COGNITIVE-DISSONANCE AND SOCIAL-CHANGE

When people behave immorally according to their own standards, they feel bad. Rational people may therefore engage in less of an immoral activity than would be in their material self-interest. Despite this fact, I show that increasing people's distaste for being immoral can increase the level of immoral activities. This can happen because of the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance: people will feel pressure to convince themselves that immoral activities are in fact moral; if each person's beliefs affect the beliefs of others, then increasing the pain from being immoral may cause members of society to convince each other that immoral activities are morally okay, and society will engage in more of such activities.