FESTINGERS THEORY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

FESTINGERS THEORY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

The most general of all the consistency theories and, as one might expect, the one that has generated the largest body of empirical data is Leon Festinger's  theory of cognitive dissonance. It is also a theory that has generated considerable controversy in the field of social psychology. Dissonance theory holds that two elements of knowledge "are in dissonant relation if, considering these two alone, the obverse of one element would follow from the other" (Festinger, 1957). As with other consistency theories, it holds that dissonance, "being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce dissonance and achieve consonance" and "in addition to trying to reduce it the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance".

In cognitive dissonance the elements in question may be (1) irrelevant to one another, (2) consistent with one another (in Festinger's terms, consonant), or (3) inconsistent with one another (dissonant in Festinger's terms). Relationships need not be logically related for consistency or inconsistency.

A relationship may be logically inconsistent to an observer while psychologically consistent to an individual who holds these obverse beliefs. Several rather interesting consequences follow from dissonance theory, especially in the areas of decision making and role playing. 

Decision Making: Upon making a decision, dissonance is predicted to follow to the extent that the rejected alternative contains features that would have resulted in its acceptance and that the chosen alternative contains features that could have caused its rejection. In other words, the more difficult a decision is to make, the greater the predicted dissonance after the decision (post decision dissonance). It also follows that post decision dissonance is greater for more important decisions. A number of studies report evidence to support these hypotheses.

Evidence has also been cited for a change in the attractiveness of alternatives once a decision has been made. In other words, after a decision has been made between alternatives ranked as nearly equal in desirability, the chosen alternative is later seen as more desirable than it had been before the decision, and the rejected alternative is ranked as less desirable than it was before the decision was made (Brehm, 1956). The authors of one book on attitude change state, "The post decision process involves cognitive change not unlike that of attitude change; indeed the effects of this process may legitimately be referred to as attitude change" (Kiesler, Collins, & Miller, 1969.

Forced Compliance: An interesting area, even if not directly related to the mass media, is attitude change following forced compliance. Dissonance theory postulates that when an individual is placed in a situation where he or she must behave publicly in a way that is contrary to that individual's privately held beliefs or attitudes, the individual experiences dissonance from knowledge of that fact, Such situations often occur as the result of a promise of a reward or the threat of punishment, but sometimes it may be simply as the result of group pressure to conform to a norm an individual does not privately agree with. Role playing is one such example.

Selective Exposure and Selective Attention: Dissonance theory is of greatest interest to us in the areas of information seeking and avoidance, often called selective exposure and selective attention. Dissonance theory predicts that individuals will avoid dissonance-producing information, and there is considerable evidence indicating that media personnel are acutely aware of this.

Some researchers have contended that individuals do not ordinarily select or reject entire messages (selective exposure) because we often cannot judge the message content beforehand. Others have observed that usually we are surrounded by people and media that agree with us on the major issues (McGuire, 1968). Some researchers argue that more typically individuals will pay attention to the parts of a message that are not contrary to their strongly held attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors (selective attention) and not pay attention to the parts of a message that are counter to strongly held positions and might cause psychological discomfort or dissonance. There is some evidence that people will pay attention to material that does not support their position if they believe it will be easy to refute, but they will avoid information that is supportive of their position if it is weak. The latter may cause them to lose confidence in their initial position (Brock & Balloun, 1967; Lowin, 1969; Kleinhesselink & Edwards, 1975).

Entertainment Choices: There is some evidence that choices in entertainment are made "on impulse," or spontaneously, rather than with deliberate selective exposure (Zillmann & Bryant, 1986). However, research (Bryant & Zillmann, 1984) has shown that people seem to select entertainment intuitively, depending upon their mood.  Other studies (Zillmann & Bryant, 1985) suggest that "all people who are down on their luck may be expected to seek, and obtain, mood lifts from comedy" (p. 309). However, "provoked, angry persons were found to refrain from watching hostile comedy and turn to alternative offerings" (Zillmann, Hezel, & Medoff, 1980).Apprehensive persons exhibited a tendency to expose themselves to information capable of reducing their apprehensions. 

Selective Retention: Earlier several studies were cited in support of the concept of selective retention, that people tend to remember material that agrees with their "prevailing frame of reference" or attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and forget material that disagrees with them. More recent research has tended to cast some doubt on these findings. One study concluded that neither prior attitudes nor prior familiarity was related to learning of material and that novelty enhances learning of propagandistic information (Greenwald & Sakamura, 1967). Another study, which tested the hypotheses of both the Levine and Murphy study and the Jones and Kohler study , concluded that only under certain conditions does an attitude-memory relationship exist, if at all, and that "the specific nature of these conditions is not as yet understood" (Brigham & Cook, 1969, p. 243). As with all scientific research, this is an area in which theory is being refined and sharpened. Recent studies are applying more rigid controls and investigating alternative explanations. At this point we can say only that the factors that influence selective retention of information are yet to be determined;, and much work remains to be done concerning the selective retention of information.