COGNITIVE

DISSONANCE
2008PSY—Social Psychology
Mt Gravatt Campus, Griffith University
Week 4, Semester 2, 2015
Keeping our social heads in order
• By now, you will be familiar with the notion that there is a
powerful automatic component to social knowledge and
social thinking
• one of the primary reasons for this is that we use schemas and
other cognitive structures to help us navigate through the
complexities of our social settings
• But at times, the environment will throw up a series of
square pegs for our round holes—we will be forced to
hold two or more contradictory beliefs or attitudes.
• we must have a way to deal with people, ideas and actions (our
own and those of others) that do not fit neatly together…
• Dissonance processes provide a strong challenge to our
views of ourselves as rational deliberate beings
• very controversial research programs from the 1950s-2000s
Aims and outline
• The aim of this lecture is to introduce you in more
depth to the processes of cognitive dissonance
• this area is probably one of the best known aspects of social
psych outside of psychology
• If "person or situation?" is the most important question in
social psychology, cognitive dissonance theory is by far
the most important and influential theory in social
psychology
• Will begin with Festinger’s original case study and
move through the components of dissonance in turn
• Several classic studies that underpin the main
concepts will be presented in context
Cognitive Dissonance
• One of the major research areas and a key theme of
social psychology
• psychology; advertising/marketing; sociology etc
• Festinger, Aronson, Carlsmith (classics); Joel Cooper (recent)
• Origins in the work of Fritz Heider
• briefly covered in social perception
• also attitude change
• originally, balance theory came from social networks—later applied
to attitudes etc
Cognitive consistency—the background to
dissonance
• Following WWII, many cognitive consistency
theories developed that emphasised rationality
• i.e., consistency between premises and conclusions
• Also, linked to strong prewar behaviourist period
• Festinger in mid 1950s sought to examine the
affective basis (i.e., motivation, arousal) of
consistency
• downplayed the cognitive rationality component of other
theories—non-descriptive
• Heider’s Balance Theory (more later)
• remember the naïve scientist?
When Prophecy Fails
Festinger, Reicken, & Schachter (1956)
• Now famous participant observation study
• Examined and described activities of a classic end of the
world cult active in mid-50s in North America
• Ethics: originally suppressed name and other details
• The cult were called The Seekers
• They gave a specific date and time for the world to end
and for a UFO to arrive to collect the faithful
• very important aspect in Festinger’s model that emphasised the
irrevocability of decisions
• later models mostly still revolve around this or very similar constructs
The study: naturalistic case study
• Researchers joined cult secretly
• ethical issues if we did this now for science
• but perfectly legal for reality TV!!
• Surprise! The world did not end… ∴, the irrevocable
evidence was presented to the cult members
• a minority experienced “deconversion”, left cult
• This would seem to be the most cognitively rational way to maintain
consistency—the data disconfirm, therefore, drop the belief
• but most remained and reaffirmed commitment
• The question, of course, was Why would they do this?
• Why would apparently rational people ignore the evidence?
• Festinger's answer came from the construct of cognitive
dissonance—cult members were motivated to resolve
the dissonance they had experienced.
What is cognitive dissonance?
• Dissonance is the negative arousal felt when
inconsistent cognitive elements are maintained
by the perceiver. These can be:
• attitude objects and other (valenced) people
• attitudes and behaviours
• beliefs and behaviours etc
• In particular, Aronson (in your text) focuses on
the self-image basis of dissonance
• his own research as a pioneer of cognitive dissonance
• cf., Fiske, self-enhancement/esteem motive
The dissonance process
• Action presents dissonance cue
• is the action attributed to free choice?
• many induced compliance studies—read in text
• consider the fundamental attribution error/correspondence bias
• Dissonance manifests as unpleasant negative
arousal
• can the arousal be attributed to dissonance?
• e.g., placebo studies (like expectancy studies)
• Dissonance reduction strategies kick in
• these are all unconscious/automatic
1. change behaviour
2. change cognitions/attitudes (cf., att. change)
• broad reaching strategy… perceptions, beliefs etc.
3. add consonant cognitions
Contemporary perspective based on
Cooper and Fazio—Four steps
• Joel Cooper and Russ Fazio (1984)
• and many research studies following
1. Behaviour leads to unwanted negative consequences
• but see Harmon-Jones and Mills (1996)
2. Personal responsibility
• free choice + foreseeable consequences
3. Physiological arousal
4. Attribution of the arousal to (dissonance inducing)
behaviour
Why does dissonance exist at all?!
• Most agree that dissonance is an inevitable
consequence of living in a complex world
• Fiske: understanding motive
• Almost any action/choice carries +/-
• what do we do with the left over evidence once the die
is cast and the choice is made?
• Also, if much of our behaviour is normatively
driven, whenever we do something, we may need
to reconcile our apparently free choices with the
realities of being part of a social and cultural
system
• there are studies showing the impact of culture on this
Biological and neuro basis
• Arousal from dissonance is real
• negative arousal can be detected in fMRIs or GSR
• Westen et al (1999) brain studies
• reduction of “reasoning” areas
• evident positive emotion upon resolution
• Evolutionary evidence
• e.g., Eagan et al (2007) Monkey M&M study!—text
• Once they picked a colour, they rejected the others
• Shows the difficulty of seeking to reason explicitly in
dissonance-inducing situations
• consider charged attitudinal situations—e.g., family BBQ…
• Reasoning is controlled thinking…
• Arousal lowers cognitive workspace (one of the necessary
preconditions for controlled thinking)
Decisions make a good paradigm
• Post-decisional dissonance
• this is a paradigm that spawned many studies
• The idea is that people are induced to make a decision among
equal attractive alternatives—then dissonance avoidance
processes occur esp. if the decision is irrevocable
• E.g., classic Brehm (1956) study—appliances
• No reason to assume that liking for appliances should be different
before and after a choice, when they started the same
• Permanence and irrevocability
• Gilbert and Ebert’s (2002) photo study
• Knox and Inkster’s (1968) cool racetrack study
• also relates to Illusion of Control…
• Text introduces lowballing in this context
• could add other social perception biases
Effort justification
• One of the classic effects!
• Countless studies that fit the paradigm
• those who must undergo an ordeal involving
work/stress/unpleasantness in order to gain a social
object are very likely to value the social object much
more than controls who don't suffer
• Aronson and Mills (1959)
• Psychology Student Sex Discussion Group!
• Some have described getting into and completing
psychology honours in such terms!
Justification vs punishment
• Counterattitudinal advocacy
• key process in dissonance research
• Somehow people induced to make an attitude-
discrepant statement
• where no external justification is present, an internal
one must be sought→diss. reduction
• Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) peg study
• By contrast, punishment as a deterrent can
provide clear external justification or not (if
mild)…
• Aronson and Carlsmith (1963) preschool toy study
we may not get a chance to cover this slide in lecture time
Dissonance and victim blaming
• Another way in which dissonance can manifest is
when we are in a situation of harming others
• where we do harm and do not actively reject norms or
directions that may conflict with our values
• Lack of external justification → search for internal
• classic study: evidence that the victim is derogated when
they wouldn’t be able to retaliate (Berscheid et al, 1968)
• A converse effect can occur with helping. E.g., Vaes &
Muratore (2013)-oncology health care workers read fictitious
case, terminal Px, then rated her suffering. From the
abstract:
• "…humanizing a patient's suffering positively predicted
symptoms of burnout especially for those participants that
had higher levels of direct contact with patients"
• n.b., "humanizing" has a specific theoretical meaning here