Week 5 - cognitive dissonance attitudes

The emergence of cognitive dissonance 

“When prophecy fails” Festinger 1956 

• The seekers - doomsday cult. Belief that flood will end life on earth on 21st dec 1955. Few people saved by aliens. 

• Festinger saw this a test of cognitive dissonance theory - how people handle contradiction between belief and reality. 

• Prediction: when prophecy failed, member would experience severe psychological inconsistency and seek wats to reduce dissonance. They will look for a public display of justification and validation. They will double down on their beliefs. 

• Researcher Stanley Schachter infiltrated the group to observe events before and after the predicted flood. 

• Members were devastated when no flood occurred. 

• They used repetitive explanations to try to excuse their incorrect belief. e.g. clocks set wrong. Metal couldn’t be in the room etc. 

• They then believed that the group’s faith and goodness saved the earth from destruction. 4 am, leader claims them sitting all night showed the god of the universe spared the earth

• After disconfirmation: they actively sought public validation - contacted media, printed flyers, appears on radio. Festinger’s prediction confirmed: when beliefs are disconfirmed, people often double down to regain internal consistency.

Confirmation bias

people tend to select sources of information that a re consistence with their worldview. People avoid conflicting news sources to manage discomfort. 

Dealing with dissonance: 

• Once dissonance is aroused it creates tension that must be reduced. The greater the dissonance the higher the motivation to reduce it. 

• Methods of reducing: 

Change behaviour to match attitude: change attitude to match behaviour: justify by adding or changing coginitions (e.g. rude to a friend so reasoned with they were rude first). 

Changing attitudes - Brehm 1956: 1st experimental tests of the theory 

• Posited that choosing between multiple desirable options evokes dissonance because they typically require compromise and the rejection of positive features. 

• Closer preferences - harder decisions - more dissonance 

• e.g. which phone to choose. One has better gadgets but is more expensive, one is more practice but is lower quality. 

Brehm 1956 - results on what ppts did to reduce dissonance

• 1. Changing attitudes about chosen option (its worth the investment) 

• 2. Downplays positives of rejection option (its plain and underpowered) 

• 3. Adds new cognitions (this will attract friends) 

• Results in ‘spreading of alternatives’: increased liking of chosen options, decreases liking of rejected option. 

Experiment - Brehm 1956 

Ppts: sophomore students from Minneapolis area 

Task: rank 7 household items e.. blender, toaster 

Rate each item desirability 

Choose one item to keep as a gift; difficult choice: out of the 2nd most and 3rd most preference (both liked). Or easy choice; between 2nd and 7th ranked items. 

Found easy choice given: ranking after choosing which to take home stays similar. 

After difficult choice: the one chosen increases in liking/ ranking. Rejected one decreases liking/ ranking. 

Brehm 1956 - results

Replicated in chimps: 

Choice between 2 sweets. First chooses one out of 2 options. Then new option given against rejected option. 60% more likely to choose new option as decided something is wrong with rejected option as it wasn’t chooses. 

Replicated with attraction: 

Type	Amount	Example Responses
Confabulations	72%	She's radiant. I would rather have approached her at a bar than the other one. I like earrings! She looks like an aunt of mine I think, and she seems nicer than the other one. Yes, well, [laughter] she looks very hot in this picture. Just a nice shape of the face, and the chin. I thought she had more personality, in a way. She was the most appealing to me.
Uncertainty	12%	Eh... I don't know. I’m not sure. [laughter] I can’t seem to remember.

• Festinger and Carlsmtih 1958: Changing attitudes 

Task - extremely boring pegboard sorting task 

Designed to create negative attitudes 

Procedure: ppts told they might act as a confederate to convince other student the task was fun. Most agreed and publicly states the task was fun. 

Goal: reate counter-attitudinal behaviour (saying task is fun when it was actually boring) 

Ppts paid either $1 or $20. 

$20 condition: large external justification -> less dissonance -> smaller attitude change. 

$1 condition: small external justification -> more dissonance -> greater attitude change. 

Later questionnaire: how enjoyable was this task: those paid $1 said it was more enjoyable to those paid $20 due to attitude change from cognitive dissonance. 

Experiment 2: Brehm ad Cohen 1962. 

Festinger and carlsmith 1959 created novel attitudes in the lab. 

More relevant to everday life. 

Got ppts to write statement of harsh opinions on new haven police 

Had people write essays supporting or condemning police 

• Small incentive (1$) -> greater attitude change 

• Large incentive (20$) -> smaller attitude change 

dissonance in effortful voluntary activities

Effort and punishment are undesirable. Traditional expectation: suffering and effort = disliking 

Cognitive dissonance: suffering and effort = liking. 

• Freely choosing to engage in an effortful or painful activity which of no value -> dissonance. To reduce dissonance, raise evaluation of the activity. 

Aronson and Mills 1959 - experiment 3

• Ppts: female uni students at Minnesota uni 

• Activity: join a psychology of sexuality discussion group 

• Initiation conditions: high embarrassment: read aloud sexually explicit words 

• Low embarrassment: read aloud mild words like love and petting 

• Group discussion: listen to boring tape recorded conversation. 

• Rate their liking of the discussion and their group members. 

Cognitive dissonance; rating of liking higher as needs to make embarrassment worth while 

Traditional: rate liking higher as no uncomfort. 

Findings: consistent with cognitive dissonance: 

Those who went through embarrassment said they enjoyed task more than those who had no embarrassment. Reduces dissonance as attitudes have to change to make the event more worthwhile. 

Experiment 4: Norton et al 2012 

Ikea effect: people value self-made products more than equivalent pre assembled items 

Mechanism: dissonance between effort and value

• I worked hard on this therefore this has value and was worth while. 

Norton et al - ppts assembled IKEA boxes, origami or lego structures. 

Participants valued their own creations more than identical creations made by others. 

Everyday examples 

Therapy: free therapy can reduce effectiveness. 

Rewarding children for creative endeavours can devalue them. 

Rewarding or punishment doesn’t always result in simple and expected outcomes. 

when is dissonance most powerful

Dissonance is most powerful and upsetting when people behave in ways that threaten their self-esteem (Aronson, 1969)

Dissonance of self: 

Average rating of a skill is always higher than the scale middle. e.g. rate yourself from 1 - 10. Average is 6 

People are strategic about how they resolve dissonance. More often than not in the direction of self-enhancement. Many dissonance-related effects are reduced if people are given the change to increase self esteem. Steele 1988. 

Reasonings given to justify dissonance: