Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance Answers.com gives this definition:

"A condition of conflict or anxiety resulting from inconsistency between one's beliefs and one's actions"

While Wiki says:

Cognitive dissonance is the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, which can be defined as any element of knowledge, including attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance holds that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to reduce the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions. Experiments have attempted to quantify this hypothetical drive.

hmm...this sounds familiar....

more later, when I've thought this through a bit.