Cognitive Dissonance Theory: Explanation and Key Terms
- When people's ideas and beliefs do not match their behavior, they tend to feel very uncomfortable and seek change something to eliminate the discrepancy between the two.
- "Cognitive dissonance can be seen as an antecedent condition which leads to activity oriented toward dissonance reduction just as hunger leads toward activity oriented toward hunger reduction. It is a very different motivation from what psychologists are used to dealing with but, as we shall see, nonetheless powerful." - Leon Festinger
- Cognition: our thoughts
- Dissonance: tension resulting from two conflicting cognitions
A Brief History
This theory was created by Leon Festinger, an American social psychologist in 1957. Festinger and James M. Carlsmith published an experiment in 1959 at Stanford University using students to study cognitive dissonance in action. The men ask subjects to perform monotonous and boring tasks, and when they were finished, they asked the subjects to tell the next participant that the tasks were extremely enjoyable and fun. There were 3 groups of subjects. There was a control group that was not asked to entice the next participant. There was a group paid paid $20 to complete this task and the other group was paid $1 to complete the last task. Those asked to entice the next participant had a dissonance: the tasks were boring but they had to pretend it was fun. The people who received $20, did not have much of a dissonance because they justified their actions with a large sum of money. The people who only received $1, changed their opinions to match their behavior and actually began to think of the tasks as more enjoyable. The subjects were then asked to rate the tasks on a scale to report how enjoyable it was and the control group and the group that received $20, reported about the same that it was not very enjoyable. However, because the $1 group changed their opinion to reduce the dissonance, they reported a much higher level of enjoyment (Cooper, 2007, p. 10-18).
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How to Reduce Dissonance
1. "Focus on more supportive beliefs that outweigh the dissonant belief or behavior."
2. "Reduce the importance of the conflicting belief."
3. "Change the conflicting belief so that it is consistent with other beliefs or behaviors"
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2. "Reduce the importance of the conflicting belief."
3. "Change the conflicting belief so that it is consistent with other beliefs or behaviors"
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Theory in Action
The classic fable from Aesop about a fox reaching for grapes on a tree depicts cognitive dissonance very clearly. The fox wants the grapes so badly, he keeps trying and trying to reach them. After a while, he gives up saying that they were probably sour anyway and he did not want them. His conflicting cognitions are that he wants the grapes but he believes he cannot get them. So, he justifies not getting them by making himself believe that they would have been sour and he would not have wanted to eat them anyway, reducing the dissonance.