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Cognitive dissonance: recipe for totalitarianism - Cognitive dissonance theory, published by Psychologist Leon Festinger in 1957, is the awareness that two or more beliefs (cognitions) that we hold are contradictory. "Awareness that two cognitions are dissonant, or that our cognitions and our behavior are contradictory, is sufficient to motivate us to reduce the discrepancy," wrote Spencer Rathaus in Psychology, Fourth Edition. Governments in particular, with the aid of the dominant news media, intend to control public perceptions and behaviors by incessantly employing scenarios which create cognitive dissonance among the masses. This is the the recipe for totalitarianism. According to the work of Festinger and others, if you present people with a concept that contains properties that are in conflict with one another, in order to restore balance, people have a tendency ignore the discrepancy, then sweep it under the rug.