Cognitive dissonance

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Dinesh ^club

With the theory of Cognitive dissonance, Leon Festinger (1957) proposed that people will revise their attitude to justify their action. In a nutshell, the theory says this happens because people are motivated to avoid having their thoughts in a dissonant relationship, and they feel uncomfortable when dissonance occurs. The strongest dissonance arises when a person does something that is inconsistent with a preexisting attitude or desire. ….

In everyday parlance, the theory merely says that people justify the things they do. This much had been observed in research that predate Festinger’s theory. For instance, in studies of laboratory role playing by Janis and King (1954) participants who agreed to make a speech for which they played the role of someone who believed strongly in an issue were found afterwards to have come to believe in the issue themselves, especially in comparison to those who had simply to listen to a speech on the topic by someone else. The role players’ attitudes moved in the direction of the speech and so became consistent with their behavior. Imagine: You might get someone to pretend to be an opera lover (no one actually starts out life that way) and the person would come to like opera more as a result. Festinger’s theory took such observations a step further by noting that such changes are particularly likely to occur ‘the more the person feels in advance that there were good reasons not to perform the behavior,’ and ‘the more the person feels he or she chose the behavior and was responsible for it.’ ~ Page 172/173

. . . People do not commonly resolve dissonance for ‘fait accompli’ consequences of action. So, for instance, dissonance forces might lead one to become particularly happy with an automobile one had purchased while knowing that it needed an engine overhaul (“It must be a marvelous car indeed if I bought it even with that engine problem”). But learning about the overhaul after the choice would do nothing to enhance one’s love of the car and instead would probably undermine it. ‘fait accfompli’ consequences of action do not entail conscious will, and so do not lead through dissonance to the confabulation of intention ~ Page 175

5 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

5 years ago.

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