The Relationship between Arousal and Cognitive Dissonance Reduction with Mental Health of Urmia University Students

In many situations, there are a significant gap between what we feel inside (positive or negative reactions to an object or subject) and what we have found out, and In fact, we experience a kind of cognitive dissonance, an unpleasant situation on sometime when we know we have conflicting attitudes and our behavior or attitudes are incompatible with each other somehow. In different cognitive states, individuals apply diverse strategies which can affect their well-being and mental health. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between arousal and reduction of dissonance and mental health. Accordingly, the following hypotheses were formulated and tested: 1. The components of arousal and reduction of dissonance and mental health are related. 2. Components of arousal and reduction of dissonance significantly predict mental health. The study comprised 120 female undergraduate students in Urmia University, Urmia, Iran in 2010-2011 academic year who were selected via simple random sampling. In order to gather data, Harman Jones' Arousal and Cognitive reduction questionnaire validated by Saffarinia (2011) as well as 25 Symptom checklist (SCL-25) were utilized. The results suggested that there was a significant correlation between arousal and cognitive dissonance reduction with mental health. Furthermore, the final results demonstrated that arousal and cognitive dissonance reduction could predict and explain 21/2 of variations associated with mental health. The findings of this study indicated that increased mental health will reduce cognitive dissonance and increased arousal will bring about enhanced amount of cognitive dissonance. This pattern can explain the amount of cognitive dissonance across different situations.