Cognitive Dissonance Theory
• How can someone continue to smoke when he or she knows
that smoking causes lung cancer?
• Cognitive dissonance is aroused whenever someone holds
two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent
• I smoke
• Its going to kill me
• You need to resolve the dissonance
• You say maybe smoking isn’t so bad after all
or
• I’m not going to smoke anymore
Early Explorations into Dissonance
• When Prophecy Fails
• Brehm (1956) - Free Choice Paradigm
• Festinger & Carlsmith- Insufficient Justification
Festinger & Carlsmith Results
Festinger & Carlsmith - Rationalization
Early Explorations into Dissonance (cont.)
• When Prophecy Fails
• Brehm (1956) - Free Choice Paradigm
• Festinger & Carlsmith- Insufficient Justification
• Became the Forced Compliance Paradigm
Self-Perception Theory
• Bem says we don’t need all that inconsistent cognitions stuff,
we watch our own behavior and infer our attitudes from
what we see.
• He replicated Festinger & Carlsmith and observers made
inferences about the subject’s behavior that was consistent
with the subject’s attitude change.
• Overjustification effect
• Lepper, Green, & Nisbett
Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, (1973) Overjustification Effect
20
10
0
Expected Award
No Award
Unexpected Award
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation and Rewards
Arousal and Dissonance
• Zanna, & Cooper (1974) Study - Dissonance and the Pill.
Zanna & Cooper (1974)
Dissonance & the Pill
15
10
5
0
Arousal
None
High Choice
Relaxing
Low Choice
Arousal and Dissonance (cont.)
• Zanna, & Cooper (1974) Study - Dissonance and the Pill.
• Fazio, Zanna, & Cooper (1977) - provides an integretion of
dissonance and self perception theories
• Within lattitude of acceptance you get self-perception
• Outside lattitude of acceptance you get cognitive
dissonance
Fazio, Zanna, Cooper, (1977) - Integration of
Dissonance and Self-Perception
25
20
15
Low-Choice
High Choice-No Booth High Choice-Booth
Accept
Reject