This entry raises a point: it says cognitive dissonance is refusal to intellectually adapt to data which contradict held belief. I thought cog diss was what happened in the mind of a subordinate when commanded to perform two mutually contradicting orders by two valid authorities with equal authority.
Pull the two words apart and take a look at them:
cognitive
–adjective
1.
of or pertaining to cognition.
2.
of or pertaining to the mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning, as contrasted with emotional and volitional processes.
dissonance
–noun
1.
inharmonious or harsh sound; discord; cacophony.
2.
Music.
a.
a simultaneous combination of tones conventionally accepted as being in a state of unrest and needing completion.
b.
an unresolved, discordant chord or interval. Compare consonance (def. 3).
3.
disagreement or incongruity.
Essentially, your example could be considered the same. Anything that is contradictory but mandated is going to cause CD.
What you refer to is confusion based contradictory input. What Rahm refers to is refusal to accept reality when faced with unexpected or unacceptable outcomes.
But is the outcome unexpected outcome-driven cognitive dissonance or is it a planned Cloward and Piven strategy?