Cognitive Dissonance Theory in Social Psychology iResearchNet

He then will feel better and not experience cognitive dissonance, which is an uncomfortable state. As another example, in Chapter 8, McNeil et al. describe how the change-resistance theory (McNeil & Alibali, 2005) can account for the difficulties children experience with acquiring an understanding of mathematical equivalence—affording the goal of explaining this phenomenon. Furthermore, these authors also discuss how they have “used the change-resistance account as a framework for designing a more comprehensive intervention” (i.e., as a tool). The reasons for this enhancement include increased motivation on the part of the client and a more positive view about the likelihood of therapeutic success. Feelings of personal choice and responsibility are at the core of these reasons, and they represent essential conditions for dissonance to occur; people must feel that they had choice and were responsible for the action that led to the dissonance.

• Each DBI may include several combinations of these activities performed over one or more sessions.
• The elaboration likelihood model has been extensively imported into extant work on psychotherapy and counseling (e.g., Heesaker, Conner, & Prichard, 1995).
• After about a half century of the development of the theory, several authors have published condensed works and state-of-the-art pieces concerning the topic, but they often suggest a partially deviant point of view.
• The most important criterion of behavior control is the demand for dependency and obedience to the group, its ideology, and its leadership.
• Following E. Aronson’s (1968) proposal, Steele’s (1988) self-affirmation theory was among the first to emphasize the importance of self-worth in the experience of cognitive dissonance.

Chapter One – Dissonance motivation from an action-based perspective: An updated review

Cognitive dissonance was defined by Leon Festinger as an aversive psychological drive state that when experienced we are motivated to reduce (Festinger 1957). Dissonance is the result of inconsistency between two or more cognitions, and these cognitions may represent one’s attitudes, thoughts about one’s behavior, or other stored information. As the number of cognitions that are inconsistent with each other increases, the amount of dissonance also increases. Based on his observations of individuals he believed to be self-actualized, including historical figures such as the U.S. presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, Maslow outlined a cluster of 14 characteristics that distinguish self-actualized individuals. Additionally, self-actualized individuals intensely appreciate simple or natural events, such as a sunrise, and they sometimes experience profound changes that Maslow termed peak experiences. Although difficult to describe, peak experiences often involve a momentary loss of self and feelings of transcendence.

Theories of Attitude and Behavior Change

As mentioned, there are many dissonance-reducing strategies that omnivores can employ to reduce the discomfort that arises. However, one way to prevent cognitive dissonance from emerging in the first place is to simply dissociate meat from its animal origins. Cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957) is often considered to be one of the most influential theories in social psychology. According to the theory, inconsistency between attitude and behavior produces an unpleasant emotional state called ‘cognitive dissonance,’ and people try to reduce this undesired state by changing their attitudes. For example, after students wrote a favorable essay about a tuition increase, their attitudes toward the tuition increase tended to become more positive (Steele, Southwick, & Critchlow, 1981). Thus, students change their attitudes in order to reduce cognitive inconsistency between their attitudes cognitive dissonance and addiction (‘I don’t like the idea of a tuition increase’) and behaviors (‘I wrote an essay supporting it’).

Supine body posture decreases rationalizations: Testing the action-based model of dissonance

Secondly, the self-affirmation model (Berkowitz, 1988) focused on the overall self-image of moral and adaptive adequacy as an alternative explanation for attitude change. Lastly, the aversive consequences model (also commonly known as ”a new look at dissonance”) (Cooper & Fazio, 1984) also presented an alternative view on mental discomfort. This model proposed that the psychological stress was caused by the feeling of being self-responsible for inducing aversive consequences, rather than the inconsistency in cognitive elements. In other words, an individual can reduce the mental discomfort by changing the inconsistent cognitions, reducing the importance of conflicting elements, acquiring new harmonious elements or increasing the importance of the existing consistent elements. Festinger used the case of a habitual smoker to demonstrate the theory (Festinger, 1962). A smoker who knows that smoking is bad for health will experience dissonance, which causes mental discomfort, because the habit of smoking and the knowledge of how harmful smoking is are conflicting.

A cognitive dissonance perspective on threats to self-concept in obsessive-compulsive disorder

• 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 attitudes to fit our behaviors.
• The Social Influence model is a systematic approach that allows expert witnesses to analyze and evaluate the elements of any specific case in terms of the degree of undue influence.
• Their friends and family encourage them to quit (subjective norm), and they believe they can stick to the plan with the help of nicotine patches (perceived behavioral control).

First, the person could remove the dissonant cognition by either changing his behaviour (stop smoking) or knowledge (believe that smoking is actually not bad for health). Second, the person could reduce the importance of the dissonant cognition by thinking that the risk of getting lung cancer from smoking is lesser than being in a car accident. Third, the person could increase the amount of consonant cognition by looking for positive effects of smoking.

• Cognitive Dissonance Theory is a psychological theory that explains how individuals experience a psychological tension when their behavior contradicts their thoughts and beliefs.
• In contrast, in the Izuma study, during the second rating task, participants perceived the discrepancy between their preference and past choice behaviors, while rating their preference for each item again.
• Sometimes you might find yourself engaging in behaviors that are opposed to your own beliefs due to external expectations at work, school, or in a social situation.
• Consistency between cognitions and actions is most common, but it is easy to find examples of inconsistent cognitions (Festinger, 1957).
• When one learns new information that challenges a deeply held belief, for example, or acts in a way that seems to undercut a favorable self-image, that person may feel motivated to somehow resolve the negative feeling that results—to restore cognitive consonance.
• For example, behaving in ways that are not aligned with your personal values may result in intense feelings of discomfort.

Action-based model

Lastly, the person could focus on the benefits of smoking as an important part of his or her life (Mills & Harmon-Jones, 1999). In simple terms, a dissonance is an inconsistency in cognitive elements, which can be knowledge, opinions, beliefs, or the behaviours of an individual. The existence of such inconsistency causes mental discomfort and motivates the individual to take some actions to reduce or eliminate it. We have millions of cognitions, many of which are in our awareness but most are not (Marx, 1976). Festinger (Festinger, 1962) theorised that a pair of cognitive elements may relate to each other in three ways.

1 Dissociation as a mean to prevent and reduce cognitive dissonance

Category-based theories of impression formation (Sect. 3.1) describe how negative out-group categories stimulate negative understanding. Mere knowledge of the stereotypes about one’s group creates stereotype threat (Steele), undermining the performance of distracted, frustrated, targets of stereotyping. Festinger’s social comparison theory describes how people strive to evaluate themselves accurately, by comparing their standing relative to similar others, on matters of ability or opinion. Schachter extended this work in exploring the fear-affiliation hypothesis, whereby people under threat affiliate with similar others, perhaps to gauge the appropriateness of their emotional reactions. From this came Schachter’s subsequent arousal-cognition theory of emotion, positing that unexplained physiological arousal elicits cognitive labels from the social context.