Cognitive Dissonance and Self-Affirmation Process

Question 1

what contributes to a state of harmony, balance and consonance?

Answer 1

beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviour and mental representations.

Question 2

describe the balance theory.

Answer 2

either have a steady state, or an imbalance (unsteady state) leading to feelings of tension.

Question 3

how can balance be achieved?

Answer 3

• through attitude change
• behaviour change
• adding consonant elements.

Question 4

define Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance.

Answer 4

when cognitive elements do not fit together, they stand in a dissonant relationship, dissonance leads to pressures to reduce or eliminate it, which is achieved through behaviour change.

Question 5

in the forced compliance task, out of which participants lied more about enjoying the tasks?

Answer 5

those in the $1 condition.

Question 6

explain why participants in the $1 condition were more willing to lie about enjoying the task to the next group of participants.

Answer 6

$1 is not sufficient enough to lie, and so causes dissonance which leads to behaviour change, so they say they like the task, whereas no dissonance is caused in the $20 condition and so no behaviour change.

Question 7

which condition caused aversive arousal: $1 or $20?

Answer 7

$1 condition (high dissonance)

Question 8

why were participants who had an unattractive experimenter more in favour of using grasshoppers as food?

Answer 8

having an unattractive experimenter caused dissonance as so participants developed a positive attitude towards the experimenter to reduce dissonance.

Question 9

explain the ‘effort justification’ of dissonance.

Answer 9

women who had severe initiation experienced higher embarrassment and so rated enjoyment of the discussion as higher than mild initiation to justify the effort they had to put in.

Question 10

development depends on the importance of…

Answer 10

• freedom of choice
• personal responsibility
• aversive consequences
• commitment

Question 11

state alternative explanations for dissonance

Answer 11

• self-concept involvement
• impression management
• self-perception theory

Question 12

give evidence that dissonance leads to arousal.

Answer 12

those in the high choice condition to write the counter-attitudinal essay on inflammatory speakers, and were not told about side effects about the capsule felt more tense that those in the low choice condition.

Question 13

who out of the participants asked to write counter-attitudinal essays on inflammatory speakers had the most attitude change?

Answer 13

those in the high choice, no side effects condition, this is because they experienced the most dissonance that therefore lead to greater attitude change to reduce tension.

Question 14

state Ciadini’s alternative perspective.

Answer 14

individual differences measure of preference for consistency (PFC).
“criticisms of inconsistency that raise the need for defensive justification”

Question 15

those in the hypocrisy condition bought the most condoms and had greater intentions to use condoms in the future compared to other conditions, why is this?

Answer 15

they had more dissonance created by the fact they were promoting condom use but had to be mindful about past failures not using condoms, which created dissonance, leading to positive behaviour change.

Question 16

define dissonance.

Answer 16

lack of agreement or harmony between people or things.

Question 17

outline Steele’s study of the name calling condition.

Answer 17

name calling - “uncooperative with community project”
positive - “cooperative”
irrelevant - experiment criticised the communities concern for safe driving.
- two days later, called again and asked if interested to set up a food cooperative in their community.

Question 18

what were the results of Steele’s name calling study?

Answer 18

• women in the relevant and surprisingly irrelevant negative name condition were more compliant to dev the food cooperative suggested.

Question 19

what is self-affirmation concerned with?

Answer 19

how people are motivated to reaffirm a sense of personal integrity, the their self-integrity is threatened.

Question 20

define aspects to the self-affirmation theory.

Answer 20

• people are motivated to maintain a sense of self-integrity, of positive self-regard
• threats to self-integrity may promote defensiveness

Question 21

what do self-affirmation manipulations show?

Answer 21

shown to promote more systematic processing of information, greater information acceptance and changes in attitudes, intentions and behaviour.

Question 22

‘people are motivated to deal with “the threat that inconsistency poses to the perception of self-integrity” ‘. How is this similar to cognitive dissonance?

Answer 22

“dissonance is at its greatest when it involves a cognition about the self and a piece of our behaviour that violates that self-concept”.
- both to do with inconsistency

Question 23

describe a common method of self-affirmation manipulations.

Answer 23

• people are asked to complete a series of simple questions about positive acts they have carried out
• then are asked to write about their most important values to them.

Question 24

describe the ‘values’ affirmation method.

Answer 24

• self-affirmation condition: “most important value to me is… and why?”
• this affirms you of sense of self.
• control condition: “least important value to me is… why would this be important to another person?”

Question 25

describe the study and findings of the link between self-affirmation and prejudice

Answer 25

study:
self-affirmation and no-affirmation (control) condition.
- evaluation of job candidate (jewish or Italian)
- asked to rate candidates traits and suitability for job
- main effect of ethnicity: more positive ratings for Italian candidates
- no main effect for manipulation of affirmation
- main effect of interaction!

Question 26

outline findings from the caffeine consumption campaign (link between caffeine consumption and fibrocystic breast disease).

Answer 26

among high caffeine consumers (risk most threatening and relevant) those who were self-affirmed rating the health information as more convincing.

Question 27

true or false: high caffeine drinkers attitudes towards risk-campaigns matched their intentions.

Answer 27

false - high caffeine drinkers were more accepting of campaign but did not change their intentions to reduce intake!
(usual finding in TPB)

Question 28

how can you reduce defensive responses to threatening health information according to the self-affirmation theory?

Answer 28

by self-affirming themselves in a different way to increase self-image, and so reduce defensiveness.

Question 29

outline the sun-screen use study.

Answer 29

1. women on beach given questions on sunscreen use
2. affirmation manipulation: four conditions (value affirmation, kindness affirmation, positive traits, control)
3. health promotion leaflet
4. various dependent measures

Question 30

what did the positive traits affirmation involve in the sunscreen study?
did it affect behaviour is a good way?

Answer 30

• indicate whether they were e.g. enthusiastic, hardworking, responsible etc
• “if yes, ideal candidate…”
• positive traits condition lead to highest percentage of women taking sample of sunscreen.

Question 31

state how self-affirmation and be linked to environmental issues.

Answer 31

denial is described as a characteristic feature of ‘unsustainable thinking’ that protects us from anxiety about global env and social problems’.

Question 32

what did results find about peoples intentions to increase level of recycling in self-affirmation manipulations.

Answer 32

those in self-affirmation condition of lower recyclers beforehand have better intentions of recycling than higher recyclers, so positive effect in low recyclers.

Question 33

what did results find about peoples measurement of food waste 7 days after after self-affirmation manipulations and negative consequences food waste were taken?

Answer 33

those in self-affirmation condition had less food waste than controls (no information on food waste or affirmation).

Question 34

state the hypothesis of the ‘protecting the self through consumption’.

Answer 34

wounded egos consume high-status (valuable) goods for their affirmation properties.

Question 35

what was found in the ‘protecting the self through consumption study’, and why was this found?

Answer 35

those given negative feedback increases consumption of high status goods, this is because negative feedback in tasks beforehand has damaged self-image and so they are more willing to purchase goods to restore self-affirmation.

Question 36

state Aronson’s argument about dissonance theory.

Answer 36

mini theories such as the self-affirmation theory could be continued under the general dissonance theory.