Why do we lie to ourselves?

(Cognitive Dissonance Explained with Humour and Insight)

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25 June 2025

"Well, isn't that convenient - to blame our brain for something that we do?" - I grim into the mirror while brushing my teeth. This thought makes no sense at a surface level, our brains are not separated from ourselves, we ARE our brain, our brain is US.

But this is exactly what we must do: we must separate our sense of self from the biological function of our brain in order to figure out how it can be that we lie to ourselves ALL THE TIME, and it's almost entirely undetectable to us.

In order to explain how our brain can be so veiled from us, we’re going to do something unusual. IMAGINE you are able to humanely carve your brain out of your skull, and put it on a table, naked, afraid, still functioning somehow? This is an unbelievable achievement. Look how amazing you are. Somebody should give you a Nobel prize for this pretend action!

The physical reality of our brain is pretty simple - it’s an organ made out of 60% fat, the rest is water, proteins, carbohydrate and salts. That’s not the interesting part though, that’s just flesh. The interesting part is the human psychology that results from having this flesh. There’s a lot that our brain is doing that is under the hood, barely controllable, if at all, and it’s... kind of ruining our lives. Why? How? Is this witchcraft or self-deception? Can we unruin our lives? All valid questions. And to try to answer them - let’s dive into the theory of cognitive dissonance, and dude, once you understand what’s happening, once you can see your own cog dis with a naked eye, you’ll have a choice, you can either forget what I said and go on with your life, or you can unlock the potential to become a supreme human being with a fleshy brain that is revealed to you and is one with you.

Watch: How cognitive dissonance is ruining our lives!

What is Cognitive Dissonance?

Everything that we know about ourselves, our behaviour and our surroundings is called “cognition”. This is according to Prof. Leon Festinger's theory, coined by him "The theory of cognitive dissonance".

Once in a while one cognition contradicts another, and our minds freak out, it’s as if our minds are losing their minds, and we enter a state of cognitive dissonance.

It was only a minute ago that Cognition A was just vibing, minding her own business. All the sudden Cognition B rolls up, trying to dis Cognition A, who's like "You wanna fight? You wanna get into it?" Our minds would be toxic masculinity, if it wasn't for our minds being absolutely incapable of living in psychological conflict. Cognition B immediately goes "Nah dog" and becomes smaller, isolated, practically non-existent. But more on that later, in a less metaphorical setting.

What I's trying to say is that dissonance is the opposite of consonance, and consonance is where our brain wants to be, that’s what it’s striving for. Our brain is the responsible adult, catching the cognitions and forcing them to solve it. Maybe in a safe space circle, maybe in the fighting ring to the death, maybe in a dance-off. It's probably a dance-off.

But the thing is - the two dissonant cognitions can only be in internal contradiction if one cognition is logically connected to the other. If Cognition A and Cognition B are from different cities - they will never meat, and dissonance will not occur.

If the cognitions are in the same knowledge sphere, there are 4 full-proof ways to enter the state of dissonance*:

1. Belief disconfirmation ("world-shattering" dissonance)

2. Induced compliance ("going-against-my-attitudes" dissonance)

3. Decision making ("post-decision" dissonance)

4. Effort justification ("disappointment" dissonance)

*If you would like to know more about how our brain reduces cognitive dissonance, you can check out this video.

The Brain as a Slimy Roommate

It’s a popular belief that the only way to solve cognitive dissonance is by adjusting one’s actions to comport with one’s belief. But that’s not actually true. I wish it was true. Can you imagine a world where people become accountable for their shitty beliefs and actions by quitting being shitty because that’s the only way to stop feeling shitty!? But it’s not true.

There are 3 ways to reduce cog dis:

1. By changing our mind to comport with our action — I’m not doing a bad thing.

2. By changing our action to comport with our beliefs — I’m doing a bad thing and I should stop.

3. By minimising the importance of the fact that our beliefs don’t match our actions — I’m doing a bad thing but meh it’s whatever.

For these reasons, poking at the cognitive dissonance might backfire, and I think I can make the claim that it often does. Since there are 3 cognitive dissonance reduction strategies, the feels might turn to the simplest one, which is of course - dismiss the problem as not important enough to deal with.

There are also specific strategies to achieve that sweet sweet passifying. For instance, in case you made a bad decision and it feels really bad, your brain can use something called “post-decision dissonance effect”. One can post-rationalise the decision they took to be more desirable and the decision they rejected less desirable, thus boosting their confidence in their decision, reducing cognitive dissonance.

How we cope with cognitive dissonance: specific strategies

This is how our slimy, naked, afraid brain reaches consonance. I know I'm being incredibly harsh on our brains, but listen: it DESERVES it! It lies to us CONSTANTLY just so that it doesn't have to make bigger effort to reduce the conscience bloat that is cog dis. We've imagined our brain is out of our skull - sitting on a table, making it easier to examine. Now imagine that your brain is a random guy that you just met. With that in mind - see if this dissonance reducing strategy example seems legitimate to you:

To reduce cognitive dissonance, the random guy, I mean brain, is seeking social support. One needs to talk to people for that. I don’t personally get to talk to actual people that much, such is the blight of a youtuber.

Once we found our social support, our brain gets comfortable in the consonance by the mechanism of diffusion of responsibility.

This plays a crucial role in the reduction of cognitive dissonance. Knowing that you’re acting just like everybody else, while recognising that that action is inconsistent with your general attitudes, can reduce the dissonance. This means that we can seek justification for acts we would find IMMORAL from those who do it too, reassuring ourselves to continue doing so, and even deciding - if everyone does it, surely it can't be immoral! When we're fully supported in our immoral behaviour, we absolutely don’t feel obliged to change said immoral behaviour. This reduction strategy is even more effective when it comes from something called an "in-group": a group of peers with whom you have defining characteristics in common: species, race, gender, belonging to a specific country, belonging to a football club, political affiliation, and so on.

Our random guy (brain) doesn't stop there: diffusion of responsibility achieves minimization of the problematic cognition. Sometimes it happens with the uttering of a single sentence:

There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.

This sentence makes it impossible to care about our behaviour in a way that moves us to behavioural change, since it deems any change inconsequential. We can't change EVERYTHING, so we might as well change NOTHING.

This random guy is pretty slimy, isn't he? Why can't he just take responsibility for his own beliefs and actions? True behavioral psychology test case.

And that's how cognitive dissonance is RUINING OUR LIVES.

Not the cog dis itself, but our way of dealing with it. Slimy strategies, easiest way out, self-lying - directly and by omission. I'm tempted to propose a solution in this article, but I might trigger cognitive dissonance in you, dear reader. One thing is for sure - our entire society would benefit greatly if we lied to ourselves a little less.

I go deeper (and funnier) into the concept of cognitive dissonance here.

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