In terms of how it is actually experienced, cognitive dissonance most closely resembles a negative emotion or a negative state of arousal a gap in memory an eerie feeling akin to deja vu intense cognitive focus (i. e., being "in the zone")

A) a negative emotion or a negative state or arousal

Explanation:

In psychology, cognitive dissonance happens when a person holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, or participates in an action that goes against one of these, either his believes, ideas or values, and experiences psychological stress because of that. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent psychologically.

The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein they try to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.

Feeling uncomfortable when one act in a way that is against his or her believe and hence stress themselves over the actions is cognitive dissonance.