Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance, the mental discomfort experienced when holding conflicting beliefs or behaviors, is a core area of psychological research now being explored through the lens of large language models (LLMs). Current research focuses on quantifying dissonance using belief embeddings derived from large datasets and evaluating LLMs' ability to both detect and potentially mitigate dissonance in human communication and decision-making. This work has implications for understanding human cognition, improving the reliability and safety of AI systems, and developing tools to combat misinformation.