Cognitive dissonance

Overview
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological state that describes the uncomfortable feeling when a person begins to understand that something the person believes to be true is, in fact, not true. Similar to ambivalence, the term cognitive dissonance describes conflicting thoughts or beliefs (cognitions) that occur at the same time, or when engaged in behaviors that conflict with one's beliefs. In academic literature, the term refers to attempts to reduce the discomfort of conflicting thoughts, by performing actions that are opposite to one's beliefs.

In simple terms, it can be the filtering of information that conflicts with what one already believes, in an effort to ignore that information and reinforce one's beliefs. In detailed terms, it is the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, where "cognition" is defined as any element of knowledge, including attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance states that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to reduce the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions. Experiments have attempted to quantify this hypothetical drive. Some of these have examined how beliefs often change to match behavior when beliefs and behavior are in conflict.

Social psychologist Leon Festinger first proposed the theory in 1957 after the publication of his book When Prophecy Fails, observing the counterintuitive belief persistence of members of a UFO doomsday cult and their increased proselytization after the leader's prophecy failed. The failed message of earth's destruction, purportedly sent by aliens to a woman in 1956, became a disconfirmed expectancy that increased dissonance between cognitions, thereby causing most members of the impromptu cult to lessen the dissonance by accepting a new prophecy: that the aliens had instead spared the planet for their sake.

Maintaining conflicting principles (e.g. logically incompatible beliefs) or rejecting reasonable behavior to avoid conflict can be increasingly maladaptive (non-beneficial) as the gap being bridged widens, and popular usage of the term "cognitive dissonance" tends to stress the maladaptive aspect. It is often associated with the tendency for people to resist information that they don't want to think about, because if they did it would create such dissonance, and perhaps require them to act in ways that depart from their comfortable habits. They usually have at least partial awareness of the information, without having moved to full acceptance of it, and are thus in a state of denial about it. This "irrational inability to incorporate rational information" is perhaps the most common perception of cognitive dissonance, and this or another example of extreme maladaption would appear to be underlying many conceptions of the term in popular usage.

Studies have not so far detected any gender or cross-cultural differences.

Empirical research
Several experimental methods were used as evidence for cognitive dissonance. These were:


 * Induced compliance studies, where people are asked to act in ways contrary to their attitudes (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959; Harmon-Jones, Brehm, Greenberg, Simon, & Nelson, 1996);
 * Postdecisional studies, where opinions of rejected alternatives after a decision are studied (Brehm, 1956; Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2002);
 * Studies of how people seek out information that is consonant rather than dissonant with their own views, so as to avoid cognitive dissonance (Frey, 1982);
 * Studies of how people respond to information that is inconsistent with their firmly-held beliefs, attitudes, or commitments (Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter, 1956; Batson, 1975; Burris, Harmon-Jones, Tarpley, 1997).
 * Karl, Dolby, and Enrich (2000) found that open source developers who were offered jobs by large software monopolies, subsequently had more favourable views towards closed source software.

Origins and experiment
In Festinger and Carlsmith's classic 1959 experiment, students were made to perform tedious and meaningless tasks, consisting of turning pegs quarter-turns and, another one, putting spools onto a tray, emptying the tray, refilling it with spools, and so on. Participants rated these tasks very negatively. After a long period of doing this, students were told the experiment was over and they could leave. This is an example of an induced compliance study.

However, the experimenter then asked the subject for a small favor. He was told that a needed research assistant was not able to make it to the experiment, and the participant was asked to fill in and try to persuade another subject (who was actually a confederate) that the dull, boring tasks the subject had just completed were actually interesting and engaging. Some participants were paid $20 for the favor, another group was paid $1, and a control group was not requested to perform the favor.

When asked to rate the peg-turning tasks later, those in the $1 group rated them more positively than those in the $20 group and control group. This was explained by Festinger and Carlsmith as evidence for cognitive dissonance. Experimenters theorized that people experienced dissonance between the conflicting cognitions "I told someone that the task was interesting", and "I actually found it boring". When paid only $1, students were forced to internalize the attitude they were induced to express, because they had no other justification. Those in the $20 condition, it is argued, had an obvious external justification for their behavior. Behavior internalization is only one way to explain the subject's ratings of the task. The research has been extended in later years. It is now believed that there is a conflict between the belief that "I am not a liar", and the recognition that "I lied". Therefore, the truth is brought closer to the lie, so to speak, and the rating of the task goes up.

The researchers further speculated that with only $1, subjects faced insufficient justification and therefore "cognitive dissonance", so when they were asked to lie about the tasks, they sought to relieve this hypothetical stress by changing their attitude. This process allows the subject to genuinely believe that the tasks were enjoyable.

Put simply, the experimenters concluded that many human beings, when persuaded to lie without being given sufficient justification, will carry out the task by convincing themselves of the falsehood, rather than telling a bald lie.

This study has been criticized, on the grounds that being paid twenty dollars may have aroused the suspicion of some participants. In subsequent experiments, two common alternative methods of "inducing dissonance" were used. In one, experimenters used counter-attitudinal essay-writing, in which people were paid varying amounts of money (e.g., one or ten dollars) for writing essays expressing opinions contrary to their own. The other method was to ask subjects to rate a number of different objects according to their desirability. The subject is then offered a choice between two objects s/he had rated equally, with the knowledge that choosing any one of the two would mean "missing out" on the possible positive features of the unchosen object, thus inducing dissonance.

Forbidden toy study
In a later experiment Aronson and Carlsmith (1963) viewed cognitive justification to forced compliance in children.

The experimenter would question the child on a set of toys to gauge which toys the children liked the most and which they found the least tempting. The experimenter then chose a toy that the child really liked, put them in a room with it, and left the room. Upon leaving the room the experimenter told half the children that there would be a severe punishment if they played with the toy and told the other half that there would be a moderate punishment.

Later, when the punishment, whether severe or moderate, was removed, the children in the moderate punishment condition were less likely to play with the toy, even though now it had no repercussion.

When questioned, the children in the moderate condition expressed more of a disinterest in the toy than would be expected towards a toy that they had initially ranked high in interest. Alternatively, the desirability of the toy went up for the children in the severe punishment condition.

This study laid out the effect of over-justification and insufficient justification on cognition.

In over-justification, the personal beliefs and attitudes of the person do not change because they have a good external reason for their actions. The children threatened with the severe punishment had a good external reasoning for not playing with the toy because they knew that they would be badly punished for it. However, they still wanted the toy, so once the punishment was removed they were more likely to play with it. Conversely, the children who would get the moderate punishment displayed insufficient justification because they had to justify to themselves why they did not want to play with the toy since the external motivator, the degree of punishment, was not strong enough by itself. As a result, they convinced themselves that the toy was not worth playing with, which is why even when the punishment was removed they still did not play with the toy.

Postdecisional dissonance studies
Jack Brehm's famous experiment looked at how 225 female students, after making a decision, favored the alternatives which they had selected more strongly (Brehm, 1956). This can be explained in dissonance terms — to go on wishing for rejected alternatives would arouse dissonance between the cognitions "I chose something else" and "I preferred that option".

Basic theory
Cognitions which contradict each other are said to be "dissonant," while cognitions which agree with each other are said to be "consonant." Cognitions which neither agree nor disagree with each other are said to be "irrelevant." (Festinger, 1957).

The introduction of a new cognition that is dissonant with a currently held cognition creates a state of "dissonance," the magnitude of which relates to the relative importance of the involved cognitions. Dissonance can be reduced either by eliminating dissonant cognitions, or by adding new consonant cognitions. The maximum possible dissonance is equal to the resistance to change of the less resistant cognition; therefore, once dissonance reaches a level that overcomes the resistance of one of the cognitions involved, that cognition will be changed or eliminated, and dissonance will be reduced.

This leads some people who feel dissonance to seek information that will reduce dissonance and avoid information that will increase dissonance. People who are involuntarily exposed to information that increases dissonance are likely to discount that information, either by ignoring it, misinterpreting it, or denying it.

Challenges and qualifications
Elliot Aronson (1969) challenged the basic theory by linking it to the self-concept. He said that cognitive dissonance did not arise because people experience dissonance between conflicting cognitions; rather, it surfaced when people saw their actions as conflicting with their self-concept. Thus, in the Festinger and Carlsmith study, Aronson would interpret the dissonance as between "I am an honest person" and "I lied to someone about finding a task interesting". Thus, according to Aronson, a person would not experience dissonance in this situation if his self-concepts involved perception of himself as a liar.

It should be noted however, that Festinger did acknowledge the powerful impact of central, self-relevant cognitions. He did imply that in spite of the strong drive to seek consistency between cognitions and behavior, there may be situations where the original cognitions are so central to the person's self-concept that they may be resistant to change towards greater consistency. Indeed, several scientists in the literature have shown how individuals who are provided with performance feedback that is discrepant from original beliefs about the self will tend to strengthen their original beliefs and attitudes further through other behaviors when given the opportunity to do so (BDG, 2007).

More recently, Tedeschi has argued that maintaining cognitive consistency is a way to protect public self-image (Tedeschi, Schlenker & Bonoma, 1971). From 1965, Daryl Bem (1965; 1967) has proposed self-perception theory as an alternative to cognitive dissonance theory. This states that people do not have inner access to their own attitudes - let alone whether they are in conflict. Bem interpreted people in the Festinger and Carlsmith study as inferring their attitudes from their behaviour. Thus, when asked "Did you find that task interesting?" they would judge that, as they told someone they did, they must have done. This self-perception theory was based largely on the behaviorism of B.F. Skinner. Bem interprets those paid twenty dollars in the Festinger and Carlsmith study as being able to interpret their vocal behaviour as an example of what behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner call "mands" - that is, elements of speech that are commands and demands rather than mere statements. Consequently, these people would have not seen their vocal behaviour as an utterance describing their behaviour.

In many experimental situations, Bem's theory and Festinger's theory make similar predictions, and so it has been very difficult for experimental social psychologists to design a conclusive experiment that will provide more evidence for one rather than the other of these two theories. However, advocates of dissonance theory sometimes argue that of these two theories, only Festinger's theory predicts that certain processes in social cognition will increase arousal, although there is some dispute about how much Festinger's original theory really did imply that cognitive dissonance increased arousal. Therefore, from 1970 onwards, some psychologists have investigated whether being faced with situations where one's cognitions are likely to conflict, arousal is likely to increase, and have found experimental evidence that this is the case.

In April 2008, economist M. Keith Chen suggested that experiments used to verify Cognitive Dissonance could be flawed. He cited the problem of the effect of choice removal on the statistical analysis (the Monty Hall problem).