SELECT AN EDITION:
A First Look at Communication Theory Reveal main menu
The screen on this device is not wide enough to display Theory Resources. Try rotating the device to landscape orientation to see if more options become available.
Resources available to all users:
- Text Comparison—theories covered in A First Look and ten other textbooks
- Theory Overview—abstract of each chapter
- Self-Help Quizzes—for student preparation
- Chapter Outlines
- Key Names—important names and terms in each chapter
- Conversation Videos—interviews with theorists
- Application Logs—student application of theories
- Essay Questions—for student prepatation
- Suggested Movie Clips—tie-in movie scenese to theories
- Links—web resources related to each chapter
- Primary Sources—for each theory with full chapter coverage
- Further Resources—bibliographic and other suggestions
- Changes—for each theory, since the previous edition
- Theory Archive—PDF copies from the last edition in which a theory appeared
Resources available only to registered instructors who are logged in:
- Discussion Suggestions
- Exercises & Activities
- PowerPoint® presentations you can use
- Short Answer Quizzes—suggested questions and answers
Information for Instructors. Read more
CHANGE TO: View by Type
Resources
by Theory
Instructors can get additional
resources. Read more
CONVERSATION VIDEOS
Archived chapters (PDF)
from previous editions are
available in Resources by
Type. See list
New to Theory Resources?
Find out more in this
short video overview (3:01).
Cognitive Dissonance
Leon Festinger
SOCIAL INFLUENCE: PERSUASION
Chapter Outline 11th Edition
- Dissonance: Discord between behavior and belief.
- Identified by Leon Festinger, cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state that people feel when they find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold.
- It is an aversive drive; humans have a basic need to avoid dissonance and establish consistency.
- The tension of dissonance motivates the person to change either the behavior or the belief.
- The more important the issue and the greater the discrepancy, the higher the magnitude of dissonance.
- Health-conscious smokers: Dealing with dissonance.
- When Festinger first published his theory, he chose the topic of smoking to illustrate the concept of dissonance.
- Today, those that vape face a similar dilemma.
- Perhaps the most typical way to avoid anguish is to trivialize or simply deny the link between vaping and lung disease.
- Festinger noted that almost all of our actions are more entrenched than the thoughts we have about them.
- Reducing dissonance between attitudes and actions.
- Hypothesis #1: Selective exposure prevents dissonance.
- We avoid information that is likely to increase dissonance.
- People select information that lined up with what they already believed and ignored facts or ideas that ran counter to those beliefs.
- Dieter Frey concluded that selective exposure exists only when information is known to be a threat.
- Warm personal relationships are the best environment for considering discrepant views.
- Hypothesis #2: Postdecision dissonance creates a need for reassurance.
- The more important the issue, the more dissonance.
- The longer an individual delays a choice between two equally attractive options, the more dissonance.
- The greater the difficulty in reversing the decision once it has been made, the more dissonance.
- Hypothesis #3: Minimal justification for action induces attitude change.
- Conventional wisdom suggests that to change behavior, you must first alter attitude.
- Festinger reverses the sequence.
- In addition, he predicts that attitude change and dissonance reduction depend on providing only a minimum justification for the change in behavior.
- A classic experiment: “Would I lie for a dollar?”
- Festinger’s minimal justification hypothesis is counterintuitive.
- The Stanford $1/$20 experiment supported the minimal justification hypothesis because subjects who received a very small reward demonstrated a change in attitude.
- Three revisions to clarify the cause and effect of dissonance.
- Most persuasion researchers today subscribe to one of three revisions of Festinger’s original theory.
- Festinger believed that we experience dissonance when we face logical inconsistency or beliefs and behaviors that don’t quite add up.
- Reducing dissonance is done by removing the inconsistency through a change of behavior or attitude. Other scholars provide a different account.
- Self-consistency: the rationalizing animal.
- Elliot Aronson argued that dissonance is caused by psychological rather than logical inconsistency.
- Inconsistency between a cognition and self-concept causes dissonance.
- Humans aren’t rational, they are rationalizing.
- Research such as the $1/$20 experiment provides evidence of self-esteem maintenance.
- Personal responsibility for bad outcomes (the New Look).
- Joel Cooper argues that we experience dissonance when we believe our actions have unnecessarily hurt another person.
- Cooper concludes that dissonance is a state of arousal caused by behaving in such a way as to feel personally responsible for bringing about an aversive event.
- Self-affirmation to dissipate dissonance.
- Claude Steele focuses on dissonance reduction.
- He believes that high self-esteem is a resource for dissonance reduction.
- Steele asserts that most people are motivated to maintain a self-image of moral and adaptive adequacy.
- These three revisions of Festinger’s theory are not mutually exclusive.
- Theory into practice: Persuasion through dissonance.
- Festinger’s theory offers practical advice for those who wish to affect attitude change as a product of dissonance.
- Don’t promise lavish benefits or warn of dire consequences.
- By cultivating friendship, you can bypass selective exposure screens.
- Offer reassurance to counter postdecision dissonance.
- As long as counterattitudinal actions are freely chosen and publicly taken, people are more likely to adopt beliefs that support what they’ve done.
- Personal responsibility for negative outcomes should be taken into account.
- Critique: Dissonance over dissonance.
- Cognitive dissonance is one of the few theories in this book that has achieved name recognition within popular culture as people have found it practically useful.
- Where the theory falls short is relative simplicity.
- Daryl Bem claims that self-perception is a much simpler explanation than cognitive dissonance.
- The theory has also received knocks for how difficult it is to actually observe dissonance.
- If researchers can’t observe dissonance, then the theory’s core hypotheses aren’t testable—a big problem for a scientific theory.
- Patricia Devine applauds researchers who have attempted to gauge the arousal component of dissonance.
- The most promising attempts to develop a dissonance thermometer have used neuroimaging.
- It has provided initial hard evidence that the experience of cognitive dissonance is, indeed, real.
- Even so, actually observing it is difficult and expensive, so even if the theory is testable, it certainly isn’t simple.
- Despite detractors, cognitive dissonance theory has energized objective scholars of communication for 60 years.
CHANGE TO: View by Type
Resources
by Theory
Instructors can get additional
resources. Read more
VIDEOS
Archived chapters (PDF)
from previous editions
are available in
Resources by Type.
See list
New to Theory
Resources?
Find out more in this short
video overview (3:01).
Cognitive Dissonance
Leon Festinger
SOCIAL INFLUENCE: PERSUASION
Chapter Outline 11th Edition
- Dissonance: Discord between behavior and belief.
- Identified by Leon Festinger, cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state that people feel when they find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold.
- It is an aversive drive; humans have a basic need to avoid dissonance and establish consistency.
- The tension of dissonance motivates the person to change either the behavior or the belief.
- The more important the issue and the greater the discrepancy, the higher the magnitude of dissonance.
- Health-conscious smokers: Dealing with dissonance.
- When Festinger first published his theory, he chose the topic of smoking to illustrate the concept of dissonance.
- Today, those that vape face a similar dilemma.
- Perhaps the most typical way to avoid anguish is to trivialize or simply deny the link between vaping and lung disease.
- Festinger noted that almost all of our actions are more entrenched than the thoughts we have about them.
- Reducing dissonance between attitudes and actions.
- Hypothesis #1: Selective exposure prevents dissonance.
- We avoid information that is likely to increase dissonance.
- People select information that lined up with what they already believed and ignored facts or ideas that ran counter to those beliefs.
- Dieter Frey concluded that selective exposure exists only when information is known to be a threat.
- Warm personal relationships are the best environment for considering discrepant views.
- Hypothesis #2: Postdecision dissonance creates a need for reassurance.
- The more important the issue, the more dissonance.
- The longer an individual delays a choice between two equally attractive options, the more dissonance.
- The greater the difficulty in reversing the decision once it has been made, the more dissonance.
- Hypothesis #3: Minimal justification for action induces attitude change.
- Conventional wisdom suggests that to change behavior, you must first alter attitude.
- Festinger reverses the sequence.
- In addition, he predicts that attitude change and dissonance reduction depend on providing only a minimum justification for the change in behavior.
- A classic experiment: “Would I lie for a dollar?”
- Festinger’s minimal justification hypothesis is counterintuitive.
- The Stanford $1/$20 experiment supported the minimal justification hypothesis because subjects who received a very small reward demonstrated a change in attitude.
- Three revisions to clarify the cause and effect of dissonance.
- Most persuasion researchers today subscribe to one of three revisions of Festinger’s original theory.
- Festinger believed that we experience dissonance when we face logical inconsistency or beliefs and behaviors that don’t quite add up.
- Reducing dissonance is done by removing the inconsistency through a change of behavior or attitude. Other scholars provide a different account.
- Self-consistency: the rationalizing animal.
- Elliot Aronson argued that dissonance is caused by psychological rather than logical inconsistency.
- Inconsistency between a cognition and self-concept causes dissonance.
- Humans aren’t rational, they are rationalizing.
- Research such as the $1/$20 experiment provides evidence of self-esteem maintenance.
- Personal responsibility for bad outcomes (the New Look).
- Joel Cooper argues that we experience dissonance when we believe our actions have unnecessarily hurt another person.
- Cooper concludes that dissonance is a state of arousal caused by behaving in such a way as to feel personally responsible for bringing about an aversive event.
- Self-affirmation to dissipate dissonance.
- Claude Steele focuses on dissonance reduction.
- He believes that high self-esteem is a resource for dissonance reduction.
- Steele asserts that most people are motivated to maintain a self-image of moral and adaptive adequacy.
- These three revisions of Festinger’s theory are not mutually exclusive.
- Theory into practice: Persuasion through dissonance.
- Festinger’s theory offers practical advice for those who wish to affect attitude change as a product of dissonance.
- Don’t promise lavish benefits or warn of dire consequences.
- By cultivating friendship, you can bypass selective exposure screens.
- Offer reassurance to counter postdecision dissonance.
- As long as counterattitudinal actions are freely chosen and publicly taken, people are more likely to adopt beliefs that support what they’ve done.
- Personal responsibility for negative outcomes should be taken into account.
- Critique: Dissonance over dissonance.
- Cognitive dissonance is one of the few theories in this book that has achieved name recognition within popular culture as people have found it practically useful.
- Where the theory falls short is relative simplicity.
- Daryl Bem claims that self-perception is a much simpler explanation than cognitive dissonance.
- The theory has also received knocks for how difficult it is to actually observe dissonance.
- If researchers can’t observe dissonance, then the theory’s core hypotheses aren’t testable—a big problem for a scientific theory.
- Patricia Devine applauds researchers who have attempted to gauge the arousal component of dissonance.
- The most promising attempts to develop a dissonance thermometer have used neuroimaging.
- It has provided initial hard evidence that the experience of cognitive dissonance is, indeed, real.
- Even so, actually observing it is difficult and expensive, so even if the theory is testable, it certainly isn’t simple.
- Despite detractors, cognitive dissonance theory has energized objective scholars of communication for 60 years.
Copyright © Em Griffin 2024 | Web design by Graphic Impact