What Is Cognitive Dissonance?

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We read reviews after the fact not to gather information, but to validate our personal experiences.

Post-decision doubt drives us to seek reassurance and reduce inner conflict.

Reviews help us compare reactions and see where our opinions fit socially.

​​​​After a recent negative car rental experience, I found myself going down a familiar rabbit hole, scrolling through online reviews of the company. The experience was over, and yet, there I was, reading complaint after complaint from strangers on the internet.

But I’m not the only one who does this. Why do we look up reviews for a hotel we’ve already stayed at, a movie we’ve watched, clothes we’ve bought, or even a doctor we’ve already visited? If we’re no longer gathering information to guide our decision-making, what are we actually looking for?

At first glance, it all seems pointless. But this habit is surprisingly common, and it reveals something important about how we interpret our experiences, especially the disappointing ones.

Making Sense of Our Experiences

People often experience a kind of inner conflict after making a decision. This can be something small, like ordering from a restaurant menu or buying a book, to something far more significant, like choosing a career path, voting in an election, or even choosing a life partner.

Part of what’s happening here is known as post-decision dissonance. This refers to the psychological discomfort we can feel after choosing between multiple options (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 2019). Once a decision is made, the alternatives don’t simply disappear. Instead, they hover in the background, along with the unsettling thought that one of them might have been better. That discomfort is what sends us searching.

In everyday language, we often call this “buyer’s remorse.” But the feeling isn’t limited to purchases. It can arise anytime we commit to one path and close off others.

After my frustrating car rental experience, I wasn’t looking for information to help me decide. That moment had passed. Instead, I was trying to make sense of what had already happened, and to reassure myself that I hadn’t simply made a poor choice. Reading negative reviews from others who had similar experiences helped shift the narrative: maybe the problem wasn’t just me. Maybe the car rental company really was that awful.

Once we’ve had an experience, good or bad, we’re no longer gathering information. We’re managing how we feel about it.

Seeking Validation and Social Proof

We want to feel that we’ve made good choices, or at least had the “right” experience. For instance, did others enjoy the TV show too? Or did they also have a terrible time at that same dentist?

After we make a decision, we often feel a subtle need for confirmation. Reading reviews can ease that tension, especially when others agree with us.

At the same time, we look for what psychologists call social proof. This is our tendency to use other people’s reactions as a guide to our own to reflect the “correct” behavior for any given situation (Sanak-Kosmowska, 2021). Reviews are essentially crowdsourced opinions, and even after the fact, we use them to calibrate our responses and locate ourselves within a shared consensus. We wonder things like: Did I miss something? Was it really that bad? Am I the only one who hated, or loved, it? We don’t just want to have an opinion; we also want to know where our opinion fits in with the views of others.

Confirmation bias also plays a role. We tend to seek out and favor information that aligns with what we already believe or desire (Suzuki & Yamamoto, 2021). In practice, that means we cherry-pick agreement, clicking on reviews that reinforce our existing views, looking for praise if we liked the experience, or criticism if we didn’t.

What Is Cognitive Dissonance?

Take our Do You Still Believe These Myths About The Mind?

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When we scroll through reviews after the fact, we’re not being especially rational. We’re not gathering new information or making better decisions. We’re trying to settle something internally. Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias are both at play, nudging us to resolve that lingering sense of doubt and to feel more certain about what we experienced. In other words, we’re not looking for facts, we’re looking for reassurance.

We want to know that we weren’t wrong, that our reaction made sense, that other people saw what we saw, too, or felt what we felt. And if they didn’t, we want to understand why.

In the end, this isn’t really about reviews at all. It’s about seeking validation, identity, and having a kind of narrative closure for our experiences.

Harmon-Jones, E., & Mills, J. (2019). An introduction to cognitive dissonance theory and an overview of current perspectives on the theory. Cognitive Dissonance: Reexamining a Pivotal Theory in Psychology (2nd Ed.)., 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000135-001

Sanak-Kosmowska, K. (2021). Evaluating social media marketing: Social proof and online buyer behaviour. Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003128052

Suzuki, M., & Yamamoto, Y. (2021). Characterizing the influence of confirmation bias on web search behavior. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 771948. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.771948

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