Week 9 - Cognitive Dissonance Flashcards
Relevant Background: Festinger’s Research Interests
Festinger interest: impact of architectural and ecological factors on student housing satisfaction for the university
–> Propinquity effect: the effect of how close you are on forming friendships
- Social Comparison Theory: on which conditions do you compare, how do you compare with, and how do you make comparisons
- Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Festinger suggested that a person’s subjective reality is dependent on the mental representations of everything around them - what do people do with the world
–> Subjective reality is the key to understanding human action
Relevant Background: What is Cognitive Dissonance
Mental Representations (Cognitions) can be in conflict with each other
1. Conflicting congnitions create a motivational state (a DISSONANCE)
2. This state is aversive (we are bothered by it)
- creates a need to reduce dissonance
3. Strategies to reduce dissonance:
a) Add consonant cognitions and/or make them more important
b) Subtract dissonant cognitions and/or make them less important
c) Change behaviours/attitudes
d) Avoid dissonant cognitions
Relevant Background: Competing Theories and Observations
1) Balance Theories
–> They do NOT predict what people do
a) Which element will be changed
b) Strength of the motivation to change
2) Learning Theory (eg. reinforcement)
–> Most popular theory about human behaviour
Phenomenon Observation:
–> Festinger noticed that cults rarely change their beliefs even if faced with evidence against their prophecies
–> At the time, there were a lot of beliefs about ‘prophecies’
Experiments: Aims
- When the Prophecy Fails
- Induced Compliance
When The Prophecy Fails Hypotheses:
1. The publicly stated belief in the prophecy will be held on to, and will increase in importance
–> This will be expressed in recruiting new members
2. The fact that prophecy failed will be downplayed and ‘explained away’
*The dissonance stems from the conflict of:
- Cognition 1: The prophecy will come true
- Cognition 2: The prophecy failed (no spaceship came)
Induced Compliance
–> Experimental evidence for cognitive dissonance theory
–> Understanding compliance (going along with something but no attitude change)
–> Do incentives help reduce dissonance
Experiment: Participants
Festinger and Colleagues studied the ‘Seekers’ through PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION - infiltrating the group by pretending to be new converts
–> Group Leader: given the pseudonym of Marian Keech
Experiment: Methods
When the Prophecy Fails
–> Participant Observation
Induced Compliance
–> Hypotheses:
o When behaviour openly contradicts a private attitude, the attitude will be changed (as it’s easier to do so)
o The need to change the attitude depends on the relevance of the behaviour-based cognition
Experiment: Procedures
When the Prophecy Fails
–> Group behaviour observed after the failed prophecy
–> All messages about the cataclysm came in the form of automatic writing seances to the group leader Mrs Keech
–> The Group were given clear and detailed instructions about what to do in order to be able to board the waiting spacecraft at Midnight - the group followed the instructions and was ready
Induced Compliance
- Participants were given an extremely tedious task to do - provided with a rectangular board with 48 wooden pieces in rows
–> Instructions: please turn each peg 1/4 with right hand, please turn them back (turns for an HOUR)
–> The experimenter tells participants they are in the ‘control group’ - and need to help as a confederate by telling the next ‘participant’ (an actual confederate) that the task is fun and exciting
o Experimenter pays ppt for being confederate
$1 low reward condition, $20 high reward condition
–> Attitude measure: Participants then asked to fill in an attitude questionnaire
–> Then FULLY debriefed about deception by experimenter
Findings
When the Prophecy Fails
- Following the failed prophecy the group begins to recruit new members with little success - created big public interest by contacting newspapers
- Thus - efforts to reduce dissonance seemed to work in short term
(But when recruitment failed - so did the group)
Study showed in a real world setting how powerful the theory of cognitive dissonance is
–> Festinger wanted to then back this up with experimental evidence (hence expt 2)
Induced Compliance
–> Participants who were paid $1 to lie about the task experienced more cognitive dissonance because the small reward was not enough to justify lying. They therefore changed their attitude about the task to reduce their discomfort, leading them to report that they genuinely found the task enjoyable
–> being paid a smaller amount led participants to internally justify their lie by changing their attitudes, whereas a larger payment provided an external justification, allowing them to maintain their initial attitudes without any change
Debate: Replicability
Hardyck and Braden (1962)
–> Nuclear devastation prophecy
–> In response to failed prophecy, 29 familities change the meaning of the prophecy to accommodate reality - inline with cognitive dissonance theory (they did NOT go out and recruit)
Underlying Mechanism: how can you find out whether people have an aversive state
–> Festinger provided no evidence to support the idea that cognitive dissonance is a drive-like state
–> Follow up research supports this idea: physiological changes with CD (eg. EEG), drugs and arousal
Controversy: When does this change occur? (Theory development)
Necessary conditions for attitudes to change after counter-attitudinal behaviour:
1. People need to believe they had the CHOICE to engage in the counter-attitudinal behaviour
2. The behaviour needs to have consequences
Dissonance is a state of uncomfortable arousal that occurs when a person accepts responsibility for bringing about unwanted consequneces
–> occurs when one’s self-esteem has been threatened by inconsistent cognitions
–> dissonance occurs when people assess the consequences of behaviour against some self-standard and are found wanting
Legacy and Impact
One Two Punch
–> Festingers work propelled dissonance into a primarily experimental field
Effort Justification
–> Aronson and Mills found that people like a group the more they suffer to join it (Application in Therapies….high rewards = lowered motivations for children to engage)
Post-Decision Dissonance
–> Evaluating a decision as high
–> Application in marketing: providing customers with information, helping them to undermine dissonant information (increasing purchase satisfaction)
Forbidden Toy Paradigm
–> Aronson found that children devalued an attractive toy if they refrained from playing with it after receiving a low threat v a high threat
–> Application: mild punishment can be more effective than harsh punishment
Impact of Conclusions: Festinger pleased theory undergoing changes (says all theories should change)
