A review of cognitive dissonance in economics 2019

Cognitive dissonance, since Festinger (1957) compared the human necessity to achieve cognitive consistency to that of eating, has developed into a phenomenon that is both ubiquitous and largely ignored by the business community despite continuous efforts of cognitive dissonance theorists to demonstrate its importance. While other behavioural theories like prospect theory, developed by Kahneman and Tyversky (1979) are much more widely accepted, the inherent complexity of cognitive dissonance paired with continuous extensions of the theory make its applicability less intuitive. Precisely for this reason, I have decided to highlight the most relevant factors of cognitive dissonance in the field of economics and expressed them in such a way to increase its accessibility to a wider audience.