Cognitive Dissonance Theory

10 Key excerpts on "Cognitive Dissonance Theory"

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  eBook - PDF

  Encyclopedia of Social Psychology

  • Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, Roy Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Cognitive Dissonance and Social Life Cognitive dissonance is ubiquitous. We like to think of ourselves as psychologically consistent human beings—that we act in ways that are consistent with our attitudes and that our attitudes are typically consistent with each other. We like to think that we make good choices and act in our own best interests. However, life often throws us curves that create inconsistency. The choices we make often lead us to dilemmas in which we need to relinquish some aspects of a rejected alter-native that we would really like or to accept aspects of our chosen alternative that we would rather not have to accept. Sometimes, we find ourselves engaged in effortful activities that make little sense or find that we have to say or do things that do not quite fit with our private attitudes. These occasions cause us to experi-ence dissonance—that uncomfortable state of tension that Festinger introduced in 1957. We do not live with the tension; rather, we take action to reduce it. And that is what is so interesting about cognitive dissonance. In our effort to reduce dissonance, we come to distort our choices to make them seem better, we come to like what we have suffered to attain, and we change our atti-tudes to fit our behaviors. Discovering and explaining the processes behind these occasions pervading our social life has been the hallmark of research on the the-ory of cognitive dissonance. Joel Cooper Amir Goren 152 ——— Cognitive Dissonance Theory See also Attitude Change; Attitudes; Cognitive Consistency; Effort Justification Further Readings Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, 177–181. Brehm, J. W. (1956). Postdecision changes in the desirability of alternatives. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52, 384–389. Cooper, J., & Fazio, R. H. (1984). A new look at dissonance theory.

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  A Practical Guide to Theoretical Frameworks for Social Science Research

  • Andrea J. Bingham, Robert Mitchell, Daria S. Carter(Authors)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5 Psychology

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003261759-5

  Cognitive Dissonance Theory

  Definition and Overview

  Cognitive Dissonance Theory (CDT) is concerned with mental inconsistency and involves the interplay of three areas: cognition, psychology, and motivation (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 2019 ). CDT is a three-step process that holds that a percieved “cognitive inconsistency leads to a motivational state that promotes regulation, which comes mainly through a change of opinions or behaviors” (Vaidis & Bran, 2019 , p. 1). In other words, perception, negative impact, then regulation or reduction strategies (Vaidis & Bran, 2018 ). CDT applies to a situation when what people believe to be true contradicts or clashes with newly acquired information or with how they act; in this situation, a cognitive dissonant state (CDS) is created (Elliot & Devine, 1994 ; Glatz et al., 2012 ; Cheng & Chen, 2022 ). Most CDT theorists agree that this dissonance can vary in magnitude (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 2019). CDT has been a major and well-respected theory in psychology for many decades (Vaidis & Bran, 2019 ).).

  CDT posits that individuals’ minds work to resolve the dissonance by changing their attitudes or beliefs, adjusting behavior, changing the environment, varying or filtering exposure to conflicting information, or deploying justification logic, depending on which is easier (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959 ; Festinger, 1962a , 1962b ; Hinojosa et al., 2017 ; Cheng & Chen, 2022 ). The larger or more important the conflict, the more motivated individuals are to resolve it. Alternatively, instead of resolving the inconsistency, one might choose to find ways to cope with the dissonant state, such as justification, ignoring the situation, or finding a compromise (Elliot & Devine, 1994 ; Vaidis & Bran, 2019 ). For a hypothetical illustration of CDT, see Figure 5.1 .

  Figure 5.1

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  Psychoanalysis, Classic Social Psychology and Moral Living

  Let the Conversation Begin

  • Paul Marcus(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2 For example, studies have shown that the great majority of American college students opposed cheating when they begin their studies; however, anonymous surveys indicate that many of them end up cheating in one form or another by the time they complete their undergraduate degree (Storch & Storch, 2003). How they justify their immoral behavior, or how adults rationalize ill-conceived and ill-fated behavior—like cheating on their income taxes, eating unhealthy food, engaging in cigarette smoking or taking illegal/harmful drugs—are the kinds of everyday behaviors on which Cognitive Dissonance Theory focuses. However, dissonance processes may also have a positive function, including fostering psychotherapy effectiveness. They have also been a useful framework to understand child-rearing practices, economic and political behavior, and psychopathology (Cooper, 2007, pp. 164, 182).

  While Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory assumes that in general, people are driven (“hard wired”; Cooper, 2007, p. 81) to strive for psychological consistency so as to effectively function in the real-world, and they vigorously engage in a wide range of dissonance-reducing strategies and tactics to help them live a more flourishing life, such an outlook is not wholeheartedly embraced by others who view the human condition differently. For example, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his famous essay Self Reliance , “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has nothing to do” (2007, p. 19). Likewise, Walt Whitman noted in Song of Myself , “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes” (Reynolds, 2005, p. 88). Finally, Freud believed “neurosis had its origin in the inability to tolerate ambiguity” (Boym, 2010, p. 65). What Emerson, Whitman and especially Freud were getting at is that ambiguity and the uncertainty it evokes, particularly when it is rooted in ambivalence, characterize the human condition. The existence of contradictions in the domains of volition, such as the wish to do something and not do something, the intellect, such as believing in two contradictory ideas, and emotions, such as feeling love and hate for the same significant other, is commonplace in many social contexts (Akhtar, 2009, p. 12). In fact, for Freud and his followers, in important matters related to love, work, communal relations and faith, learning to creatively “live with” the ambiguity, uncertainty and ambivalence, rather than attempting to resolve it via a cognitive strategy the way Festinger and his followers suggest, is part of the art of living a flourishing life.3 As well-known psychoanalysts like Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion and others have suggested, human subjectivity is best conceived as fragmented, decentered and discontinuous, even schizoid, as philosopher Felix Guattari and psychoanalyst Gilles Deleuze have argued, rather than being a rational, reified and substantivized entity. There is no “fixed,” “true” or “deep” self in this view. The point is that Festinger’s theory is built on a version of the human condition that does not adequately reckon with the fact that there are profound emotional forces at play, often unconscious ones animated by desire, phantasy, drive and affect, for human experience in our era is characterized by multiplicity, contradiction and dissolution (Frosch, 1989, p. 228).4 This is one of the reasons that even if you make a rational choice, one that seems to be the best option given the context, you still can feel uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. Sounding like a postmodern-influenced psychoanalyst at his best, Mohandas Gandhi wisely put it, “My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth” (Jack, 1979, p. 10).5

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  Studies in Decision Making

  Social Psychological and Socio-Economic Analyses

  • Martin Irle, Lawrence B. Katz(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  282 Chapter 9. Cognitive Dissonance 2. Empirical evidence concerning dissonance theory In what follows we do not discuss the basic assumptions of dissonance theory, these being more than amply covered in a number of recent German and American publications (cf. Frey, 1978a, 1978b, 1979a, 1981a; Irle & Môntmann, 1978; Wicklund & Brehm, 1976; etc.). It should only be remembered that dis-sonance exists when two cognitions are incompatible with each other, and that dissonance is a negative drive state that prompts behaviors aimed at dissonance reduction. The stronger cognitive dissonance, the stronger the pressure to reduce the the dissonance; the way dissonance is reduced depends, however, on the resistance to change of the cognitions involved. Festinger (19 57) indicates four basic paradigms for testing dissonance theory: forced-compliance, confrontation with discrepant information,postdecisional dissonance and se-lective exposure to information after decisions. During the period 1968 - 1978, we carried out research in each of these fields, the results of which are separately reported in the following four sections. 2.1.Forced compliance Forced compliance is the topic that has stimulated the great-est number of dissonance studies. Dissonance theory predicts an inverse relation between the amount of reward and attitude change following counter-attitudinal behavior. According to dissonance theory, persons who are induced to behave contrary to the way they think or feel will be more favorable towards their actions the less they are rewarded for per'forming them. This paradoxical prediction can be explained as follows: per-sons have less justification for behaving as they did follow-ing a small reward than following a large one and, therefore, experience a greater degree of dissonance. Persons can, how-ever, reduce this dissonance by changing their attitudes to

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  Cognitive Motivation

  From Curiosity to Identity, Purpose and Meaning

  • David Beswick(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  For example, ‘Dissonance may be reduced by changing private opinion to bring it into line with the overt behaviour or by magnifying the amount of reward or punishment involved’ (Festinger 1957, p. 264). Festinger continued to represent his theory as a topic in social psychology, particularly in regard to attitude change, and it was in social psychology that his influence is most clearly marked. One of the signs of cognitive dissonance studied by Festinger and his associates in the early stages of their research was the effort people would make to gather information justifying a decision already made, such as studying advertising material on both accepted and rejected options after having made the purchase (Ehrlich, Guttman, Schoenbach and Mills 1957). Post-decision dissonance is postulated to occur regularly, because, in making a choice, the attractive qualities of a rejected alterna- tive and the negative features of the one chosen have been assimilated, and remain in memory, but are inconsistent with the choice. Adding cog- nitive elements to shift the balance more strongly in favour of the chosen alternative is postulated to reduce dissonance. Changes would then be made to the perceived desirability of the alternatives, widening the gap by making the chosen one appear more attractive and/or the rejected alternative less so (Brehm 1956, 1962). Cognitive Dissonance 91 91 Induced Compliance Effects A principle of insufficient justification was derived from dissonance theory propositions, such as Proposition 4 (b) in Festinger’s eight sets of propo- sitions summarizing his theory (Festinger 1957, pp. 260–265): ‘If forced compliance is elicited, the magnitude of the dissonance decreases as the magnitude of the reward or punishment increases.’ In contrast, the less reason there is to do something inconsistent with one’s beliefs, the greater will be the dissonance created by doing it.

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  Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology

  Collection: Volumes 1 & 2

  • Paul A M Van Lange, Arie W Kruglanski, E Tory Higgins, Paul A M Van Lange, Arie W Kruglanski, E Tory Higgins, Author(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  In the theory of cognitive dissonance, Festinger (1957) completed the task of viewing the world from the perspective of the individual. In dissonance theory, cognitive consistency was represented inside the head of the person. To think of mental life as a set of cognitive representations was a radical departure from the mainstream view of the 1950s. For the first time, people’s views of their social world, their appraisals of their fellow group members, their own opinions about the world, and their observations of their own and others’ behaviors could all be projected onto a common screen. All were cognitive representations inside the head. Moreover, some of those cognitive representations bore a relationship to each other. The birth of Cognitive Dissonance Theory occurred at that instant. The new theory – cognitive dissonance – became the most productive of all of his creative insights, and dissonance theory charted a research agenda that would last for half a century.

  COGNITIVE DISSONANCE IN A LEARNING THEORY WORLD

  The major tenets of the original version of dissonance theory are well known and straightforward. The state of cognitive dissonance occurs when people perceive that a pair of cognitions is inconsistent. Formally, Festinger defined a pair of cognitions as dissonant if the actor believed that one cognition followed from the obverse of the other. He postulated that dissonance is experienced as an unpleasant drive and, like other unpleasant drive states, needs to be reduced. The reduction occurs by changing the cognition least resistant to change or by adding cognitions that minimize the perceived magnitude of the discrepancy. In keeping with Festinger’s philosophical assumption that the dissonance battle was played out inside the head of the perceiver, he reasoned that inconsistency itself is a psychological state – that is, two cognitions are dissonant if the perceiver believes they are dissonant. The psychology of the perceiver, not the philosophical rules of logic, determines the existence of dissonance.

  The idea that people prefer consistency to inconsistency was not new. Fritz Heider (1946) and Theodore Newcomb (1956) had written about such ideas previously and they were also consistent with field theoretical notions of Festinger’s advisor, Kurt Lewin. To my knowledge, Festinger’s 1957 book outlining his ideas did not raise controversy until the publication two years later of Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1959) now classic study showing that people experienced dissonance after an attitude-inconsistent statement. As we know, Festinger and Carlsmith had people participate in a task that was specifically designed to be tedious and dull. Those participants then agreed to make a statement to a person, who they believed was a fellow student, extolling the excitement of the task. Few would have had difficulty with the finding that making the statement about the excitement of the task induced people to change their attitudes in the direction of their statement. If we accept the premise that people do not like inconsistency and that they are motivated to reduce the incongruence between their behavior and attitude, then the finding makes sense and would have been predicted by any consistency theory.

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  Social Psychology

  Core Concepts and Emerging Trends

  • Daniel W. Barrett(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  internal justification by changing an attitude as in the $1 reward condition.

  Cognitive Dissonance: Unpleasant arousal stemming from inconsistencies among one’s attitudes, beliefs, and/or behaviors

  Insufficient Justification: When a person believes that his or her explanation for their own behavior is inadequate

  Counter Attitudinal Advocacy: Arguing or advocating for a position that is counter or contrary to a person’s attitudes

  Counter Attitudinal Advocacy.

  When a person argues or advocates for a position with which she disagrees and that is counter or contrary to her attitudes, she is engaging in counter attitudinal advocacy (Festinger, 1957; Stone, 2012). Such counter attitudinal advocacy should create cognitive dissonance of the form “I believe X is true, but I just argued that X is false.” The most likely route that a person will take to reconcile these discrepant cognitions is to change her true attitude so that it is closer to the one she advocated for (Festinger, 1957). In one real-world study, adolescent girls who had significant concerns about their body image were assigned to either express the disadvantages of pursuing a thin body (high dissonance) or to receive psychoeducational material that similarly indicated its disadvantages (low dissonance) (Stice, Rohde, Gau, & Shaw, 2009). The authors hypothesized and found that the dissonance-inducing intervention led to beneficial changes in body dissatisfaction, eating habits, and eating disorder symptoms as much as one year later. Other studies have demonstrated the efficacy of counter attitudinal advocacy on smoking (Simmons & Brandon, 2007) and the reduction of prejudice (Leippe & Eisenstadt, 2010).

  Figure 7.6 Cognitive Dissonance and Attitude Change

  Source: Adapted from Festinger, L., Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58,

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  The Science of Social Influence

  Advances and Future Progress

  • Anthony R. Pratkanis(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  4

  The Evolution of CognitiveDissonance Theory:A Personal Appraisal

  ELLIOT ARONSON

  I am a chronic and habitual storyteller. So what I want to do (primarily) is tell you a story. Part of the story will be fairly traditional for this kind of volume; that is, it will describe a program of research that has come out of my laboratory. But, in addition, the story will include an homage to my dear friend and mentor, Leon Festinger, who revolutionized social psychology. It will also include a history of an idea– Cognitive Dissonance Theory– as well as a central aspect of my philosophy of science (such as it is!). But mostly this story is a celebration of social psychology– a field that I have been madly in love with for the past 50 years.

  THE BEGINNING OF MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH DISSONANCETHEORY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

  I was not always in love with social psychology. As a matter of fact, when I entered graduate school in the mid-1950s, it was not my intention to become a social psychologist. I had read a little social psychology as an undergrad, and it struck me as pretty boring stuff. The hot item at the time was the Yale research on communication and persuasion which, among other things, demonstrated that, if you present people with a message indicating that nuclear submarines are feasible, it is more effective if you attribute it to a respected physicist like J. Robert Oppenheimer than if you attribute it to an unreliable source like Pravda . I can see now that this was important and necessary research, but at the time, it seemed so obvious that, to an undergraduate, it hardly seemed necessary to perform an elaborate experiment to demonstrate that it was true.

  In those days, almost everything done in the field was inspired by a rather simplistic derivation from reinforcement theory. Thus, in the above example, it is clearly more rewarding (in the sense that it is more likely that one’s opinions will be correct) to be in agreement with a trustworthy expert than to be in agreement with a biased newspaper run by a totalitarian government. Even classic experiments that weren’t specifically inspired by reinforcement theory (e.g. Asch’s 1951 experiments on conformity) could easily be recast and explained in terms of that simple and ubiquitous concept. The problem was that there weren’t other theories around that could make predictions that couldn’t somehow be subsumed under the dominant and apparently more parsimonious wings of reinforcement theory. For example in the Asch experiment, because it was dealing with something as trivial as the size of a line, a reinforcement theorist might suggest that it is simply more rewarding to go along with the unanimous judgment of six other people than to defy that opinion and brave their scorn and ridicule.

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  The Science of Social Influence

  Advances and Future Progress

  • Anthony R. Pratkanis(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  4 The Evolution of Cognitive Dissonance Theory: A Personal Appraisal ELLIOT ARONSON I am a chronic and habitual storyteller. So what I want to do (primarily) is tell you a story. Part of the story will be fairly traditional for this kind of volume; that is, it will describe a program of research that has come out of my labora- tory. But, in addition, the story will include an homage to my dear friend and mentor, Leon Festinger, who revolutionized social psychology. It will also include a history of an idea – Cognitive Dissonance Theory – as well as a central aspect of my philosophy of science (such as it is!). But mostly this story is a celebration of social psychology – a field that I have been madly in love with for the past 50 years. THE BEGINNING OF MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH DISSONANCE THEORY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY I was not always in love with social psychology. As a matter of fact, when I entered graduate school in the mid-1950s, it was not my intention to become a social psychologist. I had read a little social psychology as an undergrad, and it struck me as pretty boring stuff. The hot item at the time was the Yale research on com- munication and persuasion which, among other things, demonstrated that, if you present people with a message indicating that nuclear submarines are feasible, it is more effective if you attribute it to a respected physicist like J. Robert Oppenheimer than if you attribute it to an unreliable source like Pravda. I can see now that this was important and necessary research, but at the time, it seemed so obvious that, to an undergraduate, it hardly seemed necessary to perform an elaborate experiment to demonstrate that it was true. In those days, almost everything done in the field was inspired by a rather simplistic derivation from reinforcement theory. Thus, in the above example, it is clearly more rewarding (in the sense that it is more likely that one’s opinions will

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  The SAGE Handbook of Social Psychology

  Concise Student Edition

  • Michael A Hogg, Joel Cooper, Michael A Hogg, Joel Cooper(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University. Axsom, D. (1989) ‘Cognitive Dissonance and Behavior Change in Psychotherapy’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 25: 234–52 . Axsom, D. and Cooper, J. (1985) ‘Cognitive Dissonance and Psychotherapy: The Role of Effort Justification in Inducing Weight Loss’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 21: 149–60. Axsom, D., Yates, S., and Chaiken, S. (1987) ‘Audience Response as a Heuristic Cue in Persuasion’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 53: 30–40. Azida, T. and Joule, R.-V. (2001) ‘Double Soumission Forcée et Engagement: Le Cas des Comportements Inconsistants’, Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale , 14: 31–55. Beasley, R.K. and Joslyn, M.R. (2001) ‘Cognitive Dissonance and Post-Decision Attitude Change in Six Presidential Elections’, Political Psychology , 22: 521–40. Beauvois, J.L. and Joule, R.V. (1999) ‘A Radical Point of View on Dissonance Theory’, in E. Harmon-Jones and J. Mills (eds), Cognitive Dissonance: Progress on a Pivotal Theory in Social Psychology . Washington, DC: Amercian Psychological Association, pp. 43–70. Bem, D.J. (1967) ‘Self-Perception: An Alternate Interpretation of Cognitive Dissonance Phenomena’, Psychological Review , 74: 183–200. Bem, D.J. (1972) ‘Self-Perception Theory’, in L. Berkowitz (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (vol. 6). New York: Academic Press, pp. 1–62. Bem, D.J. and McConnell, H.K. (1970) ‘Testing the Self-Perception Explanation of Dissonance Phenomena: On the Salience of Premanipulation Attitudes’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 14: 23–31. Berkowitz, L. and Knurek, D.A. (1969) ‘Label-Mediated Hostility Generalization’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 13: 200–6. Blanton, H., Cooper, J., Skurnik, I., and Aronson, J. (1997) ‘When Bad Things Happen to Good Feedback: Exacerbating the Need for Self-Justification with Self-Affirmations’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 23: 684–92.

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