Autumn!

Autumn
Hello!

 Sorry I have been so absent recently.. I have been piled under Master's work and other commitments. Hope you are all well though! 

This is a very short post just to express how happy I am that we are now properly in autumn! Autumn and winter are my favourite times of the year, with winter being my favourite season. Now that the leaves are actually golden everywhere, the hot weather has settled down, and the clocks have gone back, it really feels like autumn!

I love the crisp nights and the cool days. Ah, it's starting to get chilly! I'm so happy we have left summer time.. I don't think I can deal with the heat and humidity for so long. 

I love the style trends too.. The beautiful coats, gloves and wooly hats! The golden spread of colour through the streets.. It's all so stunning. I like rain but in moderation. Wind and rain together are my pet peeve. Apart from that I love autumn! It's not super cold yet, so no gloves or hats.. but I can sense that this will change soon.
Took this photo of my gorgeous uni campus!

Do you like this time of year? Or are you sad that summer is over?

Hugs,
Ayesha xxx

Cognitive dissonance: difficulty making decisions?

Psychology
Hello people!

Do you ever find yourself having a little battle in your mind over the smallest or biggest decisions? For example, when you are out shopping and you know you shouldn't be buying 'those pair of shoes' but you can't convince yourself to let them go? What you are experiencing is known as 'cognitive dissonance'. 

Social psychologists have highlighted that humans like to have consistency between their beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. When these are out of balance, we are motivated to reduce the inconsistency. A Psychologist named Leon Festinger (1957) proposed cognitive dissonance theory. Cognitive dissonance occurs when our beliefs and attitudes are inconsistent with our behaviour, i.e. we do something that contradicts with what we believe in.

For example, a smoker may be constantly informed about the negative effects of smoking, yet they continue to smoke. This would create mental tension (cognitive dissonance) for the smoker, and they would be motivated to reduce this mental tension by modifying their attitudes to fit their perception of their behaviour.

This can be done by three different ways:
1.      Changing behaviour: the individual may stop smoking.
2.      Using rationalisations: “smoking isn’t that dangerous, the media just exaggerate it”.
3.      Adding a third cognition: “I’ll quit smoking at the end of this year”.

However, an individual may experience post-decisional dissonance, where they may feel they have made the wrong decision. This can be avoided by selective exposure to subsequent information. For example, a person who has quit smoking recently feels they should have continued smoking (for various reasons), they may indulge in information that elaborated the positive aspects of quitting, such as the beneficial impact on health, reduced chances of getting lung cancer, absence of the smell of smoke etc. 

So hopefully that will help explain why we often have a little battle in our heads when making a decision!

Lots of Social Psychology love,
Ayesha xxx