Cognitive Dissonance Flashcards
What is cognitive dissonance theory?
Discomfort people feel when they are aware of inconsistency among beliefs, attitudes, or behavior
What are the steps in cognitive dissonance?
- Perceive an inconsistency between attitude & behavior
- Perceive behavior as freely chosen
- Feel discomfort
- Attribute discomfort to inconsistency
Does every inconsistency cause dissonance?
No, it must impact yourself esteem
What are methods to reduce cognitive dissonance?
- By changing our behavior to bring it in line with the dissonant cognition.
- By attempting to justify our behavior through changing one of the dissonant cognitions.
- By attempting to justify our behavior by adding new cognitions.
What did the spindle thread experiment show about cognitive dissonance and attitude change?
The participants did boring task, received debrief and asked to tell the next participant that the task was really fun. They either gave them $20 or $1 to lie. Cognitive dissonance is high for the $1 because you don’t have an external reason to actually lie. $1 isn’t that much. The $20 participants will report liking the task less since they just lied and got $20 and the $1 participants will report liking it more since they might justify their behavior by saying they actually liked the task. Insufficient justification is showed!
What is insufficient justification?
When we behave counter to our attitudes when external
pressure to do so is weak, we reduce cognitive dissonance by changing our attitude to be more in line with behavior.
- In other words … weak external pressure, infer attitude drove behavior
What is justification of effort?
The tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something they have worked hard to attain, especially if they have freely chosen to exert that effort
What is over justification and an example of this in a study?
Strong external pressure, infer external pressure drove behavior (children rewarded for drawing study)
