Cognitive Dissonance

… is the experience of having cognitions that conflict amongst each other. Some stalemate of agency might result from this, and, above all, an effort to produce new thoughts that may take away the inner tensions.
One has to live on though, and to diminish the internal turmoil resulting from the dissonance one may adopt further cognitions to water it down, or “choose” to ignore certain of one’s cognitions.
This, on further analysis, is the core of tragedy.

Aristotle. n.d. (1965). On the Art of Poetry. Classical Literary Criticism. Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books.
Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Festinger, Leon (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg. 1992. “The Psychology of Aristotelian Tragedy.” In Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, edited by Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, 1–22. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.