'Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Racism'

'Since the discipline of kindly psychological science first began its probe into the phenomenon of racism and harm, a number of large theories throw away been constructed in an attempt to efficaciously abstractize prepossession and provide suppositional cortical potential into the motley slipway in which we as a society, idiosyncratics, and psychologists argon to religious service change this level-headed global issue. such(prenominal) social psychological theories include: autocratic Personality Theory, The foiling Aggression Hypothesis, Realist appointment opening, Social indistinguishability Theory, Social skill theory, Social light and cognitive randomness theory. Each of these theories has provided abstractive insight into confused fundamental factors that be germane(predicate) to the formulation, maintenance, and side of prejudice. However, of all the social psychological theories that have attempted to in effect conceptualize prejudice and in so do ing develop ways of reducing its grossly harmful effect on the individual and society, Festingers (1957) theory of Cognitive Dissonance seems wholeness of the most relevant to the clinical applications of working(a) with racial individuals, originally because the theory provides clinicians with both(prenominal) significant conceptual and practical insight into twain of the base psychological elements that ar most relevant to the care for of fate clients change their racist or harmful viewpoints in treatment, namely the relational process that exists between an individuals experiences and the behavioural consequences that follow as a result. \nThe theory of cognitive dissonance, gibe to Festinger (1957), postulates that pairs of cognitions can be either tie in or mis tie in to one another. If ii cognitions are related to one another, they are considered then to be either amenable or dissonant. For two cognitions to be harmonized one essential follow now from the other; they are considered dissonant if the contrary of one cognition follows from the other....'