Cognitive Dissonance Theory Psychology

We used two of the most popular paradigms to assess how the CDS impacts the Pleasure, Arousal and Dominance indexes of the PAD scale. The present results provide information with regard to our understanding of the CDS and are partially satisfying concerning the use of the PAD scale to assess the CDS. In the Effect of the Severity of Threat on the Devaluation of Forbidden Behavior (1963), children were left in a room with toys, including a greatly desirable steam shovel, the forbidden toy. Upon leaving the room, the experimenter told half the children that there would be severe punishment if they played with the steam-shovel toy. The other half of the children were told there would only be a mild consequence for playing with the forbidden toy. Later, when the children were told that they could freely play with any toy they wanted, the children in the mild-punishment group were less likely to play with the steam shovel (the forbidden toy), even though they knew that they would no longer receive a punishment.

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• Allow it to take up your full attention and set aside the urge to label it.
• Whenever you feel uncomfortable with your own choices and behavior, check in with yourself and look for signs that you’ve strayed from your core values and beliefs.
• Many people seem able to cope with considerable dissonance and not experience the tensions the theory predicts.
• The few studies that have reported its factorial structure have found irregularities (Elliot & Devine, 1994; Gosling, Denizeau, & Oberlé, 2006; Matz & Wood, 2005), although part of this may be due to different choices of factor analysis such as the applied rotation.
• Holly Thompson, PhD is a clinical psychologist specialising in cognitive behavioural therapy and the psychology of decision-making.
• Gawronski and Strack 2012 offers an overview of the cognitive consistency field.

On the other hand, your dissonance could motivate you to end an unsatisfying or unhealthy relationship. The phenomenon can contribute to a cycle of self-justification, where one bad decision leads to rationalisations that pave the way for further poor choices. But it can also lead to poor decision-making if individuals choose the path of least resistance, such as ignoring facts or rationalising their choices. This is why understanding cognitive dissonance is vital; it equips us with the awareness needed to navigate these psychological complexities more effectively.

Predictive dissonance model

He adjusts his diet, thereby taking a step towards his value – health. They include avoiding or devaluing factual information, rationalizing, changing one’s behavior, or developing critical thinking. Ultimately, cognitive dissonance is a regular and =https://ecosoberhouse.com/ natural occurrence in our lives. Still, it is essential to remember that the conflict can be resolved with awareness and understanding. The concept of “cognitive dissonance” was first introduced by Leon Festinger, a student of Kurt Lewin, in 1957 to explain changes in opinions and beliefs to eliminate semantic conflict situations.

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The third limitation is that there are few studies using reliable measures of the CDS. As we wrote above, instruments that focus on general feelings or emotions may in fact capture other emotions. As most cognitive dissonance paradigms are likely to induce other emotions, it may be more pertinent to distinctively assess the nature of the psychological discomfort involved in the CDS. In this regard, the Dissonance Thermometer (Devine et al., 1999; Elliot & Devine, 1994) is the most common means to assess CDS.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory: Definition and Examples

However, for the mild punishment children, it was a more difficult decision. Their desire for the toy was great and their concern for the mild punishment was small. While they also chose not to play with the toy, they cognitive dissonance theory may have needed to justify, to themselves, why they did not play with the forbidden toy.

Averse consequences vs. inconsistency

Therefore, the theory was one of the breakthroughs for research in the psychology field as it revolutionised thinking about human psychological processes. More specifically, the theory explains how rewards affect attitudes and behaviours and how behaviours and motivations affect cognitions and perceptions (Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2007). Although the concepts of harmony and conflict were not new and had been proposed earlier by Heider (Heider, 1946), Cognitive Dissonance theory made a major contribution to the concept of consistency (Cooper, 2007). The theory is different compared to other consistency theories as it defines dissonance and consonance in relation to a specific cognition, which usually is related to a behaviour (Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2007). Hence, the theory received good attention from scholars in its early days, due to its few fundamental and uncomplicated principles, which could make novel and non-obvious predictions.

To function by that expectation of existential consistency, people continually reduce their cognitive dissonance in order to align their cognitions (perceptions of the world) with their actions. In both conditions, we used commitment variables to maximize the magnitude of cognitive dissonance in the Counter-attitudinal condition (i.e., aversive consequence, freedom, publicity; see Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999; Kiesler, 1971). The publicity and the consequences of the act were high, as participants were instructed to sign the consent form with their name and were told that their arguments would be presented to the committee. Free-choice was emphasized by telling participants that they were free to participate or not in the study and that they could quit the study at any time, without any loss of benefits or other negative consequences.

This can be applied to media, news, music, and any other messaging channel. The idea is, choosing something that is in opposition to how you feel or believe in will render cognitive dissonance. When Festinger (1957) proposed cognitive dissonance theory, the behaviorist perspective and reinforcement theory (e.g., Skinner 1938) were influential in how theorists thought about human behavior. According to the behaviorist perspective, people are motivated Sober living house to hold particular attitudes and behave in certain ways to gain positive reinforcement and avoid punishment.