Term 3 Psychology
The feeling of tension when we hold two conflicting view or opinion
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
explores the relationship between cognitions (beliefs and attitudes) and our behaviour
Festinger focused on the discomfort or tension people feel when their thoughts are in conflict with their actions, or two beliefs held are incompatible
Strengths and Limitations
Strengths:
Broad applicability
The theory has been applied across a wide range of domains decision making, attitude change moral behaviour, health behaviour and consumer psychology making it highly influential in both theoretical and applied settings
Explains attitude change
Cognitive dissonance theory provides a compelling explanation for why people change their attitude, especially in situations where there are no external incentives and it explains internal, psychological motivation
Limitations:
Difficult to measure dissonance directly
Dissonance is an internal state, so it’s not directly observable or measurable. researchers often infer it from behaviour, self reports, or physiological responses, which may not always be reliable
Cultural bias:
The theory was developed in a Western context that values individual consistency. In collectivist cultures, maintaining harmony and social roles may be more important than internal consistency, limiting the theory’s universal application
The effect of cognitive dissonance on behaviour’
These mechanisms help maintain psychological equilibrium and influence behaviour, decision-making and self-perception
Avoidance
cognitive dissonance can lead to avoidance behaviour, where individuals actively avoid situations, information, or actions that would exacerbate their feelings of discomfort or inconsistency
This can involve selective exposure, where they only seek out information that supports their exisiting beliefs and avoid contradictory information
The avoidance of cognitive dissonance is a self-protective mechanism that allows individuals to maintain psychological comfort and avoid the distress associated with conflicting cognitions
Example: Placing cigarette packets in to a pretty box to avoid seeing the the health warnings
Rationalisation
Rationalisation involves finding ways to justify or explain away the inconsistency to reduce the discomfort associated with cognitive dissonance
People might come up with alternative explanations or justifications for their beliefs or actions, even if they are contradictory
This helps them maintain a sense of internal consistency
This process allows individuals to maintain a sense of coherence in their cognition and preserve their self-image of social identity
Smoking example
someone who is very health conscious, goes to the gym daily and understands the health consequences of smoking, however when they are also a social smoker despite the conflicting knowledge and values.
to reduce the cognitive dissonance by the inconsistency between their behaviour (smoking) and their health values, the individual may engage in rationalisation. They might employ the following justifications.
Minimising the risk:
The person may downplay the potential harm of smoking by telling themselves that the health risks are exaggerated or that they are just one of the lucky few who won’t experience severe consequences.
Coping mechanism:
They might rationalise smoking as a way to cope with stress or anxiety, believing that it provides temporary relief and helps them manage their emotions effectively
Personal choice:
The individual may assert their autonomy and personal freedom rationalising that they have the right to make their own decisions, even if it involves engaging in a behaviour known to be detrimental to their health
What influences Dissonance
Magnitude is a crucial factor that influences cognitive dissonance. It refers to the degree or intensity of the discrepancy between conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or behaviours held by an individual.
The greater the magnitude of the inconsistency, the stronger the cognitive dissonance experienced by the individual.
When the magnitude of cognitive dissonance is high, individuals are more likely to feel a significant level of discomfort, tension or psychological stress.
This discomfort arises from the clash between their conflicting cognitions and the desire for internal consistency
The strength of dissonance can depend on several factors:
Cognitions that are more personal tend to result in greater dissonance
The importance of the cognitions - beliefs that are highly valued result in stronger dissonance.
the ration between dissonant and constant (harmonious) beliefs impact the level of dissonance.
greater dissonance is created when the two alternatives are equally attractive.
The greater the strength of the dissonance, the more pressure there is to relieve the feelings of discomfort.
Reducing Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance causes psychological stress
People tend to seek consistency in their beliefs and perceptions + internal consistency/unharmonious
In order to reduce the tension something has to change (thoughts of behaviour) to create consistency and harmony
We try to solve the inconsistency = either consciously or unconsiously
example - smoker questioning the validity of research linking smoking and cancer (beliefs) or will buy some nicotine patches to try to quit (behaviour)
Responses to cognitive dissonance involve various strategies employed by individuals to reduce the discomfort caused by conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or behaviours.
The three cognitive dissonance
Changing beliefs
one response to cognitive dissonance is to changes one’s beliefs or attitudes to align them with the conflicting behaviour
This can involve reassessing and modifying beliefs to be consistent with the observed behaviour
For example - If an individual who values environmental conservation realises that they frequently engage in environmentally harmful practices, they may adjust their beliefs about the importance of conservation or rationalise that their actions have less impact than previously thought
Change behaviour
another response is to change one’s behaviour to align it with existing beliefs or attitudes
when face with cognitive dissonance, individuals may choose to alter their actions to be more consistent with their values
For instance, if someone values physical health but engage is unhealthy habit, they may decide to adopt a healthier lifestyle by exercising regularly and making dietary changes.
Change perception of the action
In some cases, individuals may response to cognitive dissonance by reinterpreting or changing their perceptions of the action itself
this involves reframing or reevaluating the meaning or consequences of the behaviour to reduce the dissonance
For example, a person who engages in dishonest behaviour may convince themselves that their actions were justified due to extenuating circumstance or that they were acting in the best interest of others
In summary
These responses to cognitive dissonance aim to restore internal consistency and reduce the discomfort caused by conflicting cognitions
by changing beliefs, behaviour, or perceptions of the action individuals strive to bring their thought , attitudes and actions into alignment
the specific response chosen depends on various factors, including the magnitude of dissonance, personal values and the context ini which he dissonance arises.
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)
Aim of the study:
To investigate whether forcing individuals to act in a way that contradicts their beliefs without sufficient external justification would lead them to change their attitudes to reduce cognitive dissonance
Method used in the study
participants: 71 male college students
procedure:
participants completed a boring and repetitive task (e.g. turning pegs for an hour).
after the task, they were asked to lie to the next participant, saying the task was fun and enjoyable
they were randomly assigned to be paid either $1 (low reward) or $20 (high reward) for lying
after lying, they were asked to rate how enjoyable the task actually was
Key findings
participants paid $1 rated the task as more enjoyable than those paid $20
participants paid $20 felt justified in lying (“I did it for the money) and did not change their attitude
participants paid $1 experienced cognitive dissonance: the low reward wasn’t enough to justify lying, so they adjust their attitudes to reduce the psychological discomfort
Contribution of the study to psychology
the study provided strong experimental evidence for cognitive dissonance theory, proposed by Leon Festinger
It showed the:
people seek consistency between their beliefs and behaviours
when there’s a conflict (dissonance) and no external justification, people will often change their internal beliefs to match their actions
It challenged behaviourist theories (which focused only on external rewards) by showing that internal motivation and mental discomfort can influence behaviour and attitude change.
the study has had a lasting impact in fields like social psychology attitude change, decision-making and motivation.
Criticisms and limitations
Low ecological validity
criticism the task (turning pegs on a board) was artificial and meaningless, and not something people typically do in real life
impact: results may not accurately reflect how cognitive dissonance works in everyday situations, limiting real world generalisability
Sample bias
Criticism: The participants were all male college students from a single university
impact: the findings may not apply to women, older individuals, or people from different cultural or educational backgrounds
Ethical concerns
criticism: participants were deceived - they were not told the true purpose of the experiment and were asked to lie to another participant
impact: raises ethical issues around informed consent and psychological harm, though deception was common in psychological research at the time
alternativ explanations
criticism: the attitude change may not have been due to cognitive dissonance but rather to self-perception theory (Bem, 1967) which suggests the people infer their attitudes form their behaviour
impact: challenges the idea the discomfort from dissonance is the only explanation for the findings
Demand characteristics
criticism: some participants may have guessed the purpose of the study and changed their answers to please the experimenters
impact: this could affect the validity of the results by introducing response bias
Attitudes and Stereotypes
Attribution Theory
Attribution is the process of inferring the causes of event or behaviours
originating from Fritz Heider (1958)
suggested people were naive psychologists/scientists
We use evidence to explain other behaviour
we try to understand people's’ behaviours by piecing together information to arrive at a conclusion
used to explain why we believe people do the thing they do, or meaning we attach to other peoples’ behaviours as well as to our own. Our inferences about their behaviour
Example: Why did that person hit that other person OR why did that person just donate a lot of money to that charity
Attribution Theory: Fundamental Attribution Error
It has been noted that most people tend to focus on an individual’s disposition or personality traits when trying to explain their behaviour rather than on situational or external factors
This tendency is known as the fundamental attribution error
Supported by research from Jones and Harris (1967)
Participants read a short piece of writing from a speech or essay on a controversial topic, that was written by another person
the piece of writing either supported or was opposed to the topic and participants were told that the writers were allocated a position to write about
they were then asked to judge that persos’s true attitude
participants inferred that the writer’s attitude were the same as their piece of writing
Focusing on dispositional attributes (personal attitudes rather than situational attributes (being assigned a standpoint)
Attribution about our own behaviour: Self Serving Bias
can be both dispositional or situational
however, we tend to make attribution that protect or serve our self-esteem
self serving bias (De Michelle et al., 1998)
= The tendency to distort facts in order to preserve self-esteem or see ourselves in a favourable light
this occurs particularly when our behaviour is poor or causes discomfort, “ I did it because I felt pressured” (situational rather than dispositional attribution)
For example: gets a bad grade on another test and says the teacher doesn’t like her or the test was unfair
Self-serving bias Example:
A student gets a good grade on a test and tell himself that they studied hard or are good at the material They get a bad grade on another test and says the teacher doesn’t like them or the test was unfair
Attributions about or own behaviour: Group serving bias
group serving bias is the tendency to credit the group for its success but to blame external factors for it’s failures
this bias serves to enhance the self-esteem and cohesion of the group by pootraying it in a favourable light, often leading to an overestimation of the group’s capabilities and successes
Group-serving bias example:
A star AFL player discusses the hard work (dispositional) and team-mindedness of his fellow players when asked to explain a big win. A few week later after his team loses a game, the same player explains that “the umpires made some bad calls (situational)
Individuals and Groups
What is a group?
interact with and influence each other (for more than a short period of time)
share a common definition and evaluation of themselves in accordance with such a definition (Vaughan and Hogg, 2011)
Purpose of a group
Identity and productivity
social facilitation: Do we do better in a group
social loafing: do we do worse in a group
Decision making
facilitates decision making
Creativity
Power
Helps to develop
leadership
norms
expected behaviours and rules
group cohesion
the extent which a group members want to remain members of that group
Social norms
Are standards that govern what is expected in society and in social situations
breaking the rues can result in punishment, or the possibility of being thrown out of the group
Groups have rules and expectation on how to behave = SOCIAL NORMS
These rules can be stated or written down, but mostly understood
Social roles
the roles or activities conducted by individuals within the group for the purpose of benefiting the grou
each role is assigned social norms - to tell us how someone in that role should behave
examples
sports team - coach, captain, leadership gorups
classroom - teacher, students, orgraniser, class clown
protest groups - speaker, organisers, banner holders, marchers
Different roles can represent a difference in social status
Social Status
some roles are though to be more important in groups = social status
people in higher role are usually admired or more respected by other in the group. The Captain on a Football team, the principal of a school
the leader of a group usually has the greatest power and influence on any given group member
Groups and Self Concept
other group memebers play an important role in the development and shaping of our self-concept
Provide feeback on:
skills
abilities
personality orbehaviour likes abd dislikes
for example
I’m a fast runner because I’m the fastest in my clas
I’m intelligent because my classmates always ask me to help them
Social Identity and theory
The part of the self that derives from our membership of social groups
Theory og group membership and intergroup relations based on self categorisatio, social comparison and the construction of a shared self-definition in terms of ingroup-defining properties
We have an in-group bias
Behaviour that favours one group over other group
Intergroup differentiation
behaviour that emphasises differences between our group and other groups
Tajeel (1974)
Social identity theory
Group s give pride and self esttem sense of belonging (social identity)
We enhance our self image by enhancing the satus of our ingroup and discrimination against outgroups
Strengths and limitations
Strengths
Explains intergroup behaviour
Helps understand prejudice, discrimination, and group conflict without needing direct competition (e.g., in-group favouritism can occur even in “minimal group” situations).
Supported by research
Tajfel’s minimal group experiments showed that people favour their in-group even when groups are randomly assigned.
Applicable in real-world contexts
Can explain phenomena like nationalism, workplace rivalry, and sporting team loyalty.
Considers cognitive processes
Acknowledges that self-concept and identity influence behaviour, not just external rewards or punishments.
Limitations
Overemphasis on group identity
Doesn’t fully explain why some people don’t conform to in-group norms or act on prejudice.
Neglects individual differences
Factors like personality, past experience, or moral values can also shape behaviour, but SIT focuses heavily on group membership.
Limited ecological validity in experiments
Much of the supporting evidence (e.g., Tajfel) is based on artificial lab settings with minimal real-world consequences.
Doesn’t address intergroup cooperation
While it explains conflict well, it’s less effective at explaining how and why groups might collaborate despite differences.
Social Categorisation and stereotypes
The process of identifying a person as a member of a certain group because of features they share (fletcher and garton 2007)
why do we socialy categorise:
Helps us to deal with our social world
to be able to interact with people in the appropriate ways, we need to place them into social categorise. These categorise are based on a few things
Categorise based on:
Firstly, how we socially categorise people is on their overt physical attributes for example - gender, skin colour, eye colour, height, weight, etc.
Also, on subtle attributes - such as the way they dress or do their make-up their accent when they speak, even the slang they use when they speak.
Additional physical cues - tools of trades - what they are carrying, uniforms, cars
Social categorisation theory
We start by establishing a protoype to represent social categories and groups
a fuzzy set of attributes (perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, feelings, behaviours) that describe one group and distinguishes if from relevant other groups
These prototypes tend to obey what is known as the metacontrast principle
the prototype of the group maximises the differences between outgroups (so the groups is not a part of) and minimises the differences within the groups (ingroups)
This leads the persons to think that the group they belong to, or the group other belong to, is coherent, it is distinct ands it unitary, so it’s a single entity.
So we don’t tend to view people in a group as a single person we view them as a group as a whole, so not looking at individuals, but the group
So a prototype is not an average type of the social group, it tend to be the more ideal version of what the group represents.
the prototype might be so ideal that they may not actually be a single person that exists within that group that embodies it fully
So this can lead t
Depersonalisation which is
the perception and treatment of the self and or others not as unique individuals, but as prototypical embodiments of a social group.
So in plain terms it means we don’t necessarily see ourselves as unique individuals but rather as an ideal version of someones from that group which can lead to what we call stereotypes
Stereotypes
social categorisation is out natural human tendency to classify people into groups based on characteristics that we perceive them to have in common
categorising people is a means of organising the infromation that we have about them, for example, through the use of labels, such as tech heads, rev heads, surfies, bogans etc.
social categorises that are based upon what we perceive to be typical the prototype of a particular group are termed stereotypes
Widely shared and simplified evaluate image of a social group and its members ( Vaughan and Hogg, 2011)
A form of social catergorisation
most are negative:
positive - nuns are caring people
negative - overweight people are lazy
likened to putting people into boxes
Stereotyping leads to pre judging people according to the categories we put them into
Leads to inaccurate perceptions of individuals who are within a group based on their appearance, gender, ethnicity, race, physical ability or disability and age also can be based on culture, sexuality, social class, occupation, intelligence
Why do we stereotype function of stereotypes
Helps us rapidly process information about an object
reduces thinking time
Think→ I see an object on the ground → it might be a snake or branch → better to thik it’s a venomous evil snake → I react
But..
I see a man in dark street → he looks a bit tall and large → maybe he is wearing jacket → is that jacket a bike jacket? → do i wait to see? Or do i react? I use a stereotype, i change my direction
Self-Fulfilling prophecy
stereotypes are often used to justify our own behaviour
we often look for information that confirms our stereotypes
This leads to a phenomenon known as the self-fulfilling prophecy
when our stereotype predictions are shown to be true
result of positive deeback between our beliefs and observed behaviours
in turns impacts the stereotyped person’s behaviour
be treated a certain way and you will act this will
How are stereotypes formed
We over rely on attributing actions to the individuals internal characterisitcs rather than the environmental impacts
White Americans are more likely to go to college than Black americans as they are harder working students not due to ssues with poverty, racism