Chapter 6 - SocialPsy

Cognitive dissonance theory explains…

How people react to micro-level inconsistencies in their thoughts and behavior.

Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory

People have such a distaste for perceiving inconsistencies in their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that they will bias their own attitudes and beliefs to try to deny those inconsistencies.

• When two cognitions are inconsistent with or contradict one another, people experience an uncomfortable psychological tension known as dissonance.

Three primary ways to reduce dissonance:

1. Change one of the cognitions

2. Add a third cognition that makes the original two cognitions les inconsistent with each other

3. Trivialize the cognition that are inconsistent

Free choice paradigm:

based on the idea that any time people make a choice between two alternatives, there is likely to be some dissonance

Brehm

Asked one group of participants to choose between two consumer items that they liked a lot.

Festinger and Carlsmith

had participants engage in an hour of boring tasks, such as turning wooden square pegs on quarter turn at a time.

• When participants told another person that they liked a boring task, those who received $1 later reported liking the task more than those who received $20 and more than those who did not say they liked the task

• Induced compliance paradigm: participants are induced to comply with a request to engage in behavior that runs counter to their true attitudes

Davis and Jones

induced participants to help the experiment by insulting another person and either gave participants a sense of choice in doing so (high choice condition) or did not (low choice condition). In addition, half of the participants thought they would be able to talk to the person later and explain that they didn’t really mean what they said and were just helping the experimenter (low commitment as the behavior could be taken back). The other half thought they would not be able to explain themselves to the other person (high commitment to the behavior).

• In the high choice, high commitment condition: participants rated the person they insulted negatively. This did not occur in the low choice condition or in the high choice condition if the insult could be taken back.

Knox and Inkster

showed that horse-race bettors are more confident their horse will win after they have placed their bets than they are just before doing so.

• The higher the commitment to a chosen course of action, the more dissonance, and consequently, the more one’s beliefs and attitudes are likely to change to justify the actions.

Kitayama and colleagues

had Western and East Asian students engage in a free choice task either in private or with a reminder that others would see them,

• Westerns displayed the most spread of alternatives (to justify their choice) when they completed the task in private

• East Asians displayed the widest spread of alternatives when they thought about how others could be watching them

Induced hypocrisy paradigm

people are asked to publicly advocate a position they already believe in, but, to arouse dissonance, the experimenters remind them of a time when their actions ran counter to that position.

Effort justification:

convincing themselves that what they suffered for is actually quite valuable.

Elliot Aronson and Jud Mills

tested effort justification in a study inspired by fraternity initiation practices.

• Those who had gone through a lot to get accepted—justified their effort by rating the discussion and their commitment to the group much more positively

Joel Cooper

investigated whether a sense of choice would make an effortful therapy more effective.

• Participants who felt they freely chose the effortful therapy actually showed reduced phobia

• And the bogus therapy worked just as well; the only thing that mattered was the participants’ sense of having chosen to go through the effort.

• In a sense, to justify the effort, the participants made themselves improve.

Aronson and Carlsmith

developed a way to study the effects of minimal deterrence.

• As dissonance theory predicts, the children in the mild-threat condition now liked their formerly second-favorite toy less than did the children in the no-threat and severe-threat conditions. Because the mild threat of annoying the experimenter was only a minimal deterrent to not playing with the attractive forbidden toy, the children in the mild-threat condition reduced their liking for that toy to justify not playing with it. The kids in the severe-threat condition also refrained from playing with the toy when forbidden to do so. But they had plenty of external justification—the threats of anger and of having all the toys taken away—so they didn’t change their attitudes toward the toy.

• Using the minimal deterrence necessary to stop a child from engaging in a behavior will make it most likely that the child will internalize that they do not want to engage in the behavior anyway

Further, when people are feeling dissonance,

they may alleviate the negative affect with other ways to feel better, such as drinking alcohol or increasing their religious faith

The idea that perceived inconsistency arouses negative affect (dissonance),

which then motivates attitude change (dissonance reduction).

Provide evidence for a more general idea introduced by Freud at the dawn of the 20th century:

that people’s motivational concerns—in the case of dissonance, to deny cognitive inconsistencies—lead to psychological defenses that substantially influence people’s thoughts and behavior.

Most people prefer self-concept clarity, a clearly defined, internally consistent, and temporally stable self-concept.

• In fact, individuals with high self-concept clarity report being happier and better equipped to cope with life’s challenges.

  • They are less sensitive to the feedback they receive from others, such as insults or nasty looks on the street.

• Individuals with low self-concept clarity tend to look to other people’s feedback to understand who they are.

  • Their attitudes toward themselves are therefore more likely to fluctuate, depending on whether they perceive that others view them positively or negatively.

Self-verification:

People also tend to seek out others and social situations that confirm the way they view themselves

Research on self-complexity

examines the degree to which the self-concept is made up of many distinct aspects, including social roles (e.g., student), relationships (e.g., daughter), and activities (e.g., mountain biking). 

• One benefit of high self-complexity is that the person can cope with difficulties in one area of life by drawing strength from others

To tie together separate pieces of experience over time into a coherent whole, each person constructs a self-narrative

or life story, in which he or she is the protagonist in a continuously unfolding drama of life, complete with characters, setting, plot, motivation, conflicts, and their resolutions.

• A clear self-narrative enhances well-being

Dan McAdams

found that middle-aged and older adults tend to structure their life stories around two story patterns.

1. The contamination story, in which the person first experiences good fortune but then experiences tragedy or failure and ends up in a place of bitterness or depression. But much more common is the uplifting redemption story.

2. People experience obstacles, challenges, and sometimes even tragedies but then turn their lives around and overcome those difficulties to feel successful in their lives.

   1. People who tell redemption stories report greater life satisfaction and well-being than those who tell contamination stories

Research supports

the idea that a need for psychological security motivates people to integrate their personal past and present into a coherent story.

Landau and colleagues

showed that after a reminder of death, participants attempted to restore psychological security by seeing their past experiences as meaningfully connected to the person they are now rather than as isolated events.

• Related studies show that whereas participants typically saw life as less meaningful after being reminded of death, this was not the case for participants who were prompted to think nostalgically about the past

  • Nostalgia, by increasing the perceived connection of one’s past to the present, can bolster people’s view that their life has enduring significance

Encouraging people to have nostalgic thoughts can also generate positive moods,

 boost self-esteem, enhance creativity and social connections, and increase meaning in life

• However, recent research suggests that nostalgia is a mixed experience, as when people spontaneously think nostalgically in their daily lives, it is often associated with negative rather than positive feelings

In one such study, people who wrote about an emotionally traumatic experience for four days, just 15 minutes a day,

showed marked improvements in physical health (e.g., fewer physician visits for illness) many months later

Pennebaker and colleagues:

They found that people who narrated the trauma using words associated with seeking insight and cause-and-effect connections (e.g., because) showed the most pronounced health improvements.

• Thus, narrating can translate vague, negative feelings into a coherent explanation of why the event happened and what it means for the self, which in turn helps the person to cope with the event.

Personal narratives include possible selves,

vivid images of what the self might become in the future.

• Some possible selves are positive (“the successful designer me,” “the party animal me”), whereas others are negative (“the unemployed me,” “the lonely me”).

Daphna Oyserman and colleagues

went into low-income urban school districts where failure is depressingly common. The researchers randomly assigned eighth-graders to sit in their regular homeroom period (control) or to take part in an intervention called “School-to-Jobs” twice weekly over a seven-week period.

• Students in the intervention condition had fewer classroom behavior problems and better grades even a year later, suggesting that thinking about possible selves in the future, when combined with pragmatic thinking about how to get there, can motivate people to take constructive action in the present

Cognitive dissonance theory explains how people minimize inconsistency between their cognitions.

• Research using the free choice paradigm shows that after people choose between two alternatives, they reduce dissonance by emphasizing the positive aspects of the chosen alternative and the negative aspects of the rejected alternative

• Research using the induced compliance paradigm shows that when people perceive insufficient external justification for choosing to say or do something against their initial beliefs, they change their beliefs to reduce dissonance.

• Dissonance increases with less external justification and more perceived choice, commitment, and foreseeable negative consequences.

•  In cultures that value interdependence, public displays of inconsistency arouse more dissonance because harmonious relationships are so valued. 

• When faced with an apparent discrepancy between past behavior and a currently advocated position, people engage in behaviors to reassert their commitment to the recently advocated position. 

• After working hard for a goal, people justify the effort by convincing themselves that the goal is valuable. When a minimal level of external justification is used to deter behavior, people internalize that they don’t want to engage in the behavior anyway.

Self-consistency is an important way that people make sense of their lives as a whole.

• Self-concept clarity is a clear sense of who one is from one situation to the next. High self-concept clarity supports psychological well-being.

• A complex self-concept, as defined by many distinct roles and activities, may be a buffer against stress if those aspects of self are freely chosen and controlled.

• Self-narratives are coherent stories explaining how one’s past, present, and future cohere into a unified whole. Threats to psychological security increase reliance on self-narratives. Talking or writing about a painful event can help a person cope with stressful experiences.

• Envisioning possible selves can help motivate people to achieve their long-term goals.

Self-esteem is the level of positive feeling you have about yourself, the extent to which you value yourself.

• Self-esteem is generally thought of as a trait, a general attitude toward the self ranging from very positive to very negative.

• However, self-esteem can also be viewed as a state, a feeling about the self that can temporarily increase or decrease in positivity in response to changing circumstances, achievements, and setbacks.

Using such measures in longitudinal studies, researchers have shown

that self-esteem is fairly stable over a person’s life span

The stability of trait self-esteem from childhood to adulthood suggests

that the reflected appraisals, social comparisons, and standards of value we experience as children have a lasting impact on our sense of self-worth.

Crocker and Wolfe

found that whereas one person may base self-esteem on being physically attractive, another person’s self-esteem may be tied to academic accomplishments.

Self-serving attributional bias:

is to make external attributions for bad things that one does but internal attributions for good things one does.

• Individuals suffering from depression tend not to make self-serving attributions, viewing themselves as equally responsible for their successes and their failures

Self-handicapping

setting up excuses to protect their self-esteem from a failure that may happen in the future

• Berglas and Jones showed that self-handicapping stems from uncertainty about one’s competence. People who have experienced success in the past but are uncertain about whether they can sustain success in the future are the most likely to self-handicap

• The excuse reduces their concern about protecting their self-esteem, which frees them to put in their best effort.

• In addition, men are more likely than women to self-handicap

Because of social media

one domain in which most people in the United States think they are worse than average: They tend to think other people have richer social lives than they do

Projection

view others as possessing those traits which they fear they themselves possess.

Inferiority complex

when people feel inferior in a valued domain of life

The theory of symbolic self-conpletion

suggests that people often compensate for their shortcomings in a shallower way

• When people aspire to an important identity, such as lawyer or nurse, but are not there yet and worry they may not get there, they feel incomplete. 

  • To compensate for such feelings, they often acquire and display symbols that support their desired identity, even if those symbols are rather superficial.

In contrast, people who are secure in their identity are more

open to acknowledging their limitations and do not need to boast of their intentions or display symbols of their worth

Gardner Murphy and Colleagues and Gordon Allport

note that people possess considerable flexibility in the way they maintain self-esteem and deal with threats to the self.

• When self-esteem or self-consistency is threatened in one domain, people often shore up their overall sense of self-worth by inflating their value in an unrelated domain. (Fluid Compensation)

Steele’s self-affirmation theory

posits that people need to see themselves as having global integrity and worth but can do so in flexible ways.

• As a result, people respond less defensively to threats to one aspect of themselves if they first bring to mind another valued aspect of themselves—that is, if they self-affirm

• Example: college students participated in a study immediately after their intramural sports team either won or lost.

  • Players generally displayed a defensive self-serving bias, taking more responsibility for a win than a loss.

  • However, players who had self-affirmed by writing about something else they valued took equal responsibility for their team’s victory or defeat

Although comparison with successful others can hurt self-esteem, affiliating with successful others can help

bolster self-esteem when people bask in reflected glory (BIRG).

• If you are associated with an individual or group that is successful, then that reflects positively on you.

Robert Cialdini and colleagues demonstrated this by observing that college students were more likely to wear school-affiliated apparel on the Monday after their football team had won than they were after it had lost.

Abe Tesster’s self-evaluation maintenance model

proposes that people adjust how similar they think they are to successful others, both to minimize threatening comparisons and to maximize self-esteem-bolstering identifications.

• When another perso outperformns you in a type of activity that is important to your self-esteem, piercing the other person as dissimilar makes comparison less appropriate.

• But when the domain is not relevant to your self-esteem, comparison is not threatening, so you can BIRG by seeing yourself as similar to the successful other.

Closeness in age also affects self-evaluation maintenance in the context of sibling rivalry.

Tesser examined the relationships between brothers. Being further apart in age makes comparison less relevant,a nd so a younger male was likely to see himself as “just like my older brother” and could therefore gain self-esteem through identifying with him.

I don’t know anything about poetry,” she writes, “but I’m so proud of her!!”

basking in reflected glory).

“The majority of these people don’t have a clue about how to drive,” she tells herself

(the better-than-average effect).

“Well, I totally would’ve if you had just reminded me!!” and hangs up

(self-serving attribution).

She still has some lingering doubts about her value as a granddaughter, but she reminds herself that her job right now is to do well in school and that she is an excellent student

self-affirmation) and fluid compensation).

Andrea tells her friend how tired and sore she is from working out earlier

(self-handicapping).

Andrea then says to herself, “My friend and I are such different people. Dancing is her thing, not mine”

self-evaluation maintenance).

Instantly, she starts berating her boyfriend about being loyal and keeping his eyes off other women

(projection).

That night Andrea posts photos of herself receiving an academic award and vacationing in Europe on Instagram so that everyone can see that she is educated and cosmopolitan

(symbolic self-completion).

Terror management theory starts with the idea that we humans are uniquely aware of the fact that our lives will inevitably end one day.

Because this fact can create a great deal of anxiety, people are motivated to view themselves as more than merely material creatures who perish entirely when they die.

• According to terror management theory, this is precisely the function of self-esteem: to help the individual feel like an enduringly significant being who will continue in some way beyond death.

Self-esteem functions as an anxiety buffer,

protecting the individual from the anxiety stemming from the awareness of his or her mortality.

• Self-esteem serves this anxiety-buffering function over the course of development.

• As children, we minimize our anxieties by being good because if we are good, our parents love and protect us.

• As we develop and become more and more aware of our mortality and the limitations of our parents, we shift our primary source of protection from our parents to the culture at large.

• As adults, we therefore base our psychological security not on being good little girls or boys but on being valued citizens, lovers, group members, artists, doctors, lawyers, scientists, and so forth.

Highly self-esteem people are generally less anxious;

less susceptible to phobias, anxiety disorders, and death anxiety; and better able to cope with threats and stress.

• Because this evidence is correlational, it may mean that high self-esteem buffers anxiety, but it also could mean that functioning well with minimal anxiety raises people’s self-esteem.

Greenberg, Solomon, and colleagues randomly assigned participants to have their self-esteem boosted by receiving very positive feedback about their personality, supposedly based on questionnaires they had filled out a few weeks earlier; the other half were given more neutral personality feedback.

• When the personality feedback was relatively neutral, participants reported feeling more anxiety after the threatening video than after the neutral video.

• People report less anxiety after a self-esteem boost, and their bodies show fewer signs of it.

Participants anticipating receiving electric shocks were less physiologically aroused if they first received a self-esteem boost.

Self-esteem alleviates anxiety suffering by increasing activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps to calm people, and by increasing cortical control over the amygdala.

Israeli soldiers who reported that they derived self-esteem from their driving ability drove more boldly if they were first reminded of their mortality.

Mortality salience also increases striving in other self-esteem-relevant domains, such as demonstrating one’s strength, basketball skill, intelligence, and generosity.

Hayes, Schimel, Faucher, and Williams found that when participants experienced a threat to their self-esteem, thoughts of death became more accessible to consciousness.

Self-esteem provides protection from basic anxieties about vulnerability and mortality.

Two perspectives on the function of self-esteem emphasize its social aspects.

1. Jerome Barkow proposes that people desire self-esteem to maximize their social status.

• Those of our ancestors who were most focused on seeking high social status had the most access to fertile mates and resources to nurture their offspring, therefore perpetuating their genes into future generations.

2. Mark Leary and colleagues sociometer model, a basic function of self-esteem is to indicate to the individual how much he or she is accepted by other people.

   1. Self-esteem is like a sociometer that lets you know if you are currently receiving enough social acceptance to satisfy your need to belong.

      1. The more you perceive yourself to be liked and accepted by others, the higher your level of self-esteem.

Although Barkow’s status-maximizing perspective and Leary and Baumeister’s sociometer model emphasize the social functions of self-esteem, the former emphasizes the desire to stand out and be better than others, whereas the latter emphasizes fitting in with and gaining the acceptance of others.

• Barkow’s analysis can explain why people often sacrifice being liked in order to be successful and gain status.

• While the sociometer model cannot explain that, it can help explain why people sometimes sacrifice status and material gain in order to fit in with the group.

• Both perspectives have difficulty explaining why people are so likely to bias their judgments to preserve their self-esteem.

Terror management theory and the status and sociometer perspectives all suggest that self-esteem is influenced by one’s popularity and how one is treated by others.

Kip Wiliams and colleagues set up a computerized analog of this situation that they call cyberball.

• Participants play a virtual game of catch with two other people who are presumably playing from other computer terminals.

• Being excluded by people a participant had never met and never would interact with significantly lowered the participant’s self-esteem.

  • When participants were told that they were the only person playing and that the other figures were controlled by the computer, they felt lower self-esteem.

When people are excluded in a situation such as cyberball, they show activation in the anterior cingulate cortex.

• The brain region is responsible for detecting when a given situation is not meeting our goals. It is also activated when people experience physical pain, suggesting that sticks and stones might break your bones, but words—if they suggest rejection—might be perceived as being just as hurtful.

Some social psychologists suggest that people from collectivist cultures, such as those in East Asia, place more value on group cohesion and the self’s connection with others.

• Evidence clearly indicates that people in all cultures strive for self-esteem and derive value from it.

• Self-esteem comes from living up to cultural standards of value and fulfilling culturally sanctioned roles. Self-esteem is pursued universally, but the attributes, values, and roles that lead to a feeling of worth vary depending on the individual’s culture.

  • Those raised in individualistic cultures tend to derive self-esteem from proving their superior skills and abilities, whereas those raised in collectivist cultures are more likely to derive self-esteem from sustaining their honor, gracefully performing cultural rituals, and promoting group harmony.

Early theorists such as Karen Horney and Carl Rogers point out that some people have more secure, authentic feelings of positive self-regard, whereas others may report the same high self-regard but are actually compensating for feelings of inferiority.

For some people, self-esteem is durable, but for others, it fluctuates from day to day.

Mike Kernis and colleagues measured self-esteem stability by looking at how much people’s responses to self-esteem measures changed over the course of a week.

People who do not change much have stable self-esteem. People who change a lot have unstable self-esteem.

Self-esteem can be derived from a variety of sources.

• Physical appearance, for example, is extrinsic because they provide self-esteem when we meet standards dictated by the external environment. Intrinsic sources connect feelings of self-esteem to inner qualities that seem more enduring.

  • People who rely on extrinsic sources are contingent on feedback from others, and because this feedback varies in favorability, they have less confidence in their overall value.

  • People who base their self-esteem on intrinsic qualities have feelings of value that are less contingent on others’ feedback.

Research has found that people reminded of positive intrinsic qualities of themselves are less defensive than people reminded of extrinsic sources of self-esteem,

such as social approval or personal achievement; those reminded of positive intrinsic qualities are less prone to make downward social comparisons and to engage in self-handicapping.

Researchers have often assumed that self-esteem is a conscious attitude about oneself that people can accurately self-report, but work on implicit self-esteem has called this view into question.

• Various methods have been developed for tapping feelings about the self in more subtle ways.

  • In one study, implicit self-esteem was measured as the speed at which participants could identify words such as good (as opposed to bad) after being primed with first-person pronouns such as I, Me, and Myself (as opposed to neutral primes).

    • Interestingly, these implicit measures of self-esteem are only weakly correlated with people’s self-reported feelings about themselves.

Research suggests that it is a high level of implicit self-esteem, rather than self-reported self-esteem, that is most important for anxiety buffering, reducing defensiveness, and more neural activity in the reward-related regions of the brain.

• People who consciously report high self-esteem but are low in implicit self-esteem are likely to have unstable self-esteem and to exhibit narcissistic tendencies and defensive responding.

Four important implications of self-esteem:

1. Self-esteem cannot be easily granted to people. Children must internalize a meaningful worldview and a clear standard for being a valued person. Then they must learn how to self-regulate to meet those standards of value and continue to meet them so that their value is validated throughout their life span.

2. People with either unstable self-esteem or low self-esteem will struggle with psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, and drug dependencies, which often result from attempts to avoid or alleviate these negative psychological feelings. Research has clearly linked narcissism and borderline personality disorder, two psychological profiles in which unstable self-esteem and low self-esteem are prominent, to various forms of aggression.

   1. Those who engage in them are typically lashing out at specific people or the world in general because they do not feel valued.

3. People pursue self-esteem in ways that fit with their cultural worldview. In one study, those who reported deriving self-esteem from being altruistic were the most likely to help a stranger they believed had been injured. But for others, doing good might require eradicating individuals or groups perceived to be evil.

4. Striving for self-esteem can have constructive or destructive consequences for the self. An emphasis on deriving self-value from appearance can sometimes lead to extreme dieting, restrictive eating, and ultimately anorexia. Reminders of death increase self-esteem striving, and so, depending on the basis of self-esteem the person is trying to bolster, such reminders can either increase risky behaviors or reduce them.

Researchers have wondered whether people can simply stop caring about their self-worth.

1. Striving for personal value often leads to accomplishments that contribute positively to society.

2. If we accept the idea that self-esteem is a vital buffer against anxiety, then if we were stripped of self-worth, we would be unable to function effectively.

Longitudinal research indicates that high self-esteem contributes to better physical and mental health, more educational and career success, and more satisfying social relationships.

In societies that limit people’s avenues for self-worth, clinical depression and dependence on chemical mood enhancers are more prevalent.

Self-compassion: an idea developed from Buddhist psychology.

Compassion involves being sensitive to others’ suffering and desiring to help them in some way. You practice self-compassion when you take the stance of a compassionate other toward the self.

Self-compassion involves three elements:

1. Self-kindness. When faced with painful situations or when confronting your mistakes and shortcomings, your tendency might be to beat yourself up, but with self-compassion, you would respond with the same kindness toward yourself that you would show to a close friend.

2. Recognition that everyone fails or makes mistakes on occasion and that suffering and imperfection are part of the shared human experience. 

3. Mindfulness means accepting negative thoughts and emotions as they are rather than suppressing or denying them.

Self-compassion lessens the impact of negative life events and is linked to psychological well-being, including more optimism, curiosity, and creativity, and less anxiety and depression.

In one study, a group of volunteers wrote a self-compassionate letter to themselves every day for a week; another group wrote letters about personal memories. 

The self-compassion group showed higher levels of happiness as much as six months later.

Self-compassion makes you less dependent on specific life outcomes and external validation from others.

Defenses to Protect Self-Esteem

• Self-serving attributions

• Self-handicapping

• Seeing oneself as better than average

• Projection

• Symbolic self-completion

• Compensation and self-affirmation

• Social comparison

Functions and Influences of Self-Esteem

• Buffers anxiety about vulnerability and mortality

• Indicates one’s social status and how accepted one is by others

• Influenced by how one is treated by others

• Maintained through attributes and behaviors valued by one’s culture

Self-Esteem Stability

• More constant over time and more resistant to feedback from others

• Based on intrinsic factors rather than extrinsic factors

Five Implications of Self-Esteem

• It is not easily granted

• When low or unstable, it contributes to psychological problems

• It depends on a person’s worldview

• Striving for it has constructive or destructive consequences for others and the self

• Self-compassion may be one valuable route for maintaining it.

Cognitive Dissonance

Leon Festinger (1957): A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

Inconsistent cognitions lead to uncomfortable psychological tension

Ways to induce cognitive dissonance

• Induced compliance paradigm

• Effort justification paradigm

• Free-choice paradigm

• Induced hypocrisy paradigm

Research Ethics

Aronson and Mills’ experiment on cognitive dissonance

• Inspired by fraternity initiation practices

• One condition asked female college students to read a sexually explicit passage out loud in front of a male experimenter

• An article in Feminism and Psychology described it as sexual harassment.

Critique 1: Cognitive Dissonance or Self-Perception?

Daryl Bem’s behaviorist critique (remember facial feedback?)

Critical test using misattribution of arousal (Zanna and Cooper) (Two-factor theory of emotion)

Critique 2: “Cognitive Inconsistencies”

The problem with Festinger’s concept of “inconsistent cognitions.”

Elliot Aronson’s revised theory: it’s not “inconsistency,” its is being an immoral or foolish person

• See the textbook section on “Dissonance as motivation,” last sentence, on Freud!

Cognitive Dissonance Research Continues 60 Years Later

The free-choice paradigm (Brehm)

Daniel Gilbert applies dissonance theory to happiness

Dissonance reduction is our “psychological immune system,” and resolving dissonance creates “synthetic happiness.”

People overestimate how long bad feelings will last because they underestimate ways of coping, including dissonance reduction

Individual Differences: Self-Complexity

Self-complexity (Linville), emotions, and health

• Simple and complex

“The Gloried Self” (Adler and Adler)

• The price of glory: one’s self becomes less complex

Self-Esteem and Treatment by Others

Research on ostracism by K. Williams 

• Feeling connected

• Control

• Self-esteem

• Lacking meaning

Why Rejection Hurts: Biological Level of Analysis

fMRI during cyber-ostracism

• Anterior cingulate

• Right ventral prefrontal

Correlation with self-report distress:

• ACC positive, RVPFC negative

• Effects of acetaminophen

• Tynolay

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

the sociologist Erving Goffman offers a dramaturgical perspective that uses the theatre as a metaphor to understand how people behave in everyday social interactions.

• People learn their scripts and roles through socialization.

Goffman refers to well-practiced scripts as sincere performances.

When something goes wrong, when someone does not play a role properly, then people become aware of the implicit rules and norms they have been following automatically all along.

Cynical performances

are conscious attempts to perform in a certain way to make a particular impression. People engage in such performances when they find themselves in unfamiliar territory or when they want to convey a specific impression.

• Cynical performances can turn into sincere performances as they become increasingly familiar and more rehearsed.

According to Goffman, performing and self-presentation are not primarily done to be phony or manipulative,

but rather to accomplish the goal that is important to a person in a particular social situation.

Jones and Pittman describe some common strategies we use to meet our self-presentational goals.

• To appear competent, we advertise our achievements through self-promotion. But self-promotion can backfire if it comes off as too boastful or involves false modesty, and sometimes people undersell their competence to protect the feelings of or connect with an audience.

• When we want people to like us, we often use ingratiation, such as by flattering others, which is generally quite effective. We also ingratiate ourselves with others by presenting ourselves as being like them. Sprinkling disagreement can help us to come across as more sincere and create a better impression overall.

• In certain situations, more often men than women, turn to intimidation to create an image of power and strength.

Goffman points out that people have to stay in character to uphold a particular public identity with a given audience by keeping different audiences segregated so that they can perform consistently with each audience.

Faced with a multiple-audience problem, sometimes people use different communication channels to convey different self-images.

• Flattering someone on the phone while rolling your eyes for a friend who is with you.

• Adopt a compromise position on an issue when two present audiences have opposite views.

• People are not nearly so effective as they think they are at sustaining different identities simultaneously.