Disequlibrium - Sometimes confused with cognitive dissonance; the feeling of psychological discomfort produced by the combined presence of two thoughts that do not follow from one another.
 
    Festinger (1954) proposed that people will say or do almost anything to reduce that discomfort. The elegance of the theory of cognitive dissonance has inspired psychologists over the past four decades. To this day, cognitive dissonance is one of the most widely accepted psychological theories.