Cognitive dissonance: why do we feel uneasy when our actions contradict our beliefs?

04 Eyl 08:00

I've been reading a bit about cognitive dissonance lately and I'm curious how it actually works in everyday life. Like, when someone keeps doing something they know is bad for them — smoking, procrastinating, staying in a draining job — is that just stubbornness or is there some deeper mental mechanism keeping them stuck? How does the brain handle the gap between what we believe and what we do? Would love a simple breakdown of the concept and maybe why it's so hard to resolve.