Cognitive Dissonance

Forced Compliance Behaviour

When someone is forced to do (publicly) something they (privately)
really don't want to do, dissonance is created between their
cognition (I didn't want to do this) and their behaviour (I did it).
Forced compliance occurs when an individual performs an action
that is inconsistent with his or her beliefs. The behaviour can't be
changed, since it was already in the past, so dissonance will need to
be reduced by re-evaluating their attitude to what they have done.
This prediction has been tested experimentally:

In an intriguing experiment, Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) asked

participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a
peg board for an hour). As you can imagine, participant's attitudes
toward this task were highly negative.

Example of Cognitive Dissonance

Aim
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) investigated if making people
perform a dull task would create cognitive dissonance through
forced compliance behavior.

Method
In their laboratory experiment, they used 71 male students as
participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs
in a peg board for an hour).
They were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell a waiting participant (a
confederate) that the tasks were really interesting. Almost all of the
participants agreed to walk into the waiting room and persuade the
confederate that the boring experiment would be fun.

Results
When the participants were asked to evaluate the experiment, the
participants who were paid only $1 rated the tedious task as more
fun and enjoyable than the participants who were paid $20 to lie.

Conclusion
Being paid only $1 is not sufficient incentive for lying and so those
who were paid $1 experienced dissonance. They could only
overcome that dissonance by coming to believe that the tasks really
were interesting and enjoyable. Being paid $20 provides a reason
for turning pegs, and there is therefore no dissonance.

Decision Making
Life is filled with decisions, and decisions (as a general rule) arouse
dissonance.
For example, suppose you had to decide whether to accept a job in
an absolutely beautiful area of the country, or turn down the job so
you could be near your friends and family. Either way, you would
experience dissonance. If you took the job you would miss your
loved ones; if you turned the job down, you would pine for the
beautiful streams, mountains, and valleys.
Both alternatives have their good points and bad points. The rub is
that making a decision cuts off the possibility that you can enjoy the
advantages of the unchosen alternative, yet it assures you that you
must accept the disadvantages of the chosen alternative.

Example of Cognitive Dissonance

Brehm (1956) was the first to investigate the relationship between
dissonance and decision-making.

Method
Female participants were informed they would be helping out in a
study funded by several manufacturers. Participants were also told
that they would receive one of the products at the end of the
experiment to compensate for their time and effort.
The women then rated the desirability of eight household products
that ranged in price from $15 to $30. The products included an
automatic coffee maker, an electric sandwich grill, an automatic
toaster, and a portable radio.
Participants in the control group were simply given one of the
products. Because these participants did not make a decision, they
did not have any dissonance to reduce. Individuals in the low-
dissonance group chose between a desirable product and one rated
3 points lower on an 8-point scale.
Participants in the high-dissonance condition chose between a
highly desirable product and one rated just 1 point lower on the 8-
point scale. After reading the reports about the various products,
individuals rated the products again.

Findings
Participants in the high-dissonance condition spread apart the
alternatives significantly more than did the participants in the other
two conditions.
In other words, they were more likely than participants in the other
two conditions to increase the attractiveness of the chosen
alternative and to decrease the attractiveness of the unchosen
alternative.

Effort
It also seems to be the case that we value most highly those goals
or items which have required considerable effort to achieve.
This is probably because dissonance would be caused if we spent a
great effort to achieve something and then evaluated it negatively.
We could, of course, spend years of effort into achieving something
which turns out to be a load of rubbish and then, in order to avoid
the dissonance that produces, try to convince ourselves that we
didn't really spend years of effort, or that the effort was really quite
enjoyable, or that it wasn't really a lot of effort.
In fact, though, it seems we find it easier to persuade ourselves that
what we have achieved is worthwhile and that's what most of us do,
evaluating highly something whose achievement has cost us dear -
whether other people think it's much cop or not! This method of
reducing dissonance is known as 'effort justification.'
If we put effort into a task which we have chosen to carry out, and
the task turns out badly, we experience dissonance. To reduce this
dissonance, we are motivated to try to think that the task turned
out well.

Example of Cognitive Dissonance

A classic dissonance experiment by Aronson and Mills (1959)
demonstrates the basic idea.
Aim
To investigate the relationship between dissonance and effort.

Method
Female students volunteered to take part in a discussion on the
psychology of sex. In the 'mild embarrassment' condition,
participants read aloud to a male experimenter a list of sex-related
words like 'virgin' and 'prostitute.'
In the 'severe embarrassment' condition, they had to read aloud
obscene words and a very explicit sexual passage.
In the control condition, they went straight into the main study. In
all conditions, they then heard a very boring discussion about sex in
lower animals. They were asked to rate how interesting they had
found the discussion, and how interesting they had found the
people involved in it.

Results
Participants in the 'severe embarrassment' condition gave the most
positive rating.

Conclusion
If a voluntary experience which has cost a lot of effort turns out
badly, dissonance is reduced by redefining the experience as
interesting. This justifies the effort made.

How is Cognitive Dissonance

Resolved?
Dissonance can be reduced in one of three ways: a) changing existing
beliefs, b) adding new beliefs, or c) reducing the importance of the
beliefs.
Change one or more of the attitudes, behavior, beliefs,
etc., to make the relationship between the two elements
a consonant one.
When one of the dissonant elements is a behavior, the individual
can change or eliminate the behavior.
However, this mode of dissonance reduction frequently presents
problems for people, as it is often difficult for people to change
well-learned behavioral responses (e.g., giving up smoking).
This is often very difficult, as people frequently employ a variety of
mental maneuvers.
Acquire new information that outweighs the dissonant
beliefs.
For example, thinking smoking causes lung cancer will cause
dissonance if a person smokes.
However, new information such as “research has not proved
definitely that smoking causes lung cancer” may reduce the
dissonance.
Reduce the importance of the cognitions (i.e., beliefs,
attitudes).
A common way to reduce dissonance is to increase the
attractiveness of the chosen alternative and to decrease the
attractiveness of the rejected alternative. This is referred to as
"spreading apart the alternatives."
A person could convince themself that it is better to "live for today"
than to "save for tomorrow."
In other words, he could tell himself that a short life filled with
smoking and sensual pleasures is better than a long life devoid of
such joys. In this way, he would be decreasing the importance of
the dissonant cognition (smoking is bad for one's health).

Critical Evaluation
There has been a great deal of research into cognitive dissonance,
providing some interesting and sometimes unexpected findings. It
is a theory with very broad applications, showing that we aim for
consistency between attitudes and behaviors, and may not use very
rational methods to achieve it. It has the advantage of being
testable by scientific means (i.e., experiments).
However, there is a problem from a scientific point of view, because
we cannot physically observe cognitive dissonance, and therefore
we cannot objectively measure it (re: behaviorism). Consequently,
the term cognitive dissonance is somewhat subjective.
There is also some ambiguity (i.e., vagueness) about the term
'dissonance' itself. Is it a perception (as 'cognitive' suggests), or a
feeling, or a feeling about a perception? Aronson's Revision of the
idea of dissonance as an inconsistency between a person's self-
concept and a cognition about their behavior makes it seem likely
that dissonance is really nothing more than guilt.
There are also individual differences in whether or not people act
as this theory predicts. Highly anxious people are more likely to do
so. Many people seem able to cope with considerable dissonance
and not experience the tensions the theory predicts.
Finally, many of the studies supporting the theory of cognitive
dissonance have low ecological validity. For example, turning pegs
(as in Festinger's experiment) is an artificial task that doesn’t
happen in everyday life.
Also, the majority of experiments used students as participants,
which raise issues of a biased sample. Could we generalize the
results from such experiments?