Cognitive Dissonance and Attitude Change

Flashcards covering key concepts related to cognitive dissonance, attitude changes, and relevant psychological studies from the lecture.

Desire for Consistency

The human preference for harmony between one's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, often leading to changes in one of these elements to achieve balance.

Cognitive Dissonance

The uncomfortable state of tension or disharmony experienced when there is an inconsistency between attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors.

Cognitions

Mental structures that include beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge of one's own behavior.

Motivation to Reduce Dissonance

The inherent drive people have to alleviate the uncomfortable tension caused by cognitive dissonance.

Festinger and Carlsmith Study

A classic experiment where participants who were paid $1 to lie about enjoying a boring task later reported enjoying it more than those paid $20, demonstrating how insufficient justification can lead to attitude change.

Insufficient Justification

A condition in cognitive dissonance where a person's behavior is not adequately explained by external rewards, leading them to change their attitude to reduce internal conflict.

Ways to Reduce Dissonance

Strategies to alleviate cognitive tension, including denying the cognition, reducing the importance of the discrepancy, adding new cognitions, reducing perceived choice, or changing a dissonant belief, attitude, or behavior.

Conditions for Attitude Change (Dissonance Theory)

For dissonance to lead to attitude change, the behavior must have an unwanted negative consequence, the person must feel personally responsible (freedom of choice and foreseeable consequences), and they must attribute their arousal to the dissonance.

Buyer's Remorse

A common form of cognitive dissonance experienced after making a purchase, where one feels bad about the decision or the item's value.

Overjustification Effect

The phenomenon where an expected external incentive, such as a monetary reward, decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task they already enjoy.

Intrinsic Motivation

The desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake, driven by internal satisfaction rather than external rewards.

Extrinsic Motivation

The desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment.

Stanford Prison Study (and Dissonance)

A psychological experiment where participants assigned to 'guard' roles exhibited abusive behavior, reconciling their actions through mechanisms like shifting blame or perceiving a lack of personal choice to reduce cognitive dissonance.

Value Expressive Function for Attitude

The idea that attitudes can serve to express an individual's core values, leading to positive attitudes toward things aligned with those values and negative attitudes toward things that conflict with them.