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Cognitive dissonance

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as the mental disturbance people feel when their beliefs and actions are inconsistent and contradictory, ultimately encouraging some change (often either in their beliefs or actions) to align better and reduce this dissonance. Relevant items of information include peoples' actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when an action or idea is psychologically inconsistent with the other, people do all in their power to change either so that they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.

In When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World (1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world. A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance. They tend to make changes to justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance (rationalization), believing that “people get what they deserve” (just-world fallacy), taking in specific information while rejecting or ignoring others (selective perception), or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance (confirmation bias). Festinger explains avoiding cognitive dissonance as, "Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."

Founder
Leon Festinger, born in 1919 in New York City, was an American social psychologist whose contributions to psychology include the cognitive dissonance theory, social comparison theory, and the proximity effect.

Festinger graduated from the City College of New York in 1939; he then received his PhD in Child Psychology from the University of Iowa. He was initially inspired to enter the field of psychology by Kurt Lewin, known as the “father of modern social psychology,” and his work in Gestalt psychology. Studying under Kurt Lewin for most of his academic career, Festinger returned to collaborate with Lewin at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a 2002 American Psychological Association article, Festinger is cited as the fifth most eminent psychologist of the 20th century, just after B.F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Bandura, respectively. Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory is still one of the most influential social theories in modern social psychology.

Throughout this research, Festinger noticed that people often like to stick to consistent habits and routines to maintain order within their lives. These habits may include everyday activities like preferring a specific seat during their daily commute or eating meals at consistent times. Any disturbance to this order can lead to mental unease, which may manifest in altered thought processes or beliefs. Festinger concluded that the sole means of alleviating this discomfort is by adjusting either their actions or beliefs to restore consistency.

Since his publication of A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in 1957, Festinger’s findings have helped to understand peoples’ personal biases, how people reframe situations in their heads to maintain a positive self-image, and why one may pursue certain behaviors that misalign with their judgments as they seek out or reject certain information.

Coping with the nuances of contradictory ideas or experiences is mentally stressful, as it requires energy and effort to sit with those seemingly opposite things that all seem true. Festinger argued that some people would inevitably resolve the dissonance by blindly believing whatever they wanted to believe.

Relations among cognitions
To function in the reality of society, human beings continually adjust the correspondence of their mental attitudes and personal actions; such continual adjustments, between cognition and action, result in one of three relationships with reality:
 * 1) Consonant relationship: A cognition or action consistent with the other, e.g., not wanting to become drunk when out for dinner and ordering water rather than wine
 * 2) Irrelevant relationship: A cognition or action unrelated to the other, e.g. not wanting to become drunk when out and wearing a shirt
 * 3) Dissonant relationship: A cognition or action inconsistent with the other, e.g. not wanting to become drunk when out, but then drinking more wine anyway

Magnitude of dissonance
The term "magnitude of dissonance" refers to the level of discomfort caused to the person. This can be caused by the relationship between two different internal beliefs, or an action that is incompatible with the beliefs of the person. Two factors determine the degree of psychological dissonance caused by two conflicting cognitions or by two conflicting actions:

 * 1) The importance of cognitions: the greater the personal value of the elements, the greater the magnitude of the dissonance in the relation. When the value of the importance of the two dissonant items is high, it is difficult to determine which action or thought is correct. Both have had a place of truth, at least subjectively, in the mind of the person. Therefore, when the ideals or actions now clash, it is difficult for the individual to decide which takes priority.
 * 2) Ratio of cognitions: the proportion of dissonant-to-consonant elements. There is a level of discomfort within each person that is acceptable for living. When a person is within that comfort level, the dissonant factors do not interfere with functioning. However, when dissonant factors are abundant and not enough in line with each other, one goes through a process to regulate and bring the ratio back to an acceptable level. Once a subject chooses to keep one of the dissonant factors, they quickly forget the other to restore peace of mind.

There is always some degree of dissonance within a person as they go about making decisions, due to the changing quantity and quality of knowledge and wisdom that they gain. The magnitude itself is a subjective measurement since the reports are self relayed, and there is no objective way as yet to get a clear measurement of the level of discomfort.

Reduction
Cognitive dissonance theory proposes that people seek psychological consistency between their expectations of life and the existential reality of the world. To function by that expectation of existential consistency, people continually reduce their cognitive dissonance in order to align their cognitions (perceptions of the world) with their actions.

The creation and establishment of psychological consistency allows the person affected with cognitive dissonance to lessen mental stress by actions that reduce the magnitude of the dissonance, realized either by changing with or by justifying against or by being indifferent to the existential contradiction that is inducing the mental stress. In practice, people reduce the magnitude of their cognitive dissonance in four ways:
 * 1) Change the behavior or the cognition ("I'll eat no more of this doughnut.")
 * 2) Justify the behavior or the cognition, by changing the conflicting cognition ("I'm allowed to cheat my diet every once in a while.")
 * 3) Justify the behavior or the cognition by adding new behaviors or cognitions ("I'll spend thirty extra minutes at the gymnasium to work off the doughnut.")
 * 4) Ignore or deny information that conflicts with existing beliefs ("This doughnut is not a high-sugar food.")

Three cognitive biases are components of dissonance theory. The bias where one feels they do not have any biases. The bias where one is "better, kinder, smarter, more moral and nicer than average" and the confirmation bias.

That consistent psychology is required for functioning in the real world also was indicated in the results of The Psychology of Prejudice (2006), wherein people facilitate their functioning in the real world by employing human categories (i.e. sex and gender, age and race, etc.) with which they manage their social interactions with other people.

Based on a brief overview of models and theories related to cognitive consistency from many different scientific fields, such as social psychology, perception, neurocognition, learning, motor control, system control, ethology, and stress, it has even been proposed that "all behaviour involving cognitive processing is caused by the activation of inconsistent cognitions and functions to increase perceived consistency"; that is, all behaviour functions to reduce cognitive inconsistency at some level of information processing. Indeed, the involvement of cognitive inconsistency has long been suggested for behaviors related to for instance curiosity, and aggression and fear,  while it has also been suggested that the inability to satisfactorily reduce cognitive inconsistency may – dependent on the type and size of the inconsistency – result in stress.

Selective exposure
Another means to reduce cognitive dissonance is selective exposure. This theory has been discussed since the early days of Festinger's proposal of cognitive dissonance. He noticed that people would selectively expose themselves to some media over others; specifically, they would avoid dissonant messages and prefer consonant messages. Through selective exposure, people actively (and selectively) choose what to watch, view, or read that fit to their current state of mind, mood or beliefs. In other words, consumers select attitude-consistent information and avoid attitude-challenging information. This can be applied to media, news, music, and any other messaging channel. The idea is, choosing something that is in opposition to how you feel or believe in will increase cognitive dissonance.

For example, a study was done in an elderly home in 1992 on the loneliest residents—those that did not have family or frequent visitors. The residents were shown a series of documentaries: three that featured a "very happy, successful elderly person", and three that featured an "unhappy, lonely elderly person." After watching the documentaries, the residents indicated they preferred the media featuring the unhappy, lonely person over the happy person. This can be attested to them feeling lonely, and experiencing cognitive dissonance watching somebody their age feeling happy and being successful. This study explains how people select media that aligns with their mood, as in selectively exposing themselves to people and experiences they are already experiencing. It is more comfortable to see a movie about a character that is similar to you than to watch one about someone who is your age who is more successful than you.

Another example to note is how people mostly consume media that aligns with their political views. In a study done in 2015, participants were shown "attitudinally consistent, challenging, or politically balanced online news." Results showed that the participants trusted attitude-consistent news the most out of all the others, regardless of the source. It is evident that the participants actively selected media that aligns with their beliefs rather than opposing media.

In fact, recent research has suggested that while a discrepancy between cognitions drives individuals to crave for attitude-consistent information, the experience of negative emotions drives individuals to avoid counter attitudinal information. In other words, it is the psychological discomfort which activates selective exposure as a dissonance-reduction strategy.

Paradigms
There are four theoretic paradigms of cognitive dissonance, the mental stress people experienced when exposed to information that is inconsistent with their beliefs, ideals or values: Belief Disconfirmation, Induced Compliance, Free Choice, and Effort Justification, which respectively explain what happens after a person acts inconsistently, relative to their intellectual perspectives; what happens after a person makes decisions and what are the effects upon a person who has expended much effort to achieve a goal. Common to each paradigm of cognitive-dissonance theory is the tenet: People invested in a given perspective shall—when confronted with contrary evidence—expend great effort to justify retaining the challenged perspective.

Belief disconfirmation
The contradiction of a belief, ideal, or system of values causes cognitive dissonance that can be resolved by changing the challenged belief, yet, instead of effecting change, the resultant mental stress restores psychological consonance to the person by misperception, rejection, or refutation of the contradiction, seeking moral support from people who share the contradicted beliefs or acting to persuade other people that the contradiction is unreal.

The early hypothesis of belief contradiction presented in When Prophecy Fails (1956) reported that faith deepened among the members of an apocalyptic religious cult, despite the failed prophecy of an alien spacecraft soon to land on Earth to rescue them from earthly corruption. At the determined place and time, the cult assembled; they believed that only they would survive planetary destruction; yet the spaceship did not arrive to Earth. The confounded prophecy caused them acute cognitive-dissonance: Had they been victims of a hoax? Had they vainly donated away their material possessions? To resolve the dissonance between apocalyptic, end-of-the-world religious beliefs and earthly, material reality, most of the cult restored their psychological consonance by choosing to believe a less mentally-stressful idea to explain the missed landing: that the aliens had given planet Earth a second chance at existence, which, in turn, empowered them to re-direct their religious cult to environmentalism and social advocacy to end human damage to planet Earth. On overcoming the confounded belief by changing to global environmentalism, the cult increased in numbers by proselytism.

The study of The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (2008) reported the belief contradiction that occurred in the Chabad Orthodox Jewish congregation, who believed that their Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was the Messiah. When he died of a stroke in 1994, instead of accepting that their Rebbe was not the Messiah, some of the congregation proved indifferent to that contradictory fact, and continued claiming that Schneerson was the Messiah and that he would soon return from the dead.

Induced compliance
In the Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance (1959), the investigators Leon Festinger and Merrill Carlsmith asked students to spend an hour doing tedious tasks; e.g. turning pegs a quarter-turn, at fixed intervals. This procedure included seventy-one male students attending Stanford University. Students were asked to complete a series of repetitive, mundane tasks, then asked to convince a separate group of participants that the task was fun and exciting. Once the subjects had done the tasks, the experimenters asked one group of subjects to speak with another subject (an actor) and persuade that impostor-subject that the tedious tasks were interesting and engaging. Subjects of one group were paid twenty dollars ($20); those in a second group were paid one dollar ($1) and those in the control group were not asked to speak with the imposter-subject.

At the conclusion of the study, when asked to rate the tedious tasks, the subjects of the second group (paid $1) rated the tasks more positively than did the subjects in the first group (paid $20), and the first group (paid $20) rated the tasks just slightly more positively than did the subjects of the control group; the responses of the paid subjects were evidence of cognitive dissonance. The researchers, Festinger and Carlsmith, proposed that the subjects experienced dissonance between the conflicting cognitions. "I told someone that the task was interesting" and "I actually found it boring." The subjects paid one dollar were induced to comply, compelled to internalize the "interesting task" mental attitude because they had no other justification. The subjects paid twenty dollars were induced to comply by way of an obvious, external justification for internalizing the "interesting task" mental attitude and experienced a lower degree of cognitive dissonance than did those only paid one dollar. They did not receive sufficient compensation for the lie they were asked to tell. Because of this insufficiency, the participants convinced themselves to believe that what they were doing was exciting. This way, they felt better about telling the next group of participants that it was exciting because, technically, they weren't lying.

Forbidden behavior paradigm
In the Effect of the Severity of Threat on the Devaluation of Forbidden Behavior (1963), a variant of the induced-compliance paradigm, by Elliot Aronson and Carlsmith, examined self-justification in children. Children were left in a room with toys, including a greatly desirable steam shovel, the forbidden toy. Upon leaving the room, the experimenter told one-half of the group of children that there would be severe punishment if they played with the steam-shovel toy and told the second half of the group that there would be a mild punishment for playing with the forbidden toy. All of the children refrained from playing with the forbidden toy (the steam shovel).

Later, when the children were told that they could freely play with any toy they wanted, the children in the mild-punishment group were less likely to play with the steam shovel (the forbidden toy), despite the removal of the threat of mild punishment. The children threatened with mild punishment had to justify, to themselves, why they did not play with the forbidden toy. The degree of punishment was insufficiently strong to resolve their cognitive dissonance; the children had to convince themselves that playing with the forbidden toy was not worth the effort.

In The Efficacy of Musical Emotions Provoked by Mozart's Music for the Reconciliation of Cognitive Dissonance (2012), a variant of the forbidden-toy paradigm, indicated that listening to music reduces the development of cognitive dissonance. Without music in the background, the control group of four-year-old children were told to avoid playing with a forbidden toy. After playing alone, the control-group children later devalued the importance of the forbidden toy. In the variable group, classical music played in the background while the children played alone. In the second group, the children did not later devalue the forbidden toy. The researchers, Nobuo Masataka and Leonid Perlovsky, concluded that music might inhibit cognitions that induce cognitive dissonance.

Music is a stimulus that can diminish post-decisional dissonance; in an earlier experiment, Washing Away Postdecisional Dissonance (2010), the researchers indicated that the actions of hand-washing might inhibit the cognitions that induce cognitive dissonance. That study later failed to replicate.

Free choice
In the study Post-decision Changes in Desirability of Alternatives (1956) 225 female students rated domestic appliances and then were asked to choose one of two appliances as a gift. The results of the second round of ratings indicated that the women students increased their ratings of the domestic appliance they had selected as a gift and decreased their ratings of the appliances they rejected.

This type of cognitive dissonance occurs in a person who is faced with a difficult decision and when the rejected choice may still have desirable characteristics to the chooser. The action of deciding provokes the psychological dissonance consequent to choosing X instead of Y, despite little difference between X and Y; the decision "I chose X" is dissonant with the cognition that "There are some aspects of Y that I like". The study Choice-induced Preferences in the Absence of Choice: Evidence from a Blind Two-choice Paradigm with Young Children and Capuchin Monkeys (2010) reports similar results in the occurrence of cognitive dissonance in human beings and in animals.

Peer Effects in Pro-Social Behavior: Social Norms or Social Preferences? (2013) indicated that with internal deliberation, the structuring of decisions among people can influence how a person acts. The study suggested that social preferences and social norms can explain peer effects in decision making. The study observed that choices made by the second participant would influence the first participant's effort to make choices and that inequity aversion, the preference for fairness, is the paramount concern of the participants.

Effort justification
Cognitive dissonance occurs in a person who voluntarily engages in (physically or ethically) unpleasant activities to achieve a goal. The mental stress caused by the dissonance can be reduced by the person exaggerating the desirability of the goal. In The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group (1956), to qualify for admission to a discussion group, two groups of people underwent an embarrassing initiation of varied psychological severity. The first group of subjects were to read aloud twelve sexual words considered obscene; the second group of subjects were to read aloud twelve sexual words not considered obscene.

Both groups were given headphones to unknowingly listen to a recorded discussion about animal sexual behaviour, which the researchers designed to be dull and banal. As the subjects of the experiment, the groups of people were told that the animal-sexuality discussion actually was occurring in the next room. The subjects whose strong initiation required reading aloud obscene words evaluated the people of their group as more-interesting persons than the people of the group who underwent the mild initiation to the discussion group.

In Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing (2006), the results indicated that a person washing their hands is an action that helps resolve post-decisional cognitive dissonance because the mental stress usually was caused by the person's ethical–moral self-disgust, which is an emotion related to the physical disgust caused by a dirty environment. The study The Neural Basis of Rationalization: Cognitive Dissonance Reduction During Decision-making (2011) indicated that participants rated 80 names and 80 paintings based on how much they liked the names and paintings. To give meaning to the decisions, the participants were asked to select names that they might give to their children. For rating the paintings, the participants were asked to base their ratings on whether or not they would display such art at home.

The results indicated that when the decision is meaningful to the person deciding value, the likely rating is based on their attitudes (positive, neutral or negative) towards the name and towards the painting in question. The participants also were asked to rate some of the objects twice and believed that, at session's end, they would receive two of the paintings they had positively rated. The results indicated a great increase in the positive attitude of the participant towards the liked pair of things, whilst also increasing the negative attitude towards the disliked pair of things. The double-ratings of pairs of things, towards which the rating participant had a neutral attitude, showed no changes during the rating period. The existing attitudes of the participant were reinforced during the rating period and the participants experienced cognitive dissonance when confronted by a liked-name paired with a disliked-painting.

Meat-eating
Meat-eating can involve discrepancies between the behavior of eating meat and various ideals that the person holds. Some researchers call this form of moral conflict the meat paradox. Hank Rothgerber posited that meat eaters may encounter a conflict between their eating behavior and their affections toward animals. This occurs when the dissonant state involves recognition of one's behavior as a meat eater and a belief, attitude, or value that this behavior contradicts. The person with this state may attempt to employ various methods, including avoidance, willful ignorance, dissociation, perceived behavioral change, and do-gooder derogation to prevent this form of dissonance from occurring. Once occurred, they may reduce it in the form of motivated cognitions, such as denigrating animals, offering pro-meat justifications, or denying responsibility for eating meat.

The extent of cognitive dissonance with regards to meat eating can vary depending on the attitudes and values of the individual involved because these can affect whether or not they see any moral conflict with their values and what they eat. For example, individuals who are more dominance minded and who value having a masculine identity are less likely to experience cognitive dissonance because they are less likely to believe eating meat is morally wrong. Others cope with this cognitive dissonance often through ignorance (ignoring the known realities of their food source) or explanations loosely tied to taste. The psychological phenomenon intensifies if mind or human-like qualities of animals are explicitly mentioned.

Smoking
The study Patterns of Cognitive Dissonance-reducing Beliefs Among Smokers: A Longitudinal Analysis from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Four Country Survey (2012) indicated that smokers use justification beliefs to reduce their cognitive dissonance about smoking tobacco and the negative consequences of smoking it.

 * 1) Continuing smokers (Smoking and no attempt to quit since the previous round of study)
 * 2) Successful quitters (Quit during the study and did not use tobacco from the time of the previous round of study)
 * 3) Failed quitters (Quit during the study, but relapsed to smoking at the time of the study)

To reduce cognitive dissonance, the participant smokers adjusted their beliefs to correspond with their actions:

 * 1) Functional beliefs ("Smoking calms me down when I am stressed or upset."; "Smoking helps me concentrate better."; "Smoking is an important part of my life."; and "Smoking makes it easier for me to socialize.")
 * 2) Risk-minimizing beliefs ("The medical evidence that smoking is harmful is exaggerated."; "One has to die of something, so why not enjoy yourself and smoke?"; and "Smoking is no more risky than many other things people do.")

Littering
Disposing of trash outside, even when knowing this is against the law, wrong, and is harmful for the environment, is a prominent example of cognitive dissonance, especially if the person feels bad after littering but continues to do so.

Between November 2015 and March 2016, a study by Xitou Nature Education Area in Taiwan examined littering of tourists. Researchers analyzed the relationships between tourists' environmental attitudes, cognitive dissonance, and vandalism. In this study, 500 questionnaires were distributed and 499 questionnaires were returned. The results of this study indicate that older tourists had better attitudes towards the environment and cared more. The tourists who were older and cared more for outdoor activities were less likely to litter. On the other hand, the younger tourists littered more and experienced more cognitive dissonance. This study showed that younger tourists littered more as a whole and regretted or thought about it after.

Unpleasant medical screenings
In a study titled Cognitive Dissonance and Attitudes Toward Unpleasant Medical Screenings  (2016), researchers Michael R. Ent and Mary A. Gerend informed the study participants about a discomforting test for a specific (fictitious) virus called the "human respiratory virus-27". The study used a fake virus to prevent participants from having thoughts, opinions, and feeling about the virus that would interfere with the experiment. The study participants were in two groups; one group was told that they were actual candidates for the virus-27 test, and the second group were told they were not candidates for the test. The researchers reported, "We predicted that [study] participants who thought that they were candidates for the unpleasant test would experience dissonance associated with knowing that the test was both unpleasant and in their best interest—this dissonance was predicted to result in unfavorable attitudes toward the test."

Related phenomena
Cognitive dissonance may also occur when people seek to explain or justify their beliefs, often without questioning the validity of their claims. After the earthquake of 1934, Bihar, India, irrational rumors based upon fear quickly reached the adjoining communities unaffected by the disaster because those people, although not in physical danger, psychologically justified their anxieties about the earthquake. The same pattern can be observed when one's convictions are met with a contradictory order. In a study conducted among 6th grade students, after being induced to cheat in an academic examination, students judged cheating less harshly. Nonetheless, the confirmation bias identifies how people readily read information that confirms their established opinions and readily avoid reading information that contradicts their opinions. The confirmation bias is apparent when a person confronts deeply held political beliefs, i.e. when a person is greatly committed to their beliefs, values, and ideas.

If a contradiction occurs between how a person feels and how a person acts, one's perceptions and emotions align to alleviate stress. The Ben Franklin effect refers to that statesman's observation that the act of performing a favor for a rival leads to increased positive feelings toward that individual. It is also possible that one's emotions be altered to minimize the regret of irrevocable choices. At a hippodrome, bettors had more confidence in their horses after the betting than before.

Education
The management of cognitive dissonance readily influences the apparent motivation of a student to pursue education. The study Turning Play into Work: Effects of Adult Surveillance and Extrinsic Rewards on Children's Intrinsic Motivation (1975) indicated that the application of the effort justification paradigm increased student enthusiasm for education with the offer of an external reward for studying; students in pre-school who completed puzzles based upon an adult promise of reward were later less interested in the puzzles than were students who completed the puzzle-tasks without the promise of a reward.

The incorporation of cognitive dissonance into models of basic learning-processes to foster the students' self-awareness of psychological conflicts among their personal beliefs, ideals, and values and the reality of contradictory facts and information, requires the students to defend their personal beliefs. Afterwards, the students are trained to objectively perceive new facts and information to resolve the psychological stress of the conflict between reality and the student's value system. Moreover, educational software that applies the derived principles facilitates the students' ability to successfully handle the questions posed in a complex subject. Meta-analysis of studies indicates that psychological interventions that provoke cognitive dissonance in order to achieve a directed conceptual change do increase students' learning in reading skills and about science.

Psychotherapy
The general effectiveness of psychotherapy and psychological intervention is partly explained by the theory of cognitive dissonance. In that vein, social psychology proposed that the mental health of the patient is positively influenced by his and her action in freely choosing a specific therapy and in exerting the required, therapeutic effort to overcome cognitive dissonance. That effective phenomenon was indicated in the results of the study Effects of Choice on Behavioral Treatment of Overweight Children (1983), wherein the children's belief that they freely chose the type of therapy received, resulted in each overweight child losing a greater amount of excessive body weight.

In the study Reducing Fears and Increasing Attentiveness: The Role of Dissonance Reduction  (1980), people with ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) who invested much effort in activities of little therapeutic value for them (experimentally represented as legitimate and relevant) showed improved alleviation of the symptoms of their phobia. Likewise, the results of Cognitive Dissonance and Psychotherapy: The Role of Effort Justification in Inducing Weight Loss (1985) indicated that the patient felt better in justifying their efforts and therapeutic choices towards effectively losing weight. That the therapy of effort expenditure can predict long-term change in the patient's perceptions.

Social behavior
Cognitive dissonance is used to promote social behaviours considered positive, such as increased condom use. Other studies indicate that cognitive dissonance can be used to encourage people to act pro-socially, such as campaigns against public littering, campaigns against racial prejudice, and compliance with anti-speeding campaigns. The theory can also be used to explain reasons for donating to charity. Cognitive dissonance can be applied in social areas such as racism and racial hatred. Acharya of Stanford, Blackwell and Sen of Harvard state cognitive dissonance increases when an individual commits an act of violence toward someone from a different ethnic or racial group and decreases when the individual does not commit any such act of violence. Research from Acharya, Blackwell and Sen shows that individuals committing violence against members of another group develop hostile attitudes towards their victims as a way of minimizing cognitive dissonance. Importantly, the hostile attitudes may persist even after the violence itself declines (Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen, 2015). The application provides a social psychological basis for the constructivist viewpoint that ethnic and racial divisions can be socially or individually constructed, possibly from acts of violence (Fearon and Laitin, 2000). Their framework speaks to this possibility by showing how violent actions by individuals can affect individual attitudes, either ethnic or racial animosity (Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen, 2015).

COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic, an extreme public health crisis, cases rose to the hundred million and deaths at nearly four million worldwide. Reputable health organizations such as Lyu and Wehby studied the effects of wearing a face mask on the spread of COVID-19. They found evidence that suggests that COVID patients were reduced by 2%, averting nearly 200,000 cases by the end of the following month. Despite this fact having been proven and encouraged by major health organizations, there was still a resistance to wearing the mask and keeping a safe distance away from others. When the COVID-19 vaccine was eventually released to the public, this only made the resistance stronger.

The Ad Council launched an extensive campaign advertising for people to follow the health guidelines established by the CDC and WHO and attempted to persuade people to become vaccinated eventually. After taking polls on public opinion about safety measures to prevent the spreading of the virus, it showed that between 80% and 90% of adults in the United States agree with these safety procedures and vaccines being necessary. The cognitive dissonance arose when people took polls on public behavior. Despite the general opinion that wearing a mask, social distancing, and receiving the vaccine are all things the public should be doing, only 50% of responders admitted to doing these things all or even most of the time. People believe that partaking in preventative measures is essential, but fail to follow through with actually doing them. To convince people to behave in line with their beliefs, it is essential to remind people of a fact that they believe is true, and then remind them of times in the past when they went against this. The hypocrisy paradigm is known for inconsistent cognition resolution through a change in behavior. Data were collected by participants that were asked to write statements supporting mask use and social distancing, which is something they agreed with. Then the participants were told to think about recent situations in which they failed to do this. The prediction was that the dissonance would be a motivating factor in getting people to be compliant with COVID-19 safety measures. After contacting participants one week later, they reported behaviors, including social distancing and mask-wearing.

Personal responsibility
A study conducted by Cooper and Worchel (1970) examined personal responsibility regarding cognitive dissonance. The goal was to investigate responsibility concerning foreseen consequences and how this might cause dissonance; 124 female participants were asked to complete problem-solving tasks while working with a partner. They had the option to either choose a partner with negative traits, or they were assigned one. A portion of the participants was aware of the negative traits their partner possessed; however, the remaining participants were unaware. Cooper hypothesized that if the participants knew about their negative partner beforehand, they would have cognitive dissonance; however, he also believed that the participants would be inclined to attempt to like their partners in an attempt to reduce this dissonance. The study shows that personal choice has the power to predict attitude changes.

Consumer behavior
Pleasure is one of the main factors in our modern culture of consumerism. Once a consumer has chosen to purchase a specific item, they often fear that another choice may have brought them more pleasure. Post-purchase dissonance occurs when a purchase is final, voluntary, and significant to the person. This dissonance is a mental discomfort arising from the possibility of dissatisfaction with the purchase, or the regret of not purchasing a different, potentially more useful or satisfactory good. Consequently, the buyer will "seek to reduce dissonance by increasing the perceived attractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluing the non chosen item, seeking out information to confirm the decision, or changing attitudes to conform to the decision." In other words, the buyer justifies their purchase to themselves in whatever way they can, in an attempt to convince themselves that they made the right decision and to diminish regret. Usually these feelings of regret are more prevalent after online purchases as opposed to in-store purchases. This happens because an online consumer does not have the opportunity to experience the product in its entirety, and must rely on what information is available through photos and descriptions. On the other hand, in-store shopping can sometimes be even more of an issue for consumers in regards to impulse buying. While the ease of online shopping proves hard to resist for impulse buyers, in-store shoppers may be influenced by who they are with. Shopping with friends increases the risk of impulse buying, especially compared to shopping with people such as one's parents.

Post-purchase dissonance does not only affect the consumer; brands are dependent on customer loyalty, and cognitive dissonance can influence that loyalty. The more positive experiences and emotions that a customer associates with a specific brand, the more likely they are to buy from that brand in the future, recommend it to friends, etc. The opposite is also true, meaning any feelings of discomfort, dissatisfaction, and regret will weaken the consumer's perception of the brand and make them less likely to return as a customer.

The study Beyond Reference Pricing: Understanding Consumers' Encounters with Unexpected Prices  (2003), indicated that when consumers experience an unexpected price encounter, they adopt three methods to reduce cognitive dissonance: (i) Employ a strategy of continual information; (ii) Employ a change in attitude; and (iii) Engage in minimisation. Consumers employ the strategy of continual information by engaging in bias and searching for information that supports prior beliefs. Consumers might search for information about other retailers and substitute products consistent with their beliefs. Alternatively, consumers might change attitude, such as re-evaluating price in relation to external reference-prices or associating high prices and low prices with quality. Minimisation reduces the importance of the elements of the dissonance; consumers tend to minimise the importance of money, and thus of shopping around, saving, and finding a better deal.

Politics
Cognitive dissonance theory might suggest that since votes are an expression of preference or beliefs, even the act of voting might cause someone to defend the actions of the candidate for whom they voted, and if the decision was close then the effects of cognitive dissonance should be greater.

This effect was studied over the 6 presidential elections of the United States between 1972 and 1996, and it was found that the opinion differential between the candidates changed more before and after the election than the opinion differential of non-voters. In addition, elections where the voter had a favorable attitude toward both candidates, making the choice more difficult, had the opinion differential of the candidates change more dramatically than those who only had a favorable opinion of one candidate. What wasn't studied were the cognitive dissonance effects in cases where the person had unfavorable attitudes toward both candidates. The 2016 U.S. election held historically high unfavorable ratings for both candidates.

After the 2020 United States presidential election, which was won by Joe Biden, supporters of former President Donald Trump, who had lost the election to Biden, questioned the outcome of the election, citing voter fraud. This continued after such claims were dismissed as false by numerous judges, election officials, U.S. state governors, and federal government agencies. This was described as an example of Trump supporters experiencing cognitive dissonance.

Communication
Cognitive dissonance theory of communication was initially advanced by American psychologist Leon Festinger in the 1960s. Festinger theorized that cognitive dissonance usually arises when a person holds two or more incompatible beliefs simultaneously. This is a normal occurrence since people encounter different situations that invoke conflicting thought sequences. This conflict results in a psychological discomfort. According to Festinger, people experiencing a thought conflict try to reduce the psychological discomfort by attempting to achieve an emotional equilibrium. This equilibrium is achieved in three main ways. First, the person may downplay the importance of the dissonant thought. Second, the person may attempt to outweigh the dissonant thought with consonant thoughts. Lastly, the person may incorporate the dissonant thought into their current belief system.

Dissonance plays an important role in persuasion. To persuade people, you must cause them to experience dissonance, and then offer your proposal as a way to resolve the discomfort. Although there is no guarantee your audience will change their minds, the theory maintains that without dissonance, there can be no persuasion. Without a feeling of discomfort, people are not motivated to change. Similarly, it is the feeling of discomfort which motivates people to perform selective exposure (i.e., avoiding disconfirming information) as a dissonance-reduction strategy.

Artificial intelligence
It is hypothesized that introducing cognitive dissonance into machine learning may be able to assist in the long-term aim of developing 'creative autonomy' on the part of agents, including in multi-agent systems (such as games), and ultimately to the development of 'strong' forms of artificial intelligence, including artificial general intelligence.

Self-perception theory
In Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena (1967), the social psychologist Daryl Bem proposed the self-perception theory whereby people do not think much about their attitudes, even when engaged in a conflict with another person. The Theory of Self-perception proposes that people develop attitudes by observing their own behaviour, and concludes that their attitudes caused the behaviour observed by self-perception; especially true when internal cues either are ambiguous or weak. Therefore, the person is in the same position as an observer who must rely upon external cues to infer their inner state of mind. Self-perception theory proposes that people adopt attitudes without access to their states of mood and cognition.

As such, the experimental subjects of the Festinger and Carlsmith study (Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance, 1959) inferred their mental attitudes from their own behaviour. When the subject-participants were asked: "Did you find the task interesting?", the participants decided that they must have found the task interesting, because that is what they told the questioner. Their replies suggested that the participants who were paid twenty dollars had an external incentive to adopt that positive attitude, and likely perceived the twenty dollars as the reason for saying the task was interesting, rather than saying the task actually was interesting.

The theory of self-perception (Bem) and the theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger) make identical predictions, but only the theory of cognitive dissonance predicts the presence of unpleasant arousal, of psychological distress, which were verified in laboratory experiments.

In The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance: A Current Perspective (Aronson, Berkowitz, 1969), Elliot Aronson linked cognitive dissonance to the self-concept: That mental stress arises when the conflicts among cognitions threatens the person's positive self-image. This reinterpretation of the original Festinger and Carlsmith study, using the induced-compliance paradigm, proposed that the dissonance was between the cognitions "I am an honest person." and "I lied about finding the task interesting."

The study Cognitive Dissonance: Private Ratiocination or Public Spectacle? (Tedeschi, Schlenker, etc. 1971) reported that maintaining cognitive consistency, rather than protecting a private self-concept, is how a person protects their public self-image. Moreover, the results reported in the study I'm No Longer Torn After Choice: How Explicit Choices Implicitly Shape Preferences of Odors (2010) contradict such an explanation, by showing the occurrence of revaluation of material items, after the person chose and decided, even after having forgotten the choice.

Balance theory
Fritz Heider proposed a motivational theory of attitudinal change that derives from the idea that humans are driven to establish and maintain psychological balance. The driving force for this balance is known as the consistency motive, which is an urge to maintain one's values and beliefs consistent over time. Heider's conception of psychological balance has been used in theoretical models measuring cognitive dissonance.

According to balance theory, there are three interacting elements: (1) the self (P), (2) another person (O), and (3) an element (X). These are each positioned at one vertex of a triangle and share two relations:

 * Unit relations – things and people that belong together based on similarity, proximity, fate, etc.
 * Sentiment relations – evaluations of people and things (liking, disliking)

Under balance theory, human beings seek a balanced state of relations among the three positions. This can take the form of three positives or two negatives and one positive:

 * P = you
 * O = your child
 * X = picture your child drew
 * "I love my child"
 * "She drew me this picture"
 * "I love this picture"

People also avoid unbalanced states of relations, such as three negatives or two positives and one negative:

 * P = you
 * O = John
 * X = John's dog
 * "I don't like John"
 * "John has a dog"
 * "I don't like the dog either"

Cost–benefit analysis
In the study On the Measurement of the Utility of Public Works (1969), Jules Dupuit reported that behaviors and cognitions can be understood from an economic perspective, wherein people engage in the systematic process of comparing the costs and benefits of a decision. The psychological process of cost-benefit comparisons helps the person to assess and justify the feasibility (spending money) of an economic decision, and is the basis for determining if the benefit outweighs the cost, and to what extent. Moreover, although the method of cost-benefit analysis functions in economic circumstances, men and women remain psychologically inefficient at comparing the costs against the benefits of their economic decision.

Self-discrepancy theory
E. Tory Higgins proposed that people have three selves, to which they compare themselves:

 * 1) Actual self – representation of the attributes the person believes themself to possess (basic self-concept)
 * 2) Ideal self – ideal attributes the person would like to possess (hopes, aspiration, motivations to change)
 * 3) Ought self – ideal attributes the person believes they should possess (duties, obligations, responsibilities)

When these self-guides are contradictory psychological distress (cognitive dissonance) results. People are motivated to reduce self-discrepancy (the gap between two self-guides).

Averse consequences vs. inconsistency
In the 1980s, Cooper and Fazio argued that dissonance was caused by aversive consequences, rather than inconsistency. According to this interpretation, the belief that lying is wrong and hurtful, not the inconsistency between cognitions, is what makes people feel bad. Subsequent research, however, found that people experience dissonance even when they believe they have not done anything wrong. For example, Harmon-Jones and colleagues showed that people experience dissonance even when the consequences of their statements are beneficial—as when they convince sexually active students to use condoms, when they, themselves are not using condoms.

Criticism of the free-choice paradigm
In the study How Choice Affects and Reflects Preferences: Revisiting the Free-choice Paradigm (Chen, Risen, 2010) the researchers criticized the free-choice paradigm as invalid, because the rank-choice-rank method is inaccurate for the study of cognitive dissonance. That the designing of research-models relies upon the assumption that, if the experimental subject rates options differently in the second survey, then the attitudes of the subject towards the options have changed. That there are other reasons why an experimental subject might achieve different rankings in the second survey; perhaps the subjects were indifferent between choices.

Although the results of some follow-up studies (e.g. Do Choices Affect Preferences? Some Doubts and New Evidence, 2013) presented evidence of the unreliability of the rank-choice-rank method, the results of studies such as Neural Correlates of Cognitive Dissonance and Choice-induced Preference Change (2010) have not found the Choice-Rank-Choice method to be invalid, and indicate that making a choice can change the preferences of a person.

Action–motivation model
Festinger's original theory did not seek to explain how dissonance works. Why is inconsistency so aversive? The action–motivation model seeks to answer this question. It proposes that inconsistencies in a person's cognition cause mental stress because psychological inconsistency interferes with the person's functioning in the real world. Among techniques for coping, the person may choose to exercise a behavior that is inconsistent with their current attitude (a belief, an ideal, a value system), but later try to alter that belief to make it consistent with a current behavior; the cognitive dissonance occurs when the person's cognition does not match the action taken. If the person changes the current attitude, after the dissonance occurs, they are then obligated to commit to that course of behavior.

Cognitive dissonance produces a state of negative affect, which motivates the person to reconsider the causative behavior in order to resolve the psychological inconsistency that caused the mental stress. As the affected person works towards a behavioral commitment, the motivational process then is activated in the left frontal cortex of the brain.

Predictive dissonance model
The predictive dissonance model proposes that cognitive dissonance is fundamentally related to the predictive coding (or predictive processing) model of cognition. A predictive processing account of the mind proposes that perception actively involves the use of a Bayesian hierarchy of acquired prior knowledge, which primarily serves the role of predicting incoming proprioceptive, interoceptive and exteroceptive sensory inputs. Therefore, the brain is an inference machine that attempts to actively predict and explain its sensations. Crucial to this inference is the minimization of prediction error. The predictive dissonance account proposes that the motivation for cognitive dissonance reduction is related to an organism's active drive for reducing prediction error. Moreover, it proposes that human (and perhaps other animal) brains have evolved to selectively ignore contradictory information (as proposed by dissonance theory) to prevent the overfitting of their predictive cognitive models to local and thus non-generalizing conditions. The predictive dissonance account is highly compatible with the action-motivation model since, in practice, prediction error can arise from unsuccessful behavior.

Neuroscience findings
Technological advances are allowing psychologists to study the biomechanics of cognitive dissonance.

Visualization
The study Neural Activity Predicts Attitude Change in Cognitive Dissonance (Van Veen, Krug, etc., 2009) identified the neural bases of cognitive dissonance with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); the neural scans of the participants replicated the basic findings of the induced-compliance paradigm. When in the fMRI scanner, some of the study participants argued that the uncomfortable, mechanical environment of the MRI machine nevertheless was a pleasant experience for them; some participants, from an experimental group, said they enjoyed the mechanical environment of the fMRI scanner more than did the control-group participants (paid actors) who argued about the uncomfortable experimental environment.

The results of the neural scan experiment support the original theory of Cognitive Dissonance proposed by Festinger in 1957; and also support the psychological conflict theory, whereby the anterior cingulate functions, in counter-attitudinal response, to activate the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insular cortex; the degree of activation of said regions of the brain is predicted by the degree of change in the psychological attitude of the person.

As an application of the free-choice paradigm, the study How Choice Reveals and Shapes Expected Hedonic Outcome (2009) indicates that after making a choice, neural activity in the striatum changes to reflect the person's new evaluation of the choice-object; neural activity increased if the object was chosen, neural activity decreased if the object was rejected. Moreover, studies such as The Neural Basis of Rationalization: Cognitive Dissonance Reduction During Decision-making (2010) and How Choice Modifies Preference: Neural Correlates of Choice Justification (2011) confirm the neural bases of the psychology of cognitive dissonance.

The Neural Basis of Rationalization: Cognitive Dissonance Reduction During Decision-making (Jarcho, Berkman, Lieberman, 2010) applied the free-choice paradigm to fMRI examination of the brain's decision-making process whilst the study participant actively tried to reduce cognitive dissonance. The results indicated that the active reduction of psychological dissonance increased neural activity in the right-inferior frontal gyrus, in the medial fronto-parietal region, and in the ventral striatum, and that neural activity decreased in the anterior insula. That the neural activities of rationalization occur in seconds, without conscious deliberation on the part of the person; and that the brain engages in emotional responses whilst effecting decisions.

Emotional correlations
The results reported in Contributions from Research on Anger and Cognitive Dissonance to Understanding the Motivational Functions of Asymmetrical Frontal Brain Activity (Harmon-Jones, 2004) indicate that the occurrence of cognitive dissonance is associated with neural activity in the left frontal cortex, a brain structure also associated with the emotion of anger; moreover, functionally, anger motivates neural activity in the left frontal cortex. Applying a directional model of Approach motivation, the study Anger and the Behavioural Approach System (2003) indicated that the relationship between cognitive dissonance and anger is supported by neural activity in the left frontal cortex that occurs when a person takes control of the social situation causing the cognitive dissonance. Conversely, if the person cannot control or cannot change the psychologically stressful stimulation, they are without a motivation to change the circumstance, then there arise other, negative emotions to manage the cognitive dissonance, such as socially inappropriate behavior.

The anterior cingulate cortex activity increases when errors occur and are being monitored as well as having behavioral conflicts with the self-concept as a form of higher-level thinking. A study was done to test the prediction that the left frontal cortex would have increased activity. University students had to write a paper depending on if they were assigned to a high-choice or low-choice condition. The low-choice condition required students to write about supporting a 10% increase in tuition at their university. The point of this condition was to see how significant the counter-choice may affect a person's ability to cope. The high-choice condition asked students to write in favor of tuition increase as if it were their completely voluntary choice. The researchers use EEG to analyze students before they wrote the essay, as dissonance is at its highest during this time (Beauvois and Joule, 1996). High-choice condition participants showed a higher level of the left frontal cortex than the low-choice participants. Results show that the initial experience of dissonance can be apparent in the anterior cingulate cortex, then the left frontal cortex is activated, which also activates the approach motivational system to reduce anger.

The psychology of mental stress
The results reported in The Origins of Cognitive Dissonance: Evidence from Children and Monkeys (Egan, Santos, Bloom, 2007) indicated that there might be evolutionary force behind the reduction of cognitive dissonance in the actions of pre-school-age children and Capuchin monkeys when offered a choice between two like options, decals and candies. The groups then were offered a new choice, between the choice-object not chosen and a novel choice-object that was as attractive as the first object. The resulting choices of the human and simian subjects concorded with the theory of cognitive dissonance when the children and the monkeys each chose the novel choice-object instead of the choice-object not chosen in the first selection, despite every object having the same value.

The hypothesis of An Action-based Model of Cognitive-dissonance Processes (Harmon-Jones, Levy, 2015) proposed that psychological dissonance occurs consequent to the stimulation of thoughts that interfere with a goal-driven behavior. Researchers mapped the neural activity of the participant when performing tasks that provoked psychological stress when engaged in contradictory behaviors. A participant read aloud the printed name of a color. To test for the occurrence of cognitive dissonance, the name of the color was printed in a color different from the word read aloud by the participant. As a result, the participants experienced increased neural activity in the anterior cingulate cortex when the experimental exercises provoked psychological dissonance.

The study Cognitive Neuroscience of Social Emotions and Implications for Psychopathology: Examining Embarrassment, Guilt, Envy, and Schadenfreude (Jankowski, Takahashi, 2014) identified neural correlations to specific social emotions (e.g. envy and embarrassment) as a measure of cognitive dissonance. The neural activity for the emotion of Envy (the feeling of displeasure at the good fortune of another person) was found to draw neural activity from the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. That such increased activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex occurred either when a person's self-concept was threatened or when the person experienced embarrassment (social pain) caused by salient, upward social-comparison, by social-class snobbery. That social emotions, such as embarrassment, guilt, envy, and Schadenfreude (joy at the misfortune of another person) are correlated to reduced activity in the insular lobe, and with increased activity in the striate nucleus; those neural activities are associated with a reduced sense of empathy (social responsibility) and an increased propensity towards antisocial behavior (delinquency).

Body image and health intervention
Some school programs discuss body image and eating disorders of children and adolescents. Disordered eating behaviors include binge eating episodes, excessive fasting, vomiting, and diet pills. National data from 2017 and 2018 highlights that since starting college, approximately 50 percent of college students reported becoming increasingly concerned with their weight and body shape. Studies examining eating disorders (ED) symptoms in college students reported that only 20 percent of those with positive ED got help. Less than 10 percent were diagnosed with an ED. This Body Project (BP) is rooted in the theory of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance occurs when a discrepancy emerges between beliefs and actions. The idea is centered around the notion that if beliefs and actions are inconsistent, then the individual will create a change to align the beliefs and actions. The BP uses cognitive dissonance to target ED, for example, social pressure from peers or not being satisfied with your appearance, to bring awareness and for a healthy and positive change, thoughts toward body image.

Modeling in neural networks
Artificial neural network models of cognition provide methods for integrating the results of empirical research about cognitive dissonance and attitudes into a single model that explains the formation of psychological attitudes and the mechanisms to change such attitudes. Among the artificial neural-network models that predict how cognitive dissonance might influence a person's attitudes and behavior, are:

 * Parallel constraint satisfaction processes
 * The meta-cognitive model (MCM) of attitudes
 * Adaptive connectionist model of cognitive dissonance
 * Attitudes as constraint satisfaction model

title: Cognitive dissonance


text:
Transkei

Transkei (, meaning the area beyond [the river] Kei), officially the Republic of Transkei (iRiphabliki yeTranskei), was an unrecognised state in the southeastern region of South Africa from 1976 to 1994. It was, along with Ciskei, a Bantustan for the Xhosa people, and operated as a nominally independent parliamentary democracy. Its capital was Umtata (renamed Mthatha in 2004).

Transkei represented a significant precedent and historic turning point in South Africa's policy of apartheid and "separate development"; it was the first of four territories to be declared independent of South Africa. Throughout its existence, it remained an internationally unrecognised, diplomatically isolated, politically unstable de facto one-party state, which at one point broke relations with South Africa, the only country that acknowledged it as a legal entity. In 1994, it was reintegrated into its larger neighbour and became part of the Eastern Cape province.

Establishment
The South African government set up the area as one of the two homelands for Xhosa-speaking people in Cape Province, the other being Ciskei; it was given nominal autonomy by Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd in 1963. Although the first election was contested and won by the Democratic Party, whose founder Chief Victor Poto was opposed to the notion of Bantustan independence, the government was formed by the Transkei National Independence Party. Of the 109 members in the regional parliament, 45 were elected and 64 were held by ex officio chiefs.

The entity became a nominally independent state in 1976 with its capital at Umtata (now Mthatha), although it was recognised only by South Africa and later by the other nominally independent republics within the TBVC-system. Chief Kaiser Daliwonga Matanzima was Transkei's Prime Minister until 1979, when he assumed the office of President, a position he held until 1986.

International reaction
South African prime minister B. J. Vorster justified the declaration of Transkei as an independent republic by referring to "the right of every people to have full control over its own affairs" and wished "Transkei and its leaders God's richest blessings on the road ahead."

A press release by the African National Congress at the time rejected the Transkei's independence and condemned it as "designed to consolidate the inhuman policies of apartheid". During its thirty-first session, in resolution A/RES/31/6 A, the General Assembly of the United Nations referred to Transkei's "sham independence" as "invalid," re-iterated its labelling of South Africa as a "racist régime," and called upon "all [g]overnments to deny any form of recognition to the so-called independent Transkei." An article published in Time Magazine opined that though Transkei declared independence theoretically as a "free Black state", Matanzima ruled as the dictator of a one-party state. He banned local opposition parties and bought farmlands for himself and his family offered by the South African government at subsidised prices.

Matanzima published Independence my Way in 1976, a book in which he argued that true liberation could only be gained through a confederation of black states; he described Transkei as a positive precedent and maintained that the liberation struggle chosen by the African National Congress would not be successful.

The United Nations Security Council supported moves not to recognise Transkei, and in Resolution 402 (1976) condemned moves by South Africa to pressure Lesotho to recognise Transkei by closing its borders with the country.

Troubled existence
Throughout its existence, Transkei's economy remained dependent on that of its larger neighbour, with the local population being recruited as workers into South Africa's Rand mines.

Because of a territorial dispute, Matanzima announced on 10 April 1978 that Transkei would break all diplomatic ties with South Africa, including a unilateral withdrawal from the non-aggression pact between the two governments, and ordered that all South African Defence Force members seconded to the Transkei Defence Force should leave. This created the unique situation of a country refusing to deal with the only internationally recognised nation it was recognised by. Matanzima soon backed down in the face of Transkei's dependence on South African economic aid.

During his rule, Matanzima arrested state officials and journalists at will; in late 1979, he detained the head of the newly formed Democratic Progressive Party, Sabata Dalindyebo, king of the Thembu people and vocal opponent of apartheid, for violating the dignity and injuring the reputation of the president. Dalindyebo went into exile in Zambia, a move that marked the end of official opposition politics in Transkei, and in the 1981 election, the ruling Transkei National Independence Party was re-elected, gaining 100% of all open seats.

On 20 February 1986, faced with South African evidence of corruption, Matanzima was forced to retire as president. He was succeeded by his brother George. Kaiser Matanzima was still described as Transkei's effective leader for a time, but soon the two fell out and Kaiser was temporarily detained in the Transkei gaols in 1987; upon release, he was restricted to Qamata.

In 1987, Transkei, a larger, wealthier and more populous entity, had long sought the annexation of Ciskei, and had undertaken a series of military raids on Ciskei. This included an attack on leader Lennox Sebe's compound, with the apparent goal of taking him hostage, in order to force a merger of the two Bantustans. The South African government intervened to warn the Transkei government off.

General Bantu Holomisa of the Transkei Defence Force forced the resignation and exile of Prime Minister George Matanzima in October 1987 and then overthrew Matanzima's successor, Prime Minister Stella Sigcau in a bloodless coup d'état in December 1987. Holomisa became the Head of State, and the Transkei was from that point onwards effectively in (often uneasy) alliance with the African National Congress and provided a relatively safe area for the ANC's activities. In 1990, Holomisa himself evaded a failed attempt to be ousted from his post, and when asked about the fate of his opponents, he claimed that they had died in the ensuing battles with TDF soldiers. It was later found that those deemed responsible for the foiled coup had only suffered minor injuries, but were subsequently executed without trial.

Dissolution
The Transkei government was a participant in the CODESA negotiations for a new South Africa. The territory was reincorporated into South Africa on 27 April 1994, and the area became part of the Eastern Cape province.

The Transkei Penal Code, 1983 still applies between the Kei River and the border with KwaZulu-Natal, and persons who are charged with crimes in that area are prosecuted under the code.

Government and politics
Nominally, the Republic of Transkei was a parliamentary democracy which allowed for a multi-party system. During its existence, six parties registered to compete in elections at different points of its history. Until the military coup of 1987, the Transkei National Independence Party remained the ruling party, while the Transkei People's Freedom Party constituted the official opposition. Because its founder, Cromwell Diko, was a former member of the ruling party, and due to its continued support of President Matanzima's policies, there is a widely held belief that it was actually initiated by Matanzima himself to give the impression of free elections when in fact there were none. Other parties that existed never gained any representation in parliament.

According to the Constitution of Transkei, parliament consisted of the president in joint session with the National Assembly and its laws and legislative decisions were immune to judicial review. Seventy-five of its members were elected by popular vote from the various districts Transkei's territory was divided into. The remaining members were unelected Paramount Chiefs and ex officio chiefs whose number per district was enshrined in the constitution.

Citizenship
With the establishment of the republic, the citizenry consisted of all those who had been holding the citizenship of the former territory of Transkei. Individuals were given no choice in this matter as the Transkeian constitution was a legally binding act; for the future, it provided citizenship regulations based on both jus sanguinis and jus soli. Citizenship by descent was given along the paternal line, regardless of a person's place of birth; in addition, any individual born within the republic's territory was eligible for citizenship, excluding those whose father held diplomatic immunity or was deemed an illegal immigrant and whose mother was a non-citizen. Dual citizenship at birth was not permitted, and renunciation of one's citizenship was legally possible, but rendered the individual stateless in most cases. In effect, the regulations thus created an almost homogeneous population of Xhosa ethnicity, though exceptions existed.

Flag
The flag of Transkei is a triband. The colours are (from the top down) ochre red, white, and green.

Geography and demographics

The Transkei consisted of three disconnected sections with a total area covering 45000 km2. The large main section was bordered by the Umtamvuna River in the north and the Great Kei River in the south. The Indian Ocean and the Drakensberg mountain range, including parts of the landlocked kingdom of Lesotho, served as the eastern and western frontiers. A further two small sections occurred as landlocked isolates within South Africa. One of these was in the north-west, along the Orange River adjoining south-western Lesotho, and the other in the uMzimkhulu area to the east, each reflecting colonially designated tribal areas where Xhosa speaking peoples predominated. A large portion of the area was mountainous and not suitable for agriculture.

The territorial dispute with South Africa that led to the break in relations was a patch of territory called East Griqualand (which was situated between the main and eastern segments of Transkei with its northern limit at the Lesotho border). South Africa put East Griqualand under the jurisdiction of the Cape Province instead of Transkei, thus making it an exclave of the Cape Province.

The majority of the population was Xhosa-speaking, and according to the Constitution of the Republic of Transkei, Xhosa was the sole official language, but laws had to be translated into Sotho and English in order for them to come into effect, and Afrikaans was permissible in court proceedings and for other administrative purposes. In addition, many thousands of northern Transkei residents spoke a small hybrid Nguni–Sotho language, called Phuthi.

Conflicting data exist about the number of inhabitants. According to the South African Encyclopaedia, the total population of the Transkei increased from 2,487,000 to 3,005,000 between 1960 and 1970. An estimate of 1982 puts the number at about 2.3 million, with approximately 400,000 citizens residing permanently outside the territory's borders. Fewer than 10,000 individuals were of European descent, and the urbanisation-rate for the entire population was around 5%.

Security forces
The Transkei Defence Force (TDF) was formed in October 1976 and numbered about 2,000, including one infantry battalion and an air wing with two light transporters and two helicopters. By 1993, the number of troops had risen to 4,000. Initial training was provided by the South African Defence Force, and despite its diplomatic isolation, the government of Transkei received advice from and collaborated with Israeli counterinsurgency experts. Armscor/Krygkor was its main supplier of weaponry.

After breaking all diplomatic ties with South Africa, President Matanzima announced construction-plans for an international airport by an unnamed French consortium in order for "arms and troops from other countries" to be brought into Transkei without touching South African soil, but did not elaborate on where those resources would originate.

During its last days in 1994, the Transkei Police had 4,993 police officers, operating from 61 police stations throughout the territory.

With the dissolution of Transkei in 1994, the TDF and the Transkei Police were incorporated into the South African National Defence Force and the South African Police Service, respectively.

Notable persons

 * Donald Woods, journalist and anti-apartheid activist was born in Transkei
 * Wendy Woods, journalist and anti-apartheid activist was born in Transkei
 * D. G. M. Wood-Gush FRSE expert on animal behaviour and father of "Free-range" farming born and raised in Transkei
 * Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, former president of the ANC and President of South Africa 1994–1999
 * Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki, Co-Deputy President of South Africa 1994–1996, Deputy President of South Africa 1996–1999, President of South Africa 1999–2008
 * Govan Archibald Mvuyelwa Mbeki, former South African politician and leader of the ANC and SACP
 * Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu, former South African anti-apartheid activist and member of the ANC
 * Ashby Solomzi Peter Mda, former political activist and member of PAC
 * Clarence Mlami Makwetu, former political activist and member of PAC
 * Vuyisile Mini, former anti-apartheid activist and member of the ANC
 * Robert Resha, former anti-apartheid activist and member of the ANC
 * Alfred Bitini Xuma, former ANC president 1940–1949
 * Oscar Mafakafaka Mpetha, former anti-apartheid activist, unionist and member of the ANC
 * Vusumzi L. Make, former political activist and member of PAC
 * John Nyathi "Poks" Pokela former political activist and member of PAC
 * Mapetla Mohapi, member of the Black Consciousness Movement
 * Chief Kaiser Daliwonga Matanzima, former Transkei's first and longest-serving president until 1986
 * Chief George Mzivubu Mathanzima, former Transkei's Prime Minister
 * Bantu Holomisa, former Chief of Staff of the Transkei Defence Force 1985–1987, last Transkei's Head of State 1987–1994, South African Member of Parliament, President of the United Democratic Movement
 * Oliver Tambo, former president of the ANC 1967–1991
 * Chris Hani, former South African Communist Party General Secretary.
 * Botha Sigcau, former Transkei's President
 * Stella Sigcau, former Transkei Prime Minister and minister of public enterprises.
 * Tutor Nyangelizwe Vulindlela Ndamase, former Transkei's President
 * Sabelo Phama (Victor Gqwetha), former Azanian People's Liberation Army Commander and Pan Africanist Congress of Azania Member

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Transkei


text:
User:Mic/Notes

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ABB, SEB, Scania AB, Hennes & Mauritz, Vattenfall, TetraPak, Securitas, Skanska, IKEA

Education
List of universities in Sweden: Gothenburg University, Stockholm University, Lund University, Linköping University, Umeå University, Uppsala University, Karlstad University, Örebro University, Växjö University, Chalmers University of Technology, Royal Institute of Technology, Luleå University of Technology, Lund Institute of Technology, Linköping Institute of Technology, Umeå Institute of Technology, Uppsala Institute of Technology, Stockholm School of Economics, Gothenburg School of Economics and Commercial Law, Umeå School of Business, Lund School of Economics and Management, Karolinska Institute, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Mid-Sweden University College, University College of Borås, University College of Dalarna, University College of Gotland, University College of Gävle, University College of Halmstad, University College of Jönköping, University College of Kalmar, University College of Kristianstad, University College of Mälardalen, University College of Malmö, University College of South Stockholm, University College of Skövde, University College of Trollhättan/Uddevalla, University college

Geography
Realm of Sweden, Dominions of Sweden, Lands of Sweden

Provinces of Sweden:

Götaland: Bahusia, Dalia, Gotlandia, Smalandia, Oelandia, Ostrogothia, Westrogothia; Terra Scania : Blechingia, Hallandia, Scania

Svealand: Dalecarlia, Nericia, Sudermannia, Uplandia, Wermelandia, Westmannia ;

Norrland: Angermannia, Gestricia, Helsingia, Herdalia, Jemtia, Laponia, Medelpadia, Ostrobothnia, Westrobothnia ;

Österland: Alandia, Finland Proper, Karelia, Nylandia, Satakunda, Savonia, Tavastia

Counties of Sweden: Blekinge County, Dalarna County, Gotland County, Gävleborg County, Halland County, Jämtland County, Jönköping County, Kalmar County, Kronoberg County, Norrbotten County, Skåne County, Stockholm County, Södermanland County, Uppsala County, Värmland County, Västerbotten County, Västernorrland County, Västmanland County, Västra Götaland County, Örebro County, Östergötland County

Nordic countries, Scandinavia, Subdivisions of the United Kingdom, Subdivisions of England

History
History of Sweden: Early Swedish Kingdoms, Unification of Sweden, Foundation of Modern Sweden, Rise of Sweden as a Great Power, Swedish Empire, Sweden and the Great Northern War, Absolute Monarchy in Sweden, Union between Sweden and Norway, Modernization of Sweden

Coats of Arms of Sweden, Heraldry of Småland, Heraldry of Öland

Augsburg confession, List of Swedish wars, Baltic sea countries, Bernadotte, Kalmar Union, Winter War

Politics
Politics of Sweden, Constitution of Sweden, Government of Sweden, Privy Council of Sweden

Prime Minister of Sweden, King of Sweden

Parliament of Sweden,Riksdag, Riksdag of the Estates

Elections in Sweden, Moderata samlingspartiet, Socialdemokratiska arbetarpartiet

Counties of Sweden, County Administrative Boards of Sweden, County Councils of Sweden, Municipalities of Sweden

County Administrative Board of Halland, County Administrative Board of Jönköping, County Administrative Board of Norrbotten, County Administrative Board of Södermanland, County Administrative Board of Västernorrland, County Administrative Board of Gävleborg, County Administrative Board of Kronoberg, County Administrative Board of Örebro, County Administrative Board of Stockholm, County Administrative Board of Uppsala, County Administrative Board of Kalmar

United Nations System

Institutions
Swedish Royal Academies: Swedish Academy, Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, Royal Swedish Academy of Music, Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences, Royal Swedish Society of Naval Sciences, Royal Swedish Society of Sciences, Royal Swedish Physiographic Society, Royal Swedish Society of Sciences and Letters

Schock Prize

European Atomic Energy Community

IAAF World Championships in Athletics, International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship

Lists
List of Swedes, List of Swedish monarchs, List of Swedish politicians, List of Swedish military commanders, List of Swedish scientists, List of Swedish writers, List of Swedish companies, List of Swedish newspapers

List of Swedish monarchs, List of Finnish rulers, List of Estonian rulers, List of Icelandic rulers

List of cities in Albania, List of cities in Argentina, List of cities in Australia, List of cities in Belgium, List of cities in Bolivia, List of cities in Bosnia-Hercegovina, List of cities in Brazil, List of cities in Bulgaria, List of cities in Chile, List of cities in China, List of cities in Colombia, List of cities in Colombia, List of cities in Egypt, List of cities in Ethiopia, List of cities in France, List of cities in Greece, List of cities in India, List of cities in Indonesia, List of cities in Ireland, List of cities in Jamaica, List of cities in Japan, List of cities in Kenya, List of cities in Mexico, List of cities in Portugal, List of cities in Romania, List of cities in Serbia, List of cities in Slovakia, List of cities in Slovenia, List of cities in the Czech Republic, List of cities in Turkey, List of cities in Uruguay, List of cities in Uzbekistan

Metapages
WikiProject Swedish counties, WikiProject Swedish provinces, WikiProject historical provinces in Finland, Library of Congress Country Studies

Minor contributions
Other entries where I have contributed.

Culture Soft drink, Atari

Economics Krone, Nordea, Pharmacia

Education Primary education, Secondary education, Tertiary education, Quaternary education, Higher education, Post-secondary education

Geography Sweden, List of Swedish municipalities, Nordic countries, Scandinavia, Baltic sea, Baltic states, Riga, Kattegat

History Nobel Prize, Carolus Linnaeus, Primogeniture, Sovereign Military Order of Malta, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, Philipp Melanchthon, Wannsee conference, Flag of Denmark, List of Danish monarchs, List of Norwegian monarchs

International Organizations OECD, Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, NATO, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Council of Europe, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, UN Trusteeship Council, United Nations Trust Territories, Nordic Council

Philosphy Baruch Spinoza, Rene Descartes

Lists List of official languages, List of political parties, List of Swedish municipalities, List of cities, List of national capitals by country, List of capitals of subnational entities

Ported contributions
Wikified entries ported from the 1911 encyclopedia.

Biographies: Charles IX of Sweden, Charles X of Sweden, Charles XI of Sweden, Charles XIII of Sweden, Charles XIV of Sweden, Oscar I of Sweden, Charles XV of Sweden, Oscar II of Sweden

Louis De Geer, Birger Jarl, Gustav Bonde, Per Brahe, Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, Johann Patkul, Axel Oxenstierna, Bengt Oxenstierna, Gabriel Oxenstierna, Johan Oxenstierna, Axel von Fersen, senior, Arvid Horn, Gustaf Adolf Reuterholm, Jacob Magnus Sprengtporten,Göran Magnus Sprengtporten, Nils Magnus Brahe, Axel von Fersen, Carl Gustaf Nordin, Johan Banér, Per Brahe, Nils Brahe, Lennart Torstensson, Karl Gustav von Wrangel, Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt, Jacob Magnus Sprengtporten, Johan Kristoffer Toll, Georg Heinrich von Görtz, Andrei Osterman, Olof Rudbeck, Olaus Rudbeckius, junior

Image contributions
See also: User:Mic/Images

Heraldry
Coats of arms for the Provinces of Sweden: ,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Coats of arms for the 21 Counties of Sweden: ,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Maps
Maps for the Provinces of Sweden: ,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Maps for the 21 Counties of Sweden: ,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Biographies
John III of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, Charles IX of Sweden, Charles XII of Sweden, Frederick I of Sweden, Adolf Frederick of Sweden, Gustav III of Sweden, Charles XIV of Sweden, Oscar I of Sweden, Oscar II of Sweden

Structure of Politics of Sweden (Ongoing project):

 * Politics of Sweden
 * Constitution of Sweden (New - Needs further work)
 * Government of Sweden (New - The main political institutions)
 * King of Sweden (New - The Chief of State as a political office)
 * Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden (The Current Head of State)
 * List of Swedish monarchs
 * Cabinet of Sweden (New - Prime Minister and Cabinet)
 * Swedish Prime Ministers (Currently a list)
 * Swedish Government Agencies (To be done)
 * Parliament of Sweden (New - The Riksdag institution as Parliament)
 * Riksdag (New - Institutional history and before parliamentarism)
 * Riksdag of the Estates - (New - The precursor to the Riksdag)
 * Elections in Sweden - (New - Mainly Parliamentary Elections)
 * Political Parties in Sweden (To be done - Meant for Parliamentary Parties)
 * Sveriges Riksbank
 * Law of Sweden (To be done)

Amusingly, I was mentioned in the 2003 Press Release:
 * '"What got me hooked was probably the ease of joining and contributing to the project, without having to register as a user," notes Wikipedian "Mic", who joined the project in late 2002.

Hey, didn't you just read that somewhere?

title: User:Mic/Notes


text:
Vincent Schiavelli

Vincent Andrew Schiavelli (November 11, 1948 – December 26, 2005) was an American character actor noted for his work on stage, screen, and television. Described as an "instantly recognizable sad-faced actor", he was diagnosed with Marfan syndrome in childhood.

Schiavelli gained fame as a character actor, mainly in supporting roles. His better-known roles include Fredrickson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Mr. Vargas in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), the Subway Ghost in Ghost (1990), Organ Grinder in Batman Returns (1992), Buggy Ding Dong in Death To Smoochy (2002), Chester in The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Dr. Kaufman in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and ABC executive Maynard Smith in Man on the Moon (1999). Schiavelli is the subject of the biographical film, Tanti Beddi Cosi (English, Many Beautiful Things) about his return to Polizzi Generosa, the historically significant ancestral village of his grandfather.

Early life
Schiavelli was born in Brooklyn, New York City to Sicilian-Americans John Schiavelli and Katherine Coco. He attended Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn. He studied acting through the theatre program at New York University and began performing on stage in the 1960s. He was raised in the large Sicilian neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn; the stories and recipes of which he shared in his 1998 book Bruculinu, Remembrances of Sicilian American Brooklyn.

Career
Schiavelli's first film role occurred in Miloš Forman's 1971 production Taking Off, where he played a counselor who taught parents of runaway teens to smoke marijuana to better understand their children's experiences. Schiavelli's aptitude and distinctive appearance soon provided him with a steady stream of supporting roles, often in Forman's films, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Valmont, and the 1999 biopic Man on the Moon.

He played Mr. Vargas, the biology teacher, in the 1982 comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a role he reprised in the 1986 television spin-off Fast Times. He was cast in a similar role in Better Off Dead in which he played Mr. Kerber, a geometry teacher.

In 1987, he starred alongside Tim Conway in the short film comedy Dorf on Golf, and then Dorf and the First Games of Mount Olympus in 1988. In 1990, he played the Subway Ghost in Ghost and in 1992, he played in Tim Burton's Batman Returns as the "Organ Grinder", one of the Penguin's henchmen. He appeared as another villain in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), as a silent monk in The Frisco Kid (1979), and as John O'Connor, one of the evil Red Lectroids in 1984's The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. In 1994 he appeared in the music video for ZZ Top's "Breakaway", alongside Fairuza Balk and in 1997, was named one of America's best character actors by Vanity Fair magazine. He also made several voice appearances in the animated television show Hey Arnold!. In 2002, he played a children's television show host turned heroin addict named Buggy Ding Dong in Death to Smoochy.

His first television role came in 1972 as Peter Panama in The Corner Bar, the first sustained portrayal of a gay character on American television. His other television credits include The Moneychangers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, WKRP in Cincinnati, Benson, and Taxi as the priest who marries Latka and Simka. He appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Arsenal of Freedom" as a holographic salesman, on Miami Vice as a research scientist who conspires to steal a top-secret prototype weapon from his employer, and in an uncredited role in an episode of Punky Brewster. In 1987 he appeared as Lyle, a gangster, in the MacGyver season 2 episode "Soft Touch". In Highlander: The Series, he played Leo Atkins, a homeless Vietnam War veteran accused of murder in the Season 1 episode "Innocent Man". In The X-Files, he played Lanny, a man with an underdeveloped conjoined twin in the Season 2 episode "Humbug".

Schiavelli was honorary co-chair of the National Marfan Foundation, an organization that serves those affected by Marfan syndrome, a condition that Schiavelli had.

Schiavelli also performed in a few video games, including Emperor: Battle for Dune (as Harkonnen Mentat Yanich Kobal) and as Dr. Hellman in the video game Corpse Killer.

Personal life
Schiavelli was married twice. He and his first wife, actress Allyce Beasley, were married from 1985 to 1988. They appeared together in an episode of Moonlighting, Beasley's television series. They had one son, composer Andrea Schiavelli. Vincent Schiavelli then married harpist Carol Sue Mukhalian on October 23, 1992. They remained married until his death.

Death
Schiavelli died of lung cancer on December 26, 2005, at the age of 57 at his home in Polizzi Generosa, the Sicilian town where his grandfather Andrea Coco was born, and about which he wrote in his 2002 book Many Beautiful Things: Stories and Recipes from Polizzi Generosa (ISBN 0-7432-1528-1). He was buried at Polizzi Generosa Cemetery near Palermo, Sicily.

title: Vincent Schiavelli


text:
Dragan Marušič

Dragan Marušič (born 1953, Koper, Slovenia) is a Slovene mathematician. Marušič obtained his BSc in technical mathematics from the University of Ljubljana in 1976, and his PhD from the University of Reading in 1981 under the supervision of Crispin Nash-Williams.

Marušič has published extensively, and has supervised seven PhD students (as of 2013). He served as the third rector of the University of Primorska from 2011 to 2019, a university he lobbied to have established in his home town of Koper. His research focuses on topics in algebraic graph theory, particularly the symmetry of graphs and the action of finite groups on combinatorial objects. He is regarded as the founder of the Slovenian school of research in algebraic graph theory and permutation groups.

Education and career
From 1968 to 1972 Marušič attended gymnasium in Koper. He studied undergraduate mathematics at the University of Ljubljana, graduating in 1976. He completed his PhD in 1981 in England, at the University of Reading under the supervision of Crispin Nash-Williams.

After completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Reading in 1983, Marušič spent a year teaching high school mathematics in Koper. He worked for one year at the University of Minnesota Duluth as an assistant professor, and then spent three years at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1985 to 1988. In 1988, he returned to Slovenia to work at the University of Ljubljana, where he rose quickly through the ranks, becoming a full professor in 1994. He also held the post of vice-rector of student affairs there from 1989 to 1991. In 1991-92 he spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Marušič maintains his post at the University of Ljubljana, although he has also held an appointment at the University of Primorska since 2004, shortly after its founding. He has increasingly devoted his time to the newer university, where he established the Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Information Technologies (UP FAMNIT). He served as the dean of that faculty from 2007 to 2011. He was elected in 2011 as the third rector of the University of Primorska, a position which he held until 2019.

Marušič has supervised seven PhD students, and has supervised or co-supervised six post-doctoral fellows, in addition to numerous master's and honours students. He is one of the two founding editors and editors-in-chief (with Tomaž Pisanski) of the journal Ars Mathematica Contemporanea.

Achievements and honours
Marušič is regarded as the founder of the Slovenian school of research in algebraic graph theory and permutation groups.

In 2002 he received the Zois Award, the highest scientific award in Slovenia, for his achievements in the field of graph theory and algebra. Since 2010, he has been a member of the committee that selects the Zois Award recipients, as well as the recipients of other scientific honours from the government of Slovenia.

Research
In his research, Marušič has focused on the actions of permutation groups on graphs. Some of his major contributions have been on the topics of the existence of semiregular automorphisms (see group action for an explanation of this) of vertex-transitive graphs, the existence of Hamiltonian paths and cycles in vertex-transitive graphs, and the structures of semi-symmetric graphs and half-transitive graphs. With co-authors, he proved that the Gray graph on 54 vertices is the smallest cubic semi-symmetric graph.

He has well over 100 publications.

Personal life
Marušič is married and has two sons. His brother, Dorijan Marušič was the Minister of Health for Slovenia.

title: Dragan Marušič