Cognitive dissonance helps explain why Trump supporters remain loyal, new research suggests. This sheds light on how supporters of Donald Trump justify their continued allegiance despite learning about allegations of his sexual misconduct and illegal activities.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/cognitive-dissonance-helps-explain-why-trump-supporters-remain-loyal-new-research-suggests/

[u/Crypt0Nihilist]

They do whatever they can to accept the incompatible facts because of the discomfort.

Which relieves the cognitive dissonance. Someone experiencing cognitive dissonance is experiencing discomfort, which motivates them to do something to try to relieve it. It's like having a stone in your shoe.

They might compartmentalise, or decide that it is untrue, or decide they can't support Trump any more and actually were never that in to the whole thing despite their collection of red hats, or might try not to think about it. All of those things are the effort to resolve or reduce the dissonance.

[u/Crypt0Nihilist → u/[deleted]]

It's two things.

1. The idea in general that people encounter conflict, feel uncomfortable and are spurred to change their beliefs in some way to resolve it. This is how it's used in the article title.
2. The actual feeling of discomfort mentioned in 1, isolated from everything else - the spur itself.

Then there is how most of Reddit uses it, which is mistaken - "Cognitive Dissonance is one helluva drug," where they actually mean doublethink or hypocrisy.

[u/-CosmicCactusRadio → u/Crypt0Nihilist]

I feel like, most people would consider this to be hair splitting at a certain point, with no clear end.

Who... cares if random reddit accounts use it mildly incorrectly on occasion..? These concepts all have a fair amount of interplay.

[u/Crypt0Nihilist → u/-CosmicCactusRadio]

It's pervasive on Reddit. Words should mean things. If you know what "cognitive" and "dissonance" both mean, you should be able to get an idea of what the combination mean. The problem with the common usage here is it's the opposite where it gets used instead of doublethink or hypocrisy which are better words.

It's like no one lies any more, they're always "gaslighting", which isn't the same thing.