POST-DECISION COGNITIVE DISSONANCE BY MOSES OCHONU

Post-decision dissonance. It is a condition in psychology in which people regret a decision or worry that the decision they took may not be the right one and continue to entertain or express doubts about the decision and to seek validation from people about the rightness of that decision even as the doubts persist.

Post-decision cognitive dissonance is a related condition in which people not only worry that they may have been wrong or that their decision is being challenged by unfolding events but also begin to act and say things things contrary to that worry in order to mask and compensate for the feeling that their decision may have been wrong.

A variant of post-decision cognitive dissonance entails not only acting contrary to the worry that you may have been wrong, in order to save face, but also, 1) lashing out at those who took the opposite decision so that they don't tell you "we told you so," and 2) irrationally defending the decision while inwardly praying that it is eventually vindicated, proved right.