PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Cognitive Dissonance”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

590 records · Page 33Linked to original sources
PubMed1999

Dissonance in the dining room: a study of social interaction in a special care unit.

This study is a multi-method, intrinsic case study of social interaction in a special care unit (SCU) for cognitively impaired older persons. It is found that residents are capable of developing a range of social bonds even though the SCU in question is found to have several organizational and physical factors that unwittingly thwart its therapeutic potential. These limitations are illuminated by consideration of the congruence between the conceptualization of the dining areas held by staff and that held by residents as revealed through the process of negotiation occurring in social interaction. The study adopts an environment-behavior perspective following the theoretical development of Lawton (1986) and merges it with the qualitative approach to place pursued by Goffman (1961) and Gubrium (1978). It is suggested that a focus on place as a unit of analysis offers potential for bridging Quality of Life with the cognitively impaired.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed2001

Listen to my words, give meaning to my sorrow: a study in cognitive constructs in middle-age bereaved widows.

This research examined how women widowed in midlife give meaning to the experience of loss in the process of grief resolution following the first year of bereavement. Qualitative data were gathered from women between the ages of 51 and 56 through interviews guided by critical reflection. Six themes emerged in the meaning-making process: emotional dissonance, identification of previously held assumptions, reflections on current life experiences-testing the assumptions, identification of self as survivor, changes in sense of self and ways of knowing, and changes in perspectives. Findings indicated that the crisis of loss challenged basic assumptions about self, relationships, and life options and initiated a need to find new perspectives that would incorporate loss and provide for meaningful life direction. Perspective transformation began to occur after the first year following loss, when the initial crisis of survival and anguish had abated, and was most effectively achieved several years after the death. Implications are presented for the bereaved, practitioners who assist the bereaved, adult educators, and researchers.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2005

Experiencing release: sex environments and escapism for HIV-positive men who have sex with men.

There are nonsexual reasons that may motivate people to seek out sexual activity with others. Some men who have sex with men may seek out sex environments to engage in sexual behavior. Among the nonsexual reasons that exist for men who have sex with men is a desire to escape from distressing thoughts and feelings. The amplified sexuality and other unique characteristics of sex environments allow men to have more intense emotional experiences around sex. Using the cognitive escape model as a theoretical foundation, this analysis focuses on the emotional vulnerability that some of the men who visit these venues may be avoiding and how their experiences at these venues might act as releasing mechanisms to alleviate dissonant thoughts and feelings. Implications for public health services and future research are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Emotion processing of major, minor, and dissonant chords: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Musicians and nonmusicians listened to major, minor, and dissonant musical chords while their BOLD brain responses were registered with functional magnetic resonance imaging. In both groups of listeners, minor and dissonant chords, compared with major chords, elicited enhanced responses in several brain areas, including the amygdala, retrosplenial cortex, brain stem, and cerebellum, during passive listening but not during memorization of the chords. The results indicate that (1) neural processing in emotion-related brain areas is activated even by single chords, (2) emotion processing is enhanced in the absence of cognitive requirements, and (3) musicians and nonmusicians do not differ in their neural responses to single musical chords during passive listening.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2000

Faculty Behavior and Other Key Factors in Student Adjustment to Medical School.

Physicians today need a number of non-cognitive attributes and skills in order to be maximally effective. However, these attributes and skills, such as caring and respect for others, self-awareness, and communication skills, are not always addressed in medical education. Many would-be physicians find that medical school is a grueling experience characterized by chronic stress, the need to recognize one's strengths and limitations, and dissonance between their own values and beliefs and those of the school. The faculty and administrators at one medical school developed a special extra-curricular program to render their undergraduate program more humanistic in supporting student socialization and adjustment. The program featured intentionally structured, faculty-facilitated small groups of first-year students.This study used focus group interviews to explore student perceptions of the effectiveness of the "Personal, Professional, and Leadership Development Program" and thereby to gain insight into the phenomena that affect the development of medical students as future health care providers. Findings showed that students described social support and academic support from peers and faculty as contributing to their adjustment. The most compelling factor in student adjustment was faculty behavior and attitudes. Implications for adult learning and humanistic education practices are described.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1996

Perception of musical tension in short chord sequences: the influence of harmonic function, sensory dissonance, horizontal motion, and musical training.

This study investigates the effect of four variables (tonal hierarchies, sensory chordal consonance, horizontal motion, and musical training) on perceived musical tension. Participants were asked to evaluate the tension created by a chord X in sequences of three chords [C major-->X-->C major] in a C major context key. The X chords could be major or minor triads major-minor seventh, or minor seventh chords built on the 12 notes of the chromatic scale. The data were compared with Krumhansl's (1990) harmonic hierarchy and with predictions of Lerdahl's (1988) cognitive theory, Hutchinson and Knopoff's (1978) and Parncutt's (1989) sensory-psychoacoustical theories, and the model of horizontal motion defined in the paper. As a main outcome, it appears that judgments of tension arose from a convergence of several cognitive and psychoacoustics influences, whose relative importance varies, depending on musical training.

Auditory Perception↗
PubMed2003

Why are smiles contagious? An fMRI study of the interaction between perception of facial affect and facial movements.

In human communication there is often a close relationship between the perception of an emotionally expressive face and the facial response of the viewer himself. Whereas perception and generation of facial expressions have been studied separately with functional imaging methods, no studies exist on their interaction. We combined the presentation of emotionally expressive faces with the instruction to react with facial movements predetermined and assigned. fMRI was used in an event related design to examine healthy subjects while they regarded happy, sad, or neutral faces and were instructed to simultaneously move the corners of their mouths either (a). upwards or (b). downwards, or (c). to refrain from movement. The subjects' facial movements were recorded with an MR-compatible video camera. Movement latencies were shortened in congruent situations (e.g. the presentation of a happy face and combined with upward movements) and delayed in non-congruent situations. Dissonant more than congruent stimuli activated the inferior prefrontal cortex and the somatomotor cortex bilaterally. The congruent condition, in particular when seeing a happy face, activated the medial basotemporal lobes (hippocampus, amygdala, parahippocampal region). We hypothesize that this region facilitates congruent facial movements when an emotionally expressive face is perceived and that it is part of a system for non-volitional emotional facial movements.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Children's implicit knowledge of harmony in Western music.

Three experiments examined children's knowledge of harmony in Western music. The children heard a series of chords followed by a final, target chord. In Experiment 1, French 6- and 11-year-olds judged whether the target was sung with the vowel /i/ or /u/. In Experiment 2, Australian 8- and 11-year-olds judged whether the target was played on a piano or a trumpet. In Experiment 3, Canadian 8- and 11-year-olds judged whether the target sounded good (i.e. consonant) or bad (dissonant). The target was either the most stable chord in the established musical key (i.e. the tonic, based on do, the first note of the scale) or a less stable chord. Performance was faster (Experiments 1, 2 and 3) and more accurate (Experiment 3) when the target was the tonic chord. The findings confirm that children have implicit knowledge of syntactic functions that typify Western harmony.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2006

Attitudes and persuasion.

Study of attitudes and persuasion remains a defining characteristic of contemporary social psychology. This review outlines recent advances, with emphasis on the relevance of today's work for perennial issues. We reiterate the distinction between attitude formation and change, and show its relevance for persuasion. Single- and dual-process models are discussed, as are current views on dissonance theory. Majority and minority influence are scrutinized, with special emphasis on integrative theoretical innovations. Attitude strength is considered, and its relevance to ambivalence and resistance documented. Affect, mood, and emotion effects are reviewed, especially as they pertain to fear arousal and (un)certainty. Finally, we discuss attitude-behavior consistency, perhaps the reason for our interest in attitudes in the first place, with emphasis on self-interest and the theory of planned behavior. Our review reflects the dynamism and the reach of the area, and suggests a sure and sometimes rapid accumulation of knowledge and understanding.

Affect↗
PubMed2000

Thinking about Russia: plausible pasts and probable futures.

This paper uses both correlational and experimental methods to explore the power of counterfactual cognitions about the past to constrain judgments about the future as well as policy preferences. Study 1 asked 47 specialists on the Soviet Union to assess both the plausibility of controversial counterfactuals and the probability of controversial conditional forecasts. The results reveal deep ideological schisms, with liberals much more likely than conservatives to believe that Stalinism was not inevitable, that the Cold War could have ended earlier, and that Gorbachev might have succeeded in democratizing the Soviet Union if he had been a better tactician, among others. Reactions to these counterfactuals proved to be highly predictive of positions that experts in early 1992 endorsed concerning the advisability of 'shock therapy', expanding NATO eastward, and economic aid to Russia. Study 2 manipulated the salience and plausibility of counterfactual scenarios concerning (a) why the Cold War ended as it did, and (b) how close the US and USSR came to nuclear war. Changes in the counterfactual scenarios that non-experts endorsed produced significant changes in their policy preferences in the direction suggested by the salient counterfactual. Experts, however, were unswayed, often generating counter-arguments against dissonant counterfactuals. Taken together, the studies show that assumptions about what happened in the missing control conditions of history are highly subjective, largely theory-driven and profoundly consequential.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Peoples' understandings of a primary care-based mental health self-help clinic.

Self-help programmes are increasingly advocated as a means of managing mental health problems. This qualitative study explored patients' understandings of the use of a UK primary care-based self-help clinic (facilitated by a nurse). As part of a wider evaluation of the clinic, in-depth interviews were conducted with a purposive sub-sample of clinic users. Data indicate that people understand their problem as one of having lost an ability to cope, and that the ethos underlying the clinic is well matched to restore a sense of coping, by motivating patients to re-establish and retain control over their everyday lives. However, some patients experienced a sense of dissonance between prior expectations and actual use of the self-help clinic. Without prior familiarity with self-help, engaging the patient as the mechanism of change may be difficult. Some patients expected formal counselling and were influenced in this by their previous experience of services and discussions with the GP at the point of referral. It takes time and active engagement with self-help materials before patients become aware that they are a crucial mechanism of change. Patients may benefit from information and a referral process, which emphasises the centrality of self-efficacy and the patient as 'change agent' prior to referral.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2001

Neurobiological foundations for the theory of harmony in western tonal music.

Basic principles of the theory of harmony reflect physiological and anatomical properties of the auditory nervous system and related cognitive systems. This hypothesis is motivated by observations from several different disciplines, including ethnomusicology, developmental psychology, and animal behavior. Over the past several years, we and our colleagues have been investigating the vertical dimension of harmony from the perspective of neurobiology using physiological, psychoacoustic, and neurological methods. Properties of the auditory system that govern harmony perception include (1) the capacity of peripheral auditory neurons to encode temporal regularities in acoustic fine structure and (2) the differential tuning of many neurons throughout the auditory system to a narrow range of frequencies in the audible spectrum. Biologically determined limits on these properties constrain the range of notes used in music throughout the world and the way notes are combined to form intervals and chords in popular Western music. When a harmonic interval is played, neurons throughout the auditory system that are sensitive to one or more frequencies (partials) contained in the interval respond by firing action potentials. For consonant intervals, the fine timing of auditory nerve fiber responses contains strong representations of harmonically related pitches implied by the interval (e.g., Rameau's fundamental bass) in addition to the pitches of notes actually present in the interval. Moreover, all or most of the partials can be resolved by finely tuned neurons throughout the auditory system. By contrast, dissonant intervals evoke auditory nerve fiber activity that does not contain strong representations of constituent notes or related bass notes. Furthermore, many partials are too close together to be resolved. Consequently, they interfere with one another, cause coarse fluctuations in the firing of peripheral and central auditory neurons, and give rise to perception of roughness and dissonance. The effects of auditory cortex lesions on the perception of consonance, pitch, and roughness, combined with a critical reappraisal of published psychoacoustic data on the relationship between consonance and roughness, lead us to conclude that consonance is first and foremost a function of the pitch relationships among notes. Harmony in the vertical dimension is a positive phenomenon, not just a negative phenomenon that depends on the absence of roughness--a view currently held by many psychologists, musicologists, and physiologists.

Auditory Cortex↗
PubMed1999

Cortical brain dysfunction in early schizophrenia: secondary pathogenetic hierarchy of neuroplasticity, psychopathology and social impairment.

Schizophrenia has the quality of a 'top-down' disorder with perturbation of self, and malattuned appraisal of basic experience of the outside world, and of intentionality. There is dissonance between the faculties of consciousness. The neuronal cortical network displays distributed activation of the sensory cortices during perception, and retroactivation during recall. This multimodal organization is sensitive to aberrations of structure and informational content during the metabolically dynamic phases of expansion and pruning in childhood and adolescence. There is substantial evidence of deviant function of the cortical network in schizophrenia. This includes increased neuronal density, reduced prefrontal capacity for activation, impaired fronto-temporal interaction during language production, defect monitoring of inner speech, activation of secondary sensory cortices during hallucinations, reduced cortical and thalamic volume, reduced thalamic activation (filtering) and sensitization of dopaminergic modulation. As a hypothesis the cortical defects lead to secondary causation of abnormalities at the levels of neuroplasticity, symptomatology and social competence. Suggestions for empirical testing are presented for the hypothesis that neocortical defects are primary, thalamic defects secondary and dopaminergic aberrations tertiary in the schizophrenic process. This testing of hypotheses involves prospective studies of patient groups at various ages of onset, as well as comparison of neurobiological measures in remitting vs. treatment-resistant cases.

Cerebral Cortex↗