Which psychological term refers to the stress of holding contrasting beliefs?

The story behind the answer

Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort you feel when your beliefs, attitudes, or actions conflict—like valuing health but smoking. To relieve this stress, people often change a belief, adjust their behavior, or rationalize (“I only smoke on weekends”). Leon Festinger coined the term in 1957; his classic study showed that people paid $1 to lie later convinced themselves the task was fun, reducing dissonance by changing their attitude.

Remember it as “dissonance = discord in your thoughts.” The other options don’t fit: split-brain refers to severed connections between brain hemispheres; blindsight is responding to visual stimuli without conscious vision; “flip-flop syndrome” isn’t a standard psychological term.