Cognitive dissonance is the motivational mechanism that underlies the reluctance to admit mistakes or accept scientific findings even when those findings can save our lives. The cognitive dissonance ...

In 1934, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake hit eastern India, killing thousands and devastating several cities. Curiously, in areas that were spared the worst destruction, stories soon spread that an even ...

Members of Heaven’s Gate, a religious cult, believed that as the Hale-Bopp comet passed by Earth in 1997, a spaceship would be traveling in its wake—ready to take true believers aboard. Several ...

Jocelyn Solis-Moreira is a New York-based science journalist whose work has appeared in Health, Live Science, and Discover Magazine, among other publications. She holds a master's degree in psychology ...

Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when a person simultaneously holds two cognitions, thoughts or beliefs that are psychologically inconsistent with a person’s behavior. Cognitive ...

Cognitive dissonance, or having conflicting attitudes, beliefs and behaviors, is affecting how people respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a recent article for The Atlantic, social scientists Elliot ...

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Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when a person simultaneously holds two cognitions, thoughts or beliefs that are psychologically inconsistent with a person’s behavior. Cognitive ...

A police officer once told me that most crimes are solved because the criminal mind, as he put it, was “stuck on stupid.” At Stanford back in the late ’50s, Leon Festinger developed theories and tests ...

This is the 14th article in the Behavioral Finance and Macroeconomics series exploring the effect behavior has on markets and the economy as a whole and how advisors who understand this relationship ...