Cognitive dissonance was first introduced as a theory in 1957 by Dr. Leo Festinger, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. A simplistic definition of cognitive dissonance can be stated as any situation wherein two relevant beliefs, opinions, or information held by an individual are fundamentally opposed (source 9). Usually, this involves a behavior, decision or choice that is incongruent to currently held beliefs. According to the theory, this creates a state of psychological distress (cognitive dissonance arousal) in an individual. See illustration of dissonance arousal.

Based on previous studies it is known that humans strive for a state of consistency (consonance) in their thoughts and actions. For example, a belief in the value of education will cause parents to save money for their child's college tuition. This is a consistent pattern of a belief inducing a logical behavior. However, if the parents of the child decide to take money out of the college fund to buy a new car, they may feel what Festinger coined cognitive dissonance.

An example of cognitive dissonance often cited in the literature is that of smokers. Smokers know they are involved in unhealthy behavior but they continue to smoke. This creates cognitive dissonance. To reduce this dissonance, the smoker has two choices, to change his behavior (quit smoking) or to change his cognitive dissonance to cognitive consonance through techniques such as rationalizing (I am going to die anyway) or avoidance (simply does not pay attention to warnings) or by obtaining new information to refute the distressing information (some people who live to 100 are smokers).

This author will attempt to show a link between advertising messages and cognitive dissonance. Advertising messages sometimes create a state of cognitive dissonance in the viewer, either intentionally or unknowingly. This powerful motivator then achieves two goals for the advertiser: the viewer remembers the ad and the viewer takes action to reduce the state of dissonance that was created by the ad. Hopefully, this action takes the form of product purchase.

This paper will explore several ads in a later section and analyze the link between advertising messages and cognitive dissonance and how advertisers use this technique to sell products. It is the author's contention that advertisers can produce more effective ads if they understand the dynamics of cognitive dissonance and how these principles can be applied to advertising message development and execution.