The second condition necessary for cognitive dissonance to work is that people must have a freedom of choice. If listeners feel they are being coerced into doing something, then dissonance will not be aroused. They may alter their behavior cognitive dissonance addiction in the short term, but as soon as the coercion is gone, the original behavior will reemerge. It’s like the person who drives more slowly when a police officer is nearby but ignores speed limits once officers are no longer present.
The psychology of mental stress
When there are conflicts between cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, and opinions), people will take steps to reduce the dissonance and feelings of discomfort. Because people want to avoid discomfort, cognitive dissonance can have a wide range of effects. We may engage in behaviors or adopt attitudes to help relieve the discomfort caused by the conflict. Psychologist Leon Festinger first described the theory of cognitive dissonance in 1957.
Induce effort
Moreover, it proposes that human (and perhaps other animal) brains have evolved to selectively ignore contradictory information (as proposed by dissonance theory) to prevent the overfitting of their predictive cognitive models to local and thus non-generalizing conditions. The predictive dissonance account is highly compatible with the action-motivation model since, in practice, prediction error can arise from unsuccessful behavior. Previous studies using EEG have also demonstrated that the DPLFC, especially on the left side, plays a key role in dissonance reduction processes (Harmon-Jones, Gerdjikov, & Harmon-Jones, 2008; Harmon-Jones, Harmon-Jones, Fearn, Sigelman, & Johnson, 2008).
Challenge current beliefs
- Third, the person could increase the amount of consonant cognition by looking for positive effects of smoking.
- Cognitive dissonance theory postulates that an underlying psychological tension is created when an individual’s behavior is inconsistent with his or her thoughts and beliefs.
- 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.
- For example, a small 2019 study notes that dissonance-based interventions may be helpful for people with eating disorders.
- The revisions are self-consistency, self-affirmation, new look, and action-based model.
- The “mild initiation” group of subjects were to read aloud twelve sexual words not considered obscene.
For example, Festinger explains that a smoker might cope with the discrepancy between their knowledge (that smoking is bad) and their behavior (that they smoke) by quitting. According to Festinger, we can work to reduce the dissonance we feel in several different ways. Another person (who appeared to not be part of the original study) then asked participants to report on how interesting the study actually was. There has been a great deal of research into cognitive dissonance, providing some interesting and sometimes unexpected findings. If a voluntary experience that has cost a lot of effort turns out badly, the dissonance is reduced by redefining the experience as interesting.
Dissonance due to Inconsistency between Commitment and Information
Once again, it can be challenging to deduce such a relationship because two elements may be indirectly linked. Therefore, researchers have to consider or make a reference to other cognitions before deriving a conclusion (Festinger, 1962). In A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world.
Cognitive Dissonances and Musical Emotions
The tasks were designed to induce a strong, negative, mental attitude in the subjects. Once the subjects had done the tasks, the experimenters asked some subjects to speak with another new subject about the tasks. Unknown to the subjects, this new subject was actually a confederate (an actor) and part of the research team. The subjects were directed to persuade the confederate that the tedious tasks were interesting and engaging.
- Being paid $20 provides a reason for turning pegs, and there is, therefore, no dissonance.
- Receiving only one dollar did not seem to justify lying to the confederate and compelled subjects in the one-dollar group to internalize the “interesting task” mental attitude.
- Because these participants did not make a decision, they did not have any dissonance to reduce.
- The children had a choice to make–play with the toy that they really wanted and face punishment, or ignore their desire for the toy.
- The “dissonance” or conflict between what we may believe and what we have actually done creates great tension.
- Aronson 1992 and Brehm 2007, written by two of Festinger’s historical students, offer historical anecdotic information as well as keystones to understand the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance.
When faced with a deadline, you could even cut corners to accomplish a task, but then experience discomfort when it’s done because you value hard work. It is hypothesized that their positive influence on cognition might be a need to make fast decisions, e.g., when a life is threatened, even at the expense of the detailed understanding. Unification of musical modes into a single family in the great civilizations of the Bronze Age, also could be viewed within the context of growing cognitive dissonance. Rational harmonization of the entire compass of all available music tones appears as a natural progression of human culture. Inspired by correlative cosmologies, mathematically-based theories of music harmony catered to neurobiological need of the brain to reduce informational stress by employing a new strategy of organizing data and establishing ways for synthesis of new quality.
The reading of obscene sexual words to be initiated to the discussion involved a greater investment by the subjects than reading non-obscene words. Listening to a dull discussion was not worth the embarrassment of reading the obscene words, resulting in cognitive dissonance. The strong initiation subjects convinced themselves that the discussion was more interesting than it actually was to make their effort to feel worthwhile.
