By Catherine A. Sanderson, Amherst College
It is not always a persuasive message, attention, or motivation of an individual that can change our attitudes and behavior. One of the most famous theories in social psychology, called the cognitive dissonance theory, proposes a very different strategy for eliciting such change.
What Is Cognitive Dissonance Theory?
According to the cognitive dissonance theory, the very best way to get people to change their attitudes is to first get them to change their behavior. This contradiction creates cognitive dissonance, an unpleasant state of physiological arousal, which we are highly motivated to avoid.
People like to have their attitudes and behaviors in line, so when we engage in behavior that conflicts with our attitudes, it makes us feel uncomfortable. So, if we engage in a behavior that is not in line with our attitudes, we will change our attitudes to match our behavior in order to reduce this arousal.
This theory proposes a pretty novel route to attitude change: force them to do some kind of behavior, and then their attitude will fall in line to match it.
Leon Festinger’s Study
This theory was developed by Stanford University professor Leon Festinger and was prompted by an observational study of a fringe religious group known as the Seekers. This group believe that the West Coast was going to be destroyed by a flood on a particular day, and that “superior beings” from a planet known as Clarion would come to rescue members of this group in a flying saucer.
Members of the group quit their jobs and left most of their possessions behind—since they could only bring a few things on board the flying saucer—and traveled to the specific spot where they would be rescued. But the flying saucer did not arrive, and there was no flood.
Observations from the Study
So, how did the Seekers respond? One might think they would come to realize that their belief in their leader was perhaps misguided. But this was not at all what happened. Instead, members of the group, who had engaged in costly behavior to prepare for their rescue, came to feel even more strongly about their initial beliefs.
They interpreted the absence of the flood as a clear sign that their behavior had made a difference. In the words of one group member, the Seekers “had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction”.
Festinger recognized that people can be strongly motivated to resolve conflicts between their attitudes and behaviors. And this motivation leads people to favor their own behavior, when dealing with information that directly contradicts pre-existing beliefs, not by changing these beliefs but by adapting the beliefs to justify their own behavior.
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Empirical Test of the Theory
In the first empirical test of this theory, researchers brought in college students to perform a really boring task. They had to turn pegs on a large board for an hour, turning each peg a quarter of the way around, and then starting again at the top of the board to do another quarter turn, and so on.
This was very boring and the students did not enjoy it. At the end of the hour, when the experiment was in theory over, the researchers then asked the student a favor: Could they please tell the next person, who was waiting to participate in this study, that the tasks were really fun?
And here was the interesting twist: Some students were given a dollar to tell the next person the task was fun, whereas others were given $20. All students agreed to lie, perhaps due to the pressure of being asked by the researcher.
But the amount they were given mattered in terms of how they evaluated the experiment when asked by a new researcher. People who were paid $20 to lie to the other student reported, accurately, that they found the study pretty boring. But people who were given only a dollar actually said they sort of enjoyed participating.
Findings from the Test
Researchers believe the amount paid influenced how people came to see the peg-turning task. People who were paid a large sum could justify their lie to the other student about how fun the task was; after all, it was a pretty minor lie, and they got $20. But people who were paid only a dollar were in a tough spot.
Are they really willing to look someone else in the eye and tell them this peg-turning task was fun and therefore lie to them for only a dollar? This seems like a pretty insufficient reason to tell this lie. So, the people receiving only a dollar convinced themselves that they really did find the task somewhat enjoyable. So, they weren’t actually lying, and thus, there’s no dissonance.
Implications of the Theory
This method of attitude change can work in all types of real-world settings because people want to avoid feeling contradictions between two attitudes or between their attitudes and behavior. People overwhelmingly want to have their attitudes in line with their behavior, so getting people to engage in a behavior is another way of leading them to change their attitudes.
So, college women who write letters to junior high school girls promoting the importance of having a healthy body image, later on, develop more positive attitudes about their own bodies. Simply asking people to sign a petition in favor of recycling or following speed limit laws pushes their attitudes more in favor of such policies and changes their behavior.
Common Questions about the Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Its Implications
According to the cognitive dissonance theory, the very best way to get people to change their attitudes is to first get them to change their behavior. This contradiction creates cognitive dissonance, an unpleasant state of physiological arousal, which we are highly motivated to avoid.
The cognitive dissonance theory was developed by Stanford University professor Leon Festinger prompted by his observational studies.
The method of attitude change proposed by the cognitive dissonance theory can work in all types of real-world settings because people want to avoid feeling contradictions between two attitudes or between their attitudes and behavior. People overwhelmingly want to have their attitudes in line with their behavior, so getting people to engage in a behavior is another way of leading them to change their attitudes.
