“Your best friend is having a beer bash
tonight. Everyone you talk to indicated their positive intentions of going to
the best beer bash of the millennium. However, you have a Psyc 135 final next
morning that you haven't studied for. Your midterm scores have been low going
into the final, but everyone claims that the final is easy every semester.
Should you stay home and study for the final or go to this millennium beer bash
and merrily consume alcohol?”
Above stated scenario raises several questions in my mind and lands me in a
state of psychological tension. Having a choice of attending a social event or
studying for the final exam puts me in a dilemma as to what to do next.
Deciding to stay home and study for a test may very well anger my friends, but
may also cause a terrible sense of well being of missing out on a social event.
While deciding to go to the party instead, it leads me in a state of tension as
the party time can be well spent on studying for the final exam next morning.
This state of uneasiness or tension is easily understood as Cognitive
Dissonance.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory, developed by Leon Festinger (1957), is concerned
with the relationships among cognitions (Festinger, 1957). In this context,
cognition can be perceived as a piece of knowledge that may inscribe an element
of an attitude, an emotion, a behavior, a value, and so on (Festinger, 1957).
For example, the knowledge that you like the color blue is a cognition. People
hold a multitude of cognitions simultaneously, and these cognitions form
irrelevant, consonant or dissonant relationships with one another.
Cognitive Irrelevance probably describes the bulk of the relationships among a
person’s cognitions. Irrelevance simply means that the two cognitions have
nothing to do with each other. Two cognitions are consonant if one cognition
fits with or is consistent with the other. People like consonance among their
cognitions. We do not know whether this aspect is innate or is learned, but
people do prefer cognitions that fit together to those that do not. It is this
simple observation that gives the theory of cognitive dissonance its
interesting form. And, two cognitions are said to be dissonant or incompatible
if one cognition follows from the opposite of another (Festinger, 1957).
Continuing on with the scenario, having decided to attend the beer bash, it
positions me in another unfortunate dissonant situation. With the increased
peer pressure of alcohol consumption on one hand, and on the other, knowing the
harmful effects that it may bring upon my exams performance, I face an
important decision that needs to be made. One decision is to stay abstinent
from alcohol or follow in the footsteps of my beer bash friends. Prescribing to
any of the alternatives may lead to dissonance as drinking may deteriorate
health and cause lower grades, while not attending the beer bash may give my
best friend and peers a sense of their rejection.
What happens to people when they discover dissonant cognitions? The answer to
this question forms the postulation of Festinger’s theory. Festinger's theory
of Cognitive Dissonance postulates that individuals, when presented with
evidence contrary to their worldview or situations in which they must behave
contrary to their worldview, experience cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957).
Dissonance can be simply understood as an “unpleasant state of tension.” A
person who has dissonant or discrepant cognitions is said to be in a state of
psychological dissonance, which is experienced as unpleasant psychological
tension (Berkowitz & Cotton, 1984). This tension state has drive-like
properties that are much like those of hunger and thirst. When an individual
has been deprived of food for several hours, he/she experiences unpleasant
tension and is driven to reduce the unpleasant tension state that results
(Berkowitz & Cotton, 1984).
The general sequence of a psychological tension is as follows, (a) conflict,
(b) decision, (c) dissonance, and (d) dissonance reduction (O’Keefe, 1990).
O'Keefe provides with some suggestions of reducing dissonance. One way of
reducing dissonance felt after a choice is made, is to reevaluate the
alternatives. “By evaluating the chosen alternative more positively than one
did before, and by evaluating the unchosen alternative less positively than
before, the amount of dissonance felt can be reduced drastically.” (O’Keefe,
1990) In essence, by re-evaluating the alternatives, I may decide to spend some
time at the beer bash to socialize and enjoy non-alcoholic beer. This in turn
will help me alleviate my dissonance as I will have plenty of time to devote it
for Psyc 135 final next morning.
O’Keefe explains cognitive dissonance as a relationship between two or more
cognitive elements. Dissonance occurs when two cognitions are in a dissonant
relationship. Dissonance is not something that people want in their lives.
People try to avoid dissonance if they do come across. For example, Smoking
cigarettes may taste good and look professional, but in fact it is known to
cause smoking ailments like lung cancer, emphysema and bronchitis. With this in
mind, the greater the importance of health to the smoker, the greater amount of
dissonance is produced when he / she smokes.
To understand the alternatives open to an individual in a state of dissonance,
we must first understand the factors that affect the magnitude of dissonance
arousal (Festinger, 1957). First, in its simplest form, dissonance increases as
the degree of discrepancy among cognitions increases. Second, dissonance
increases as the number of discrepant cognitions increases. Third, dissonance
is inversely proportional to the number of consonant cognitions held by an
individual. And, finally, the relative weights given to the consonant and
dissonant cognitions may be adjusted by their importance in the mind of the
individual (Festinger, 1957).
Festinger proposed three hypothesis to elaborate upon Cognitive Dissonance
theory (Berkowitz & Cotton, 1984). One of the hypotheses states that
dissonance is associated with the post-decisions and requires reassurance. To
decipher as to what Festinger proposes in the first hypotheses, the cigarette
smoking example is employed here. Smokers (like me) often reassure ourselves
with the taste of the nicely rolled cigarettes, after a heavy meal. Another
hypotheses indicates that selective exposure prevents dissonance (Berkowitz
& Cotton, 1984). This can be explained by our (smokers) determination to
avoid the ill-effects that smoking induces. And, the final hypothesis states
that minimal justification is needed for our action to induce a shift in our
attitude (Berkowitz & Cotton, 1984). Knowing the harm that smoking may
cause to not only the smokers but also to the second-hand smokers, we (smokers)
continually outweigh the rewards (relaxation, increased confidence, decreased
anxiety level, etc) we receive than the guilt we feel.
Many ideas exist that may be employed in the reduction of dissonance in our
environment. In an instance, if two cognitions are discrepant, we can simply
change one to make it consistent with the other (O’Keefe, 1990). In addition,
if two cognitions cause a certain magnitude of dissonance, that magnitude can
be reduced by adding one or more consonant cognitions, thereby abating the
dissonance. This often involves rationalizing or reassurance which reinforces
an existing worldview. This is called "rationalizing" because the
individual seeks out semi-logical conclusions using existing cognitions and
newly created consistent cognitions in order to find a way to invalidate the
inconsistent cognitions (O’Keefe, 1990). Also, it may be advantageous to alter
the importance of the various cognitions to reduce the level of dissonance,
since the discrepant and consonant cognitions must be weighed by importance.
References
Berkowitz, L. & Cotton, J. (1984). Cognitive Dissonance in Selective
Exposure. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 17, 357-373.
O’Keefe, Daniel J. (1990). Persuasion: Theory and Research. Newbury Park,
California: Sage Press.
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press.