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Cognitive Dissonance

I just got an email from a friend with the following quote. I'm going to leave the things she bolded as-is.

"Let us consider persons at one extreme end of the range of tolerance for dissonance, that is, persons for whom dissonance is especially painful. One might expect that in such extreme instances a person would act so as to avoid the occurrence of dissonance. Thus, for example, he would undoubtedly have experienced the unpleasantness that exists following a decision since there is almost always dissonance. If such a person, for whom dissonance is extremely painful, attempts to avoid the occurrence of dissonance, one would expect to observe that he tried to avoid making decisions or even becomes incapable of making decisions. At this extreme, of course, it becomes a pathological affair...One would also expect that such a person would react very vigorously to the introduction of dissonance into his cognition. This must follow if, indeed, the inability to make decisions is a reaction to fear of dissonance. There is at least one kind of situation where a person cannot avoid dissonance unless he makes an absolute recluse out of himself. That is, occasionally people discuss things, have disagreements, and voice their disagreements. Since the knowledge that someone like oneself holds one opinion is dissonant with holding a contrary opinion, a person for whom dissonance is extremely unpleasant would be expected to react very vigorously to the expression of disagreement from others. He might argue vigorously, be dogmatic, be stubborn, and the like. This syndrome of inability to make decisions, of being very 'decided' and 'one-sided' about issues, and of reacting vigorously in the face of disagreement from others, is one which would be consistent with an interpretation that the person has such low tolerance for dissonance that he has learned to react in anticipation of it...There are other, milder ways of reacting in anticipation of dissonance in order to avoid it. There are persons who, in avoiding post-decision dissonance, make decisions without making them. This can be done sometimes by assuming a passive role with respect to the environment so that, at least in some instances, decisions get made because the ground, so to speak, has moved under one's feet. Thus the decision is made but the person is not responsible for it...such avoidance of dissonance should exist only for persons who have very low tolerance for dissonance coupled with relatively inefficient mechanisms for reducing dissonance once it occurs."

From A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance by Leon Festinger.

I don't know anyone like that. That sounds completely unusual.