17C (Festinger: cognitive dissonance, 1959)

Background- research approach

Festinger initially works on quantitative model of decision making, statistical questions, lab work with rats

• One of the early psychologists to work quantitatively- quantitative observational approach- different to child psychology 

research interests

 

Impact of architectural and ecological factors on student housing satisfaction for the university

• Propinquity effect- proximity effect- the closer you live to someone the more likely you are to make friends with them

• Looked at people living on staircases- had more social contacts in people who were more isolated

what did he also notice and the theories

uniformity in opinions in friendship groups

may be due to

1. social comparison theory- can compare upwards and downwards

2. cognitive dissonance theory- dissonance to reduce when comparing upwards and downwards (e.g.,if someone does better)

what did Festinger suggest

a persons subjective reality is dependent on the mental representations of everything around them

• Objective reality influences subjective reality but is not the same

• Subjective reality is the key to understanding human action

• Mental representations are cognitions

Mental representations (cognitions) can be in conflict with each other

background to cognitive dissonance theory

1. Conflicting cognitions create a motivational state (= dissonance)

   • Dissonance is not the thoughts, its what happens between

2. This state is aversive, and creates a need to reduce dissonance

   • Get bothered by this

3. Strategies to reduce dissonance

   • Add consonant cognitions and/or make them more important (wouldn’t listen anyways)- makes one decision stronger

   • Subtract dissonant cognitions and/or make them less important (just had the weekend, pull yourself together)

   • Change attitudes/behaviour (don’t need to go to the lecture)

   • Avoid dissonant cognitions (don’t think constantly about climate change)

competing theories

Balance theories (Heider)

explains cognitions between you (person, P), a thing (X) (e.g. going for coffee) and other (O)

• we want consistency in triadic interpersonal relationships

they do not predict:

• which element will be changed

• the strength of the motivation to change

other theory

learning theory

• e.g., reinforcement

• most popular theory about human behaviour and behavioural change

• but does not include cognition!!

background to the study

observing a phenomenon: prophecies

Festinger noticed cults rarely change their beliefs even if faced with evidence contradicting their beliefs

• can this phenomenon be explained by cognitive dissonance?

the prophecy research

prophecy from planet Clarion

• mrs Keech is ‘sent’ messages from superior beings on plant clarion

• visiting earth on flying saucers

• tell her Lake City will be destroyed by a flood from the Great Lake before dawn Dec, 21

• but told people who believe this will be picked up and saved before the flood

obviously this never happened- Festinger noticed cult did not change their belief

→ researched these people as they must have been experiencing a lot of dissonance, they change their beliefs to explain why their prophecy did not come true

the studies

1. when the prophecy fails

2. induced compliance

when the prophecy fails

Cognitive dissonance stemming from the conflict of…

Cognition 1: The prophecy will come true

• Public statement of this belief in the face of derision from the community will make it extremely difficult to change this cognition

Cognition 2: The prophecy failed

• Proof in the form of no spaceship to the rescue and the world still intact the next day

how can dissonance resulting from these two cognitions be reduced hypotheses

1. The publicly stated belief in the prophecy will be held on to, and will increase in importance

   • This will be expressed in proselytizing and recruitment of new members

2. The fact that the prophecy failed will be downplayed and “explained away”

method

Festinger and colleagues decided to study the Seekers through participant observation, infiltrating the group by pretending to be new converts joining the cult

• Group leader: Dorothy Martin

To protect her- Festinger gave her the pseudonym Marian Keech in his publication

results

Results

• All messages about the cataclysm came in the form of automatic writing seances to the group leader Mrs Keech

• The group were given clear and detailed instructions about what to do in order to be able to board the waiting spacecraft at midnight on December 21st. These instructions were followed (e.g., any metal was removed from clothes) and the group was ready

obviously no spaceship turned up so the cult members argued

• They showed the aliens and god that there are good people on earth so earth should not be destroyed

• Saying this means they saved the earth- reduced dissonance (added consonant)

• This explains why earth did not stop because they believed- allowing them to continue to believe

further results

• Following the failed prophecy, the group begins to proselytize and recruit new members (with little success)!!

• They were able to generate a great deal of public interest by contacting various newspapers

Thus, their efforts to reduce dissonance seemed to work in the short term…

• But when recruitment failed, so did the group

conclusion

• “When prophecy fails” was able to correctly predict the behaviour of the Seekers

• The study shows in a real-world setting how powerful the theory of cognitive dissonance is

Next step: Festinger wanted to back this up with experimental evidence

study 2 (induced compliance) aims

1. Experimental evidence for cognitive dissonance theory

2. Understanding compliance (following a request without changing attitudes):

   • What happens to cognitions when we do something that we don’t believe in

   • Behaviour is in conflict with attitudes

   Do incentives help people to reduce dissonance?

   • Effect of adding consonant cognitions

   • Is giving money good or bad for dissonance?

hypotheses

1. When behaviour openly contradicts a private attitude, the attitude will be changed (as it is easier to do so)

2. attitude change depends on the relevance of the behaviour-based cognition:

   • To the extent that the behaviour-based cognition can be explained by other factors (i.e., subtract/adding dissonant cognitions), the need to change the attitude-based cognition is reduced

   • If you cant reduce dissonance only option is to change attitude

hypotheses of the study

Role of Incentives

Cognitive dissonance theory: the stronger an incentive to show counter-attitudinal behaviour, the weaker the attitude change (hypothesis 2)

• Helps you to reduce dissonance 

Reinforcement theory: The more a behaviour is rewarded by an incentive, the stronger the change in behaviour (and attitudes?!?)

• Not a contradiction- dissonance= attitude change, reinforcement= behavioural change

method

Peg turning task:

given a tedious task to turn pegs ¼ then turn them all back fro 1 hour

• then told to tell the next person that this is a fun and exciting task

• some are paid $1, some are paid $20

then fill in survey

conflicting cognitions

Inconsistent Attitudes

Cognition 1: “This task is boring”

• Participants were given an extremely tedious task

• just turning 48 wooden pieces in rows

Cognition 2: “I just told someone this is a fun and exciting task”

• The experimenter tells participants that they are in the “control group” of an experiment about the effect of expectations on performance. The “experimental” group is supposedly told that the task is fun by a confederate.

• The experimenter asks the participant to help out as a confederate and tell next “participant” that the task is fun and exciting.

the different incentive conditions

The experimenter says he can pay the participant for being the “confederate”

• Low reward condition: $1

• High reward condition: $20

• Control condition: No request to tell a lie

attitude measure

Attitude Measure

Participants are asked to go to the secretary’s office after having talked to the other “participant”

• Fill in an attitude questionnaire (supposedly to assess experiment participation)

Debriefing

Participants are fully debriefed about the study, including deception, by the experimenter

findings

high reward → incentive reduced dissonance, little change in attitudes (similar to control)

low reward → changed attitudes!!- satisfying/relaxing

• paying people is a rubbish idea!!!

reason for findings

1. Conflicting cognitions create a motivational state (= dissonance)

   • the task was boring

   • i told someone the task was fun

2. This state is aversive, and creates a need to reduce dissonance

3. Strategy to reduce dissonance

   • Add consonant cognitions and/or make them more important (task was fun- but only because they paid me)

   • change attitudes (when no incentive)

debate and controversy number 1

replicability

Hardyck & Braden (1962):

Prophecy of nuclear devastation, with specific prophecy of event in 1962

• 29 families (135 people) built shelters and stayed underground for 42 days

In response to the failed prophecy:

• They changed the meaning of the prophecy to accommodate reality (in line with cognitive dissonance prediction)

• But: They did not proselytize

Possible reason: Different social context (bigger, more highly regarded than Seekers)

→ hard to replicate as not many prophecies

underlying mechanism (mediator)

mediator

Festinger provided no evidence to support the idea that cognitive dissonance is a drive-like state

Follow-up research, however, supported the idea:

• Physiological changes (e.g., EEG, SCR) and psychological discomfort produced by counter-attitudinal statements can be measured

  • there is a motivational state

• It is possible to increase (or decrease) dissonance through drugs that increase (or decrease) arousal (Cooper et al., 1978)

  • won’t try to reduce dissonance as they don’t experience the internal aversive state

• Dissonance-produced attitude change can be eliminated by getting people to misattribute their arousal (Zanna & Cooper, 1974)

moderators (necessary conditions)

Necessary conditions for attitudes to change after counter-attitudinal behaviour:

• People need to believe they had the choice to engage in the counter-attitudinal behaviour (Linder et al., 1987) (subjective choice)

• The behaviour needs to have consequences (e.g., Cooper & Worchel, 1970)

Needs to matter!!

theory developments

• Dissonance is a state of uncomfortable arousal that occurs when a person accepts responsibility for unwanted consequences (Cooper & Fazio, 1984)

• Dissonance occurs when one’s self-esteem has been threatened by inconsistent cognitions (Aronson, 1992)

• Dissonance occurs when people assess the consequences of behaviour against some self-standard (Cooper & Stone, 2001)

3 points for impact (applying the theory)

1. Effort Justification

2. Post-decision dissonance

3. Forbidden toy paradigm

one-two punch

one-two punch

Festinger et al.’s (1956) work propelled dissonance into the forefront of social psychology

• Trying to convince different communities that experiments are good but not ecologically valid

dissonance research became a primarily experimental field                                       

It was the combination of “when Prophecy Fails” and the induced compliance study that made dissonance have an immediate impact on social psychology

• dissonance was highly generative

ways of applying cognitive dissonance theory

effort justification:

Aronson & Mills (1959) found that people like a  group more the more they suffer to join it (e.g., hazing, initiation rites)

• Application in Therapy

  • make it hard to get into therapy, or give people a hard task

Lepper & Greene (1975) found that high external rewards lowered intrinsic motivation in children to engage in the rewarded behaviour (don’t want to engage in activity they have an intrinsic motivation for if rewarded)

• Application in Education

  • External reward schemes should be used for behaviour that is not already intrinsically motivated; needs to be specific for each child

  • onve rewards stop- kids don’t do the intrinsically motivated activity anymore

post-decision dissonance

Brehm (1956) gave a group of women free choice of what appliance to take home as a gift – the one chosen was evaluated higher and those not chosen evaluated lower compared with the pre-choice evaluation

• evaluate the one they didn’t pick as bad reduces dissonance,a dn the one they did pick as really good

Application in Marketing

• Providing customers with consonant information and helps them resolve dissonant experience which can increase purchase satisfaction

  → make people think they have made the right decision

forbidden toy paradigm

Aronson & Carlsmith (1962) found that children devalued an attractive toy if they refrained from playing with it after receiving a low threat (vs high) of punishment for playing with that toy

• if you give child harsh punishment, they only stop because the parent gave a punishment and will then continue to do it as there is no attitude change

• if you give them a low punishment, they stop doing it and change their attitude to the activity to it not being fun- cannot attribute stopping to punishment

Application in Education

• Mild punishment can be more effective than harsh punishment

conclusion

so many impacts- therapy, marketing, parenting/education

Festinger was personally pleased that dissonance theory was undergoing changed (moderators and mediators)

All theories need to change; if they remain static, they are probably not good theories at all

 

Another impact: popular science

• Popular science book by Travis and Aronson (2015)- mistakes were made but not by me