After engaging in the campaigning, the person may experience dissonance in connection with having publicly supported a candidate whom he or she did not previous like very much and try to reduce the dissonance by deciding that he or she really likes the candidate. From a self-perception position, the person simply “looks back” and sees that he or she decided to do the campaigning without much pressure. Hence, the person may conclude that he or she “must really like the candidate.” Each of these cognitive dissonance addiction conceptions may be viable in various arenas when people take actions that are counter attitudinal in nature. In summary, Cognitive Dissonance theory has contributed to the concept of consistency in several ways. Firstly, Festinger integrated various concepts, including attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, value and behaviours, which had been considered separately as a single construct of cognition. This treatment made it possible for scholars to understand the psychological process as a whole.
Theories of Persuasion
- For example, Elliot Aronson (1969) argues that people wish to appear reasonable to themselves and suggests that in Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1959) experiment, if “dissonance exists, it is because the individual’s behavior is inconsistent with his self-concept” (p. 27).
- To resolve cognitive dissonance, a person can aim to ensure that their actions are consistent with their values or vice versa.
A review of cognitive dissonance theory at the organisation level was also conducted to integrate the relevant knowledge that was published from 2000 to 2016 (Hinojosa et al., 2017). The review revealed that most of the related studies focused on a specific stage rather than the whole process of cognitive dissonance, with the least coverage on the motivation phase. The two most studied phases of cognitive dissonance in the organisational context were the cognitive discrepancy and the discrepancy reduction phase. Although Cognitive Dissonance Theory has its shortcomings, it does offer us insight into the relationship among attitudes, cognitions, affect, and behaviors, and it does suggest routes to attitude change and persuasion. Social cognition researchers as well as communication scholars continue to use many of the ideas from CDT. As Steven Littlejohn (2002) observes, Festinger’s theory is not only the most important consistency theory; it is one of the most significant theories in social psychology.
How Attitude Change Takes Place
If listeners feel they are being coerced into doing something, then dissonance will not be aroused. They may alter their behavior in the short term, but as soon as the coercion is gone, the original behavior will reemerge. It’s like the person who drives more slowly when a police officer is nearby but ignores speed limits once officers are no longer present. As a speaker, if you want to increase cognitive dissonance, you need to make sure that your audience doesn’t feel coerced or manipulated, but rather that they can clearly see that they have a choice of whether to be persuaded.
The Theory of Animal Mind: Evidence of Influencing Psychological Theories
Indeed, at our knowledge, the existing studies examining the CDS are subject to the same methodological issues we raised previously, and the field lacks a reliable instrument to assess the CDS. The relation between inconsistency and CDS is more than a presence-absence relation and it forms a main axiom of CDT. As a consequence, to achieve a test of the model and clear predictions, one must measure the degree of inconsistency or other factors responsible for its magnitude which are supposed to impact the CDS (e.g., strength, importance, centrality). This relation between inconsistency and CDS has been under-examined in the literature, and an effort must be made to operationalize inconsistency rigorously. This means that operationalization of both the assessment of inconsistency and the manipulation of inconsistency is required, and that only systematic measures would allow for investigation of the relations between inconsistency, CDS and the regulation process. Moreover, in the present state of conceptualization, assessing the inconsistency may also be the most relevant way to assess the “dissonance” construct.
What cognitive dissonance feels like
In fact, the term “meat” itself can be argued to be part of the concealing of these animal origins. It was originally not reserved for animal meat but could be used to describe any type of solid food (Singer, 1995). In earlier hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies, people were quite familiar with the animals they consumed. It can, hence, be argued that they had a clear association between meat and animals.
Almost all of the participants agreed to walk into the waiting room and persuade the confederate that the boring experiment would be fun. In their laboratory experiment, they used 71 male students as participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a peg board for an hour). Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education.
Acquire new information that outweighs the dissonant beliefs.
- Altogether, according to the diversity of specific emotion studied, focusing on one specific affect or on a cocktail of affects to capture the nature of CDS seems inappropriate.
- In addition, a serious evaluation of the theory requires assessing the whole model and not only the last sequential part.
- If we put effort into a task that we have chosen to carry out, and the task turns out badly, we experience dissonance.
- Finally, looking on the bright side, social psychology is not suffering a decade of crisis.
- For instance, the hypocrisy paradigm (Aronson, 1992; Stone and Fernandez, 2008; Priolo et al., 2019) compares inconsistent conditions to neutral or consistent ones.
Everyday Health follows strict sourcing guidelines to ensure the accuracy of its content, outlined in our editorial policy. We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions. According to Festinger, there are a few ways that a person might resolve this dissonance. These 17 Positive CBT & Cognitive Therapy Exercises [PDF] include our top-rated, ready-made templates for helping others develop more helpful thoughts and behaviors in response to challenges, while broadening the scope of traditional CBT. This offers opportunities to discuss the discrepancies, deepen the relationship, and re-align values. Conversely, we may justify or trivialize negative behavior or even end the relationship.
- But cognitive dissonance in and of itself doesn’t have to be a bad thing, or only cause distress.
- The general model of CDT suggests that the detection of an inconsistency will evoke a CDS, which will motivate a regulation strategy.
- People like to believe that they are logical, consistent, and good at making decisions.
- Cognitive dissonance theory explains the mental unease and emotional discomfort that arise when this harmony is disrupted, leading us to strive for internal consistency and alignment.
- For instance, the anterior cingulate cortex is consistently activated in CDT paradigms, but also in MMM paradigms (see Proulx et al., 2012) and in mortality salience paradigms (Quirin et al., 2012).
A Biosocial Model of Affective Decision Making
