consolidate important neural pathways from the prenatal period through adolescence. Throughout these years, the brain is highly malleable, and drug-induced alterations of neural plasticity may deflect the normal course of brain maturation. Patients are taught to identify NATs by recording their thoughts as they occur using self-monitoring and to generate alternative responses using the Socratic dialogue. The patient is encouraged to respond to these automatic thoughts using a variety of verbal responses, that is different from already established problem behaviours.

Theoretical foundations and key psychological constructs

• Research shows that justifications give people the impression that they made a careful decision.
• When faced with two similar choices, we are often left with feelings of dissonance because both options are equally appealing.
• To live an authentic life, you need to be able to recognize when you’re compensating for incongruence.
• As the relationship progresses, challenges may arise, highlighting the differences that were overlooked in the beginning.
• “It depends on the immediacy of the situation and whether or not there’s any way to resolve it, but sometimes, new information can lead to action,” says Dr. Prewitt.