POLI 311: 2 - Persuasion, Cognitive Dissonance & Link to Behaviour

Cognitive Dissonance and Consistency

Psychological inconsistencies among a person’s attitudes can cause an uncomfortable state of tension. Therefore, this increases their need to achieve cognitive balance (consistency)

Kinds of Dissonance

 Belief-disconfirmation: being confronted with information that conflicts with an attitude already held.

 Induced-compliance: having to justify an attitude that one does not hold, or persuade people to do an unpleasant activity.

 Free-choice: having to choose one of two options even though the unchosen option has desirable properties.

Robert Abelson’s Four Modes of Resolution

Denial, Bolstering, Differentiation and Transcendence

Denial

• A direct attack on one or both conflicting cognitive elements, or a denial of the relationship/sign between them.

• Mechanism: Rejecting the validity of a fact, asserting the exact opposite, or explaining away the negative/positive valence to restore balance.

• Example: A person on a strict diet claiming they never really liked rich foods in the first place.

Bolstering

• Adding new cognitive elements or reinforcing existing balanced relations to overwhelm or outweigh the imbalance.

• Mechanism: Accumulating supporting arguments, rationalizations, or secondary beliefs that make the overall structure stable.

• Example: A smoker convincing themselves that smoking is good for their nerves, highly enjoyable, and socially essential to offset health concerns.

Differentiation

• Splitting a single cognitive element into distinct, dissociated sub-parts so they no longer directly contradict each other.

• Mechanism: Compartmentalizing or redefining terms to separate the conflicting contexts.

• Example: Deciding that a specific authority figure is "good and wise" in professional contexts, but entirely "misguided" in personal contexts, separating the evaluation.

Transcendence

• Embedding the conflicting elements into a larger, superordinate concept or higher-level framework.

• Mechanism: Shifting to a broader perspective where the contradiction ceases to matter or becomes part of a grander, harmonious design.

• Example: Resolving a scientific-versus-religious contradiction by viewing scientific discovery simply as the mechanism through which a higher spiritual order operates.

Choosing a strategy

Individuals generally tend to cycle through or attempt these modes based on cognitive difficulty and the intensity of affect. Simpler tactics like denial or bolstering are often tried first because they require less structural overhaul of one's worldview, whereas differentiation and transcendence demand more complex cognitive restructuring.

Doestoevsky on Attitude and Behaviour

People may consciously deceive others, either through their actions or opinions, about what their true beliefs really are. Or, they may be unaware of their “true” attitudes altogether

The LaPiere Study

LaPiere sets out to prove that there is no necessary relationships between attitudes and behaviour.

 To demonstrate this, he travelled around for two years (1930-1932) with what he describes as an “attractive.” He assumes that attitudes towards them would be negative due to discrimatory sentiment towards the Chinese. However, they were almost never refused service vis-a-vis. On the other hand, when he inquired on the phone, they were rejected

Attitude-behaviour gap

LaPiere demonstrated a profound discrepancy between what people say in response to a hypothetical questionnaire (verbal attitudes) and how they actually behave when interacting with real individuals in face-to-face social situations (overt actions)

Social desirability bias

Once such expressions become proscribed law or simply abandoned by most, people need to conceal them and express the more “socially desirable” answer.

• Social desirability biases emerge around all kinds of issues:

• People tend to over-report “good behavior” like how often they floss their teeth, go to church, and vote

• People tend to under-report “bad behavior”, like how often they commit criminal acts, drug use, sexual promiscuity, etc…

• Note that “good” and “bad” here often aren’t objectively so; rather, these are simply judgments based on what we think are prevailing community standards

Informational conformity

When in an ambiguous situation, a person will look to others for guidance

eg: The Asch Experiment

The Asch Conformity Experiment

In Sherif’s experiment, there is neither a “right” nor an “obvious” answer to how much the line has moved. Asch put a naive participant in the room with another group who agreed on a “correct” answer beforehand. The question was: Which of lines A, B, or C matches the length of the line on the left?

In the end, very few actually believed the majority opinion to be correct. They went along to avoid being ridiculed or thought peculiar

IAT