Attitudes and Cognitive Dissonance

cognitive consistency theories

humans justify behavior to minimize inconsistencies btw thoughts and actions

cognitive dissonance

unpleasant state that arises when a person recognizes the inconsistency btw his or her actions and beliefs

three steps to cognitive dissonance

witness inconsistency btw beliefs/thoughts and actions

inconsistency creates unpleasant emotion which we want to get rid of

we change our attitude to be consistent with our behavior

another way cognitive dissonance occurs

forced to make a hard decision with both positive and negative features

triggers emotional distress (dissonance)

triggers process of rationalization

attitudes are changed to make us more comfortable with our decisions

when does rationalization occur: before and after making a decision

before: rationalizing negatives to help choose a preference

after: rationalizing consequences to feel good about decision

effort justification

tendency to reduce dissonance by justifying time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing

“It’s not so bad!” seen in many contexts

car ownership - sunk cost fallacy

preference for major

friendships

basic training

sunk cost fallacy

when you are reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action bc they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial

induced/forced compliance

compelling someone to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes, or values

if forced, we tend to act as if we wanted to do it all along

experiment that tested induced compliance

festinger and carlsmith (1959)

when trying to change someone’s attitude…

use the smallest amt of incentive or coercion necessaryre

reward too sunstantial

won’t change underlying attitude

reward barely sufficient

better chance of changing attitudes

can extinguish behavior by

forced compliance

forbidden toy experiment

severe punishment (very angry) —> no change in rating of toy

mild punishment —> liked toy a lot less

when does inconsistency = dissonance

when it challenges how we view ourselves

inconsistency creates dissonance when behavior

was freely chosen

was not sufficiently justified

had predictable negative consequences

what is another way to reduce dissonance

self-affirmationa

self affirmation

focusing on a different, strong, self-aspect/schema to reduce dissonance

“ok i did ____ but I’m still ____”

self perception theory

attitudes are inferred via behavior rather than introspection

dissonance is not a real thing, there is no unpleasant state, infer from behavior what our attitudes should be

cognitive dissonance vs self perception

cognitive dissonance: inconsistency produces unpleasant arousal and we reduce arousal by changing attitude

self perception: no arousal, we infer attitudes from our behavior

when is cognitive dissonance used

when behavior conflicts with pre-existing strong attitude

when do we use self-perception

used when no attitude exists or it is weak