In psychology, cognitive dissonance is a phenomenon where people unknowingly or subconsciously hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions (mental processes). Being confronted by situations that create this dissonance or highlight these inconsistencies can cause stress (discomfort) and motivates change in their thoughts or actions to reduce this dissonance. Persons who experience internal inconsistency tend to become psychologically uncomfortable and are motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance in several ways, such as: rationalization (justifying the behavior), using a just-world fallacy, using selective perception (ignoring some info), or avoiding information (resulting in confirmation bias).