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What Is Cognitive Dissonance Theory?

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Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors.

This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.

For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by Leon Festinger, arising out of a participant observation study of a cult that believed that the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood, and what happened to its members — particularly the really committed ones who had given up their homes and jobs to work for the cult — when the flood did not happen.

While fringe members were more inclined to recognize that they had made fools of themselves and to “put it down to experience,” committed members were more likely to re-interpret the evidence to show that they were right all along (the earth was not destroyed because of the faithfulness of the cult members).

How Attitude Change Takes Place

Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and behavior in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance). This is known as the principle of cognitive consistency.

When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance.

Notice that dissonance theory does not state that these modes of dissonance reduction will actually work, only that individuals who are in a state of cognitive dissonance will take steps to reduce the extent of their dissonance.

The theory of cognitive dissonance has been widely researched in a number of situations to develop the basic idea in more detail, and various factors have been identified which may be important in attitude change.

What Causes Cognitive Dissonance?

Forced Compliance Behavior,
Decision Making,

We will look at the main findings to have emerged from each area.

Forced Compliance Behavior

When someone is forced to do (publicly) something they (privately) really don’t want to do, dissonance is created between their cognition (I didn’t want to do this) and their behavior (I did it).

Forced compliance occurs when an individual performs an action that is inconsistent with his or her beliefs. The behavior can’t be changed since it was already in the past, so dissonance will need to be reduced by re-evaluating their attitude toward what they have done. This prediction has been tested experimentally:

In an intriguing experiment, Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) asked participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a peg board for an hour). As you can imagine, participant’s attitudes toward this task were highly negative.

Example of Cognitive Dissonance

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) investigated if making people perform a dull task would create cognitive dissonance through forced compliance behavior.

In their laboratory experiment, they used 71 male students as participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a peg board for an hour).

They were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell a waiting participant (a confederate) that the tasks were really interesting. Almost all of the participants agreed to walk into the waiting room and persuade the confederate that the boring experiment would be fun.

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.

Being paid only $1 is not sufficient incentive for lying and so those who were paid $1 experienced dissonance. They could only overcome that dissonance by coming to believe that the tasks really were interesting and enjoyable. Being paid $20 provides a reason for turning pegs, and there is, therefore, no dissonance.

Decision Making

Life is filled with decisions, and decisions (as a general rule) arouse dissonance.

For example, suppose you had to decide whether to accept a job in an absolutely beautiful area of the country or turn down the job so you could be near your friends and family.

Either way, you would experience dissonance. If you took the job you would miss your loved ones; if you turned the job down, you would pine for the beautiful streams, mountains, and valleys.

Both alternatives have their good points and bad points. The rub is that making a decision cuts off the possibility that you can enjoy the advantages of the unchosen alternative, yet it assures you that you must accept the disadvantages of the chosen alternative.

Brehm (1956) was the first to investigate the relationship between dissonance and decision-making.

Female participants were informed they would be helping out in a study funded by several manufacturers. Participants were also told that they would receive one of the products at the end of the experiment to compensate for their time and effort.

The women then rated the desirability of eight household products that ranged in price from $15 to $30. The products included an automatic coffee maker, an electric sandwich grill, an automatic toaster, and a portable radio.

Participants in the control group were simply given one of the products. Because these participants did not make a decision, they did not have any dissonance to reduce. Individuals in the low-dissonance group chose between a desirable product and one rated 3 points lower on an 8-point scale.

Participants in the high-dissonance condition chose between a highly desirable product and one rated just 1 point lower on the 8-point scale. After reading the reports about the various products, individuals rated the products again.

Participants in the high-dissonance condition spread apart the alternatives significantly more than the participants in the other two conditions.

In other words, they were more likely than participants in the other two conditions to increase the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and to decrease the attractiveness of the unchosen alternative.

It also seems to be the case that we value most highly those goals or items which have required considerable effort to achieve.

This is probably because dissonance would be caused if we spent a great effort to achieve something and then evaluated it negatively.

We could, of course, spend years of effort into achieving something which turns out to be a load of rubbish and then, in order to avoid the dissonance that produces, try to convince ourselves that we didn’t really spend years of effort or that the effort was really quite enjoyable, or that it wasn’t really a lot of effort.

In fact, though, it seems we find it easier to persuade ourselves that what we have achieved is worthwhile, and that’s what most of us do, evaluating highly something whose achievement has cost us dear – whether other people think it’s much cop or not!

This method of reducing dissonance is known as “effort justification.”

If we put effort into a task that we have chosen to carry out, and the task turns out badly, we experience dissonance. To reduce this dissonance, we are motivated to try to think that the task turned out well.

A classic dissonance experiment by Aronson and Mills (1959) demonstrates the basic idea.

To investigate the relationship between dissonance and effort.

Female students volunteered to take part in a discussion on the psychology of sex. In the “mild embarrassment” condition, participants read aloud to a male experimenter a list of sex-related words like “virgin” and “prostitute.”

In the “severe embarrassment” condition, they had to read aloud obscene words and a very explicit sexual passage.

In the control condition, they went straight into the main study. In all conditions, they then heard a very boring discussion about sex in lower animals. They were asked to rate how interesting they had found the discussion and how interesting they had found the people involved in it.

Participants in the “severe embarrassment” condition gave the most positive rating.

If a voluntary experience that has cost a lot of effort turns out badly, the dissonance is reduced by redefining the experience as interesting. This justifies the effort made.

How To Reduce Cognitive Dissonance

Dissonance can be reduced in one of three ways: a) changing existing beliefs, b) adding new beliefs, or c) reducing the importance of the beliefs.

Change one or more of the attitudes, behavior, beliefs, etc., to make the relationship between the two elements a consonant one.

When one of the dissonant elements is a behavior, the individual can change or eliminate the behavior.

However, this mode of dissonance reduction frequently presents problems for people, as it is often difficult for people to change well-learned behavioral responses (e.g., giving up smoking).

This is often very difficult, as people frequently employ a variety of mental maneuvers.

Acquire new information that outweighs the dissonant beliefs.

For example, thinking smoking causes lung cancer will cause dissonance if a person smokes.

However, new information such as “research has not proved definitely that smoking causes lung cancer” may reduce the dissonance.

Reduce the importance of the cognitions (i.e., beliefs, attitudes).

A common way to reduce dissonance is to increase the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and decrease the attractiveness of the rejected alternative. This is referred to as “spreading apart the alternatives.”

A person could convince themself that it is better to “live for today” than to “save for tomorrow.”

In other words, he could tell himself that a short life filled with smoking and sensual pleasures is better than a long life devoid of such joys. In this way, he would be decreasing the importance of dissonant cognition (smoking is bad for one’s health).

Critical Evaluation

There has been a great deal of research into cognitive dissonance, providing some interesting and sometimes unexpected findings.

It is a theory with very broad applications, showing that we aim for consistency between attitudes and behaviors and may not use very rational methods to achieve it. It has the advantage of being testable by scientific means (i.e., experiments).

However, there is a problem from a scientific point of view because we cannot physically observe cognitive dissonance, and therefore we cannot objectively measure it (re: behaviorism). Consequently, the term cognitive dissonance is somewhat subjective.

There is also some ambiguity (i.e., vagueness) about the term “dissonance” itself. Is it a perception (as “cognitive” suggests), a feeling, or a feeling about a perception? Aronson’s Revision of the idea of dissonance as an inconsistency between a person’s self-concept and a cognition about their behavior makes it seem likely that dissonance is really nothing more than guilt.

There are also individual differences in whether or not people act as this theory predicts. Highly anxious people are more likely to do so. Many people seem able to cope with considerable dissonance and not experience the tensions the theory predicts.

Finally, many of the studies supporting the theory of cognitive dissonance have low ecological validity. For example, turning pegs (as in Festinger’s experiment) is an artificial task that doesn’t happen in everyday life.

Also, the majority of experiments used students as participants, which raises issues of a biased sample . Could we generalize the results from such experiments?

What is the difference between cognitive dissonance theory and balance theory?

Cognitive dissonance theory, proposed by Festinger, focuses on the discomfort felt when holding conflicting beliefs or attitudes, leading individuals to seek consistency.

Heider’s Balance Theory , on the other hand, emphasizes the desire for balanced relations among triads of entities (like people and attitudes), with imbalances prompting changes in attitudes to restore balance. Both theories address cognitive consistency, but in different contexts.

Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2) , 177.

Brehm, J. W. (1956). Postdecision changes in the desirability of alternatives. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52(3) , 384.

Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of cognitive dissonance . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Festinger, L. (1959). Some attitudinal consequences of forced decisions . Acta Psychologica , 15, 389-390.

Festinger, L. (Ed.). (1964). Conflict, decision, and dissonance (Vol. 3) . Stanford University Press.

Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2) , 203.

Experiments

Leon Festinger and Cognitive Dissonance

Introduction, general overviews.

Core Historical Sources
Biographies and Autobiography of Classic Contributors
Classic and New Paradigms
Other Dissonance Inducement Situations
Moderators of Cognitive Dissonance
Affect and Dissonance
Physiological Measures
Neuroimaging and the Cognitive Dissonance State
Regulation Strategies Aiming at Inconsistency: Modes of Reduction
Regulation Strategies Aiming at Discomfort: Palliative Regulations
Factors Influencing Regulation
Controversies and Critics
Preconditions for Cognitive Dissonance
Reformulations and New Models for the Dissonance Theory
Intercultural Approach Dissonance and Cultural Context
Dissonance in NonHuman Animals

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

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Executive Functions in Childhood
Remote Work
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Cognitive Dissonance Theory by David C. Vaidis , Alexandre Bran LAST REVIEWED: 28 October 2020 LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2020 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199828340-0156

Appearing for the first time in the mid-20th century, the term “cognitive dissonance” appears nowadays about eight hundred times in PsycINFO and the original book has been cited more than forty-five thousand times in scientific publications: that is more than twice a day for about sixty years. The theory of cognitive dissonance was molded by Leon Festinger at the beginning of the 1950s. It suggests that inconsistencies among cognitions (i.e., knowledge, opinion, or belief about the environment, oneself, or one’s behavior) generate an uncomfortable motivating feeling (i.e., the cognitive dissonance state). According to the theory, people feel uncomfortable when they experience cognitive dissonance and thus are motivated to retrieve an acceptable state. The magnitude of existing dissonance depends on the importance of the involved cognitions. Experiencing a higher level of dissonance causes pressure and motivation to reduce the dissonance. Findings from several studies show that dissonance occurs when people do not act in accordance with their attitude (e.g., writing supportive arguments in favor of a topic that they do not agree upon; performing a task they disapprove). Festinger 1957 (cited under Core Historical Sources ) considers three ways to cope with cognitive dissonance: (a) changing one or several involved elements in the dissonance relationship (e.g., moving an opinion to fit a behavior), (b) adding new elements to reduce the inconsistency (e.g., adopting opinions that fit a behavior), and (c) reducing the importance of the involved elements. Early theorists in this field suggested improvement to the cognitive dissonance theory by adding restrictions for the emergence of the phenomena. Three major developments have to be considered: the commitment purpose and freedom, the consequence of the act purpose, and the self-involvement. Since the 2010s, the theory has been refined with new integrative models and methodological breakthrough. Mostly studied in human beings, several studies shift paradigms to other animals such as nonhuman primates, rats, and birds. The cognitive dissonance theory has been applied to a very large array of social situations and leads to original experimental designs. It is arguably one of the most influential theories in social psychology, general psychology, and cross-discipline sciences more generally.

The field of cognitive dissonance is broad. Several paradigms were developed and many theories coexist. There are plenty of sources, mostly scientific articles and books, that provide a wide overview of the literature on cognitive dissonance. After about a half century of the development of the theory, several authors have published condensed works and state-of-the-art pieces concerning the topic, but they often suggest a partially deviant point of view. 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. In the same vein, Cooper 2019 proposes the author’s personal view of this story, focusing on his own theoretical achievements. Gawronski and Strack 2012 offers an overview of the cognitive consistency field. More aimed at advanced researchers in cognitive dissonance, Harmon-Jones 2019 (the second edition of Harmon-Jones and Mills 1999 ) is an edited volume that synthesizes modern perspectives on dissonance.

Aronson, Elliot. 1992. The return of the repressed: Dissonance theory makes a comeback. Psychological Inquiry 3:303–311.

DOI: 10.1207/s15327965pli0304_1

Aronson reviews the history of cognitive dissonance and mainly develops the self-consistency revision. This paper could be considered as the one that permits a regain of interest of the theory in the late 1990s.

Brehm, Jack W. 2007. A brief history of dissonance theory. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 1:381–391.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00035.x

The paper reviews the storyline of cognitive dissonance theory, from Festinger’s very beginning up to the spreading of experimentations all over the world. The author does not develop the reformulations but presents an outline of the theory.

Cooper, Joel. 2019. Cognitive dissonance: Where we’ve been and where we’re going . International Review of Social Psychology 32.1.

DOI: 10.5334/irsp.277

Cooper examines the long history of critiques of the theory and offers a view of the current state of cognitive dissonance. Throughout the paper, Cooper reviews his important contributions to the field.

Festinger, Leon. 1962. A theory of cognitive dissonance . Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.

The most essential work about the theory. Festinger develops the core concepts and then covers four situations of dissonance: consequences of decisions, forced compliance, exposure to information, and the role of social support. The last chapter also gives strong advice to improve and delimit the theory. The book has been initially printed in 1957 at Row Peterson and Company before being republished. The current available version is the one revised in 1985 by Festinger.

Gawronski, Bertram, and Fritz Strack. 2012. Cognitive consistency: A fundamental principle in social cognition . New York: Guilford Press.

This book provides an overview of the cognitive consistency field and of the place of cognitive dissonance theory.

Harmon-Jones, Eddie. 2019. Cognitive dissonance: Reexamining a pivotal theory in psychology . 2d ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Aimed at a postgraduate and researcher audience, this book is a collection of chapters written by various top experts in the field of cognitive dissonance. It offers a substantial panorama of the theories and research issues. The first edition was released in 1999 and the second edition proposed several updates.

Harmon-Jones, Eddie, and Judson Mills. 1999. Cognitive dissonance: Progress on a pivotal theory in social psychology . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

DOI: 10.1037/10318-000

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Cognitive Dissonance: Theory, Examples & How to Reduce It

If this has ever happened to you, you have experienced first-hand what this article is about: what happens when we act in a way that does not align with who we believe we are.

That slight feeling of discomfort we perceive when noticing this mismatch is called cognitive dissonance .

Cognitive dissonance is powerful because we are highly driven to eliminate it. The way we do that can be transformative or destructive. Interestingly, we often do so without being aware of it.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive CBT Exercises for free . These science-based exercises will provide you with detailed insight into Positive CBT and give you the tools to apply it in your therapy or coaching.

This Article Contains:

Cognitive dissonance: festinger’s theory, a real-life example, 4 ways to address cognitive dissonance, a look at research findings, assessing cognitive dissonance: 2 questionnaires, dealing with dissonance in therapy: 4 tips, a note on cognitive dissonance in relationships, 2 books on the topic, 4 interesting podcast episodes on the subject, positivepsychology.com’s relevant resources, a take-home message.

A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.

Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

Over 60 years ago, Leon Festinger (1957) postulated one of the most well-known theories of psychology: cognitive dissonance theory.

The theory is based on the idea that two cognitions can be relevant or irrelevant to each other (Festinger, 1957). Such cognitions can be about behaviors, perceptions, attitudes, emotions, and beliefs. Often, one of the cognitions in question is about our behavior. If the cognitions are relevant, they can be in agreement (consistent) or disagreement (inconsistent) with one another (Festinger, 1957).

Discrepancy between an attitude and a behavior – eating a doughnut while thinking of reducing calorie intake – leads to psychological discomfort called cognitive dissonance (Harmon-Jones, 2019).

Cognitive dissonance leads to the motivation to reduce the dissonance (Festinger, 1957). The stronger the discrepancy between thoughts, the greater the motivation to reduce it (Festinger, 1957).

There are four strategies used to do reduce the discomfort of cognitive dissonance:

We change our behavior so that it is consistent with the other thought.
We change one of the dissonant thoughts in order to restore consistency.
We add other (consonant) thoughts that justify or reduce the importance of one thought and therefore diminish the inconsistency.
We trivialize the inconsistency altogether, making it less important and less relevant.

There are two other factors that influence the magnitude of cognitive dissonance: whether you had some choice over the inconsistency and whether you expect the inconsistency to have negative consequences in the future. The more choice you had over the inconsistency (Linder, Cooper, & Jones, 1967) and the worse the consequences (Cooper & Worchel, 1970), the stronger the dissonance will be.

Dissonance can also be experienced vicariously through people of a social group that we identify with. When they act inconsistently with their attitude, we feel the same discomfort as if we had acted inconsistently with our attitude ourselves (Cooper, 2016).

The concept of cognitive dissonance is nicely explained in this YouTube video by social psychologist Andy Luttrell.

Cognitive dissonance occurs frequently and to all of us (Harmon-Jones, 2019).

Imagine confronting a sunbather with the information that excessive sun exposure is the leading cause of skin cancer. The two thoughts – ‘sunbathing can cause cancer’ and ‘I am sunbathing’ – will cause the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. Consequently, they will be motivated to reduce it.

They will do this in one of four ways:

They change their behavior. Upon acquiring the additional information, they might stop sunbathing.
They change one thought. They might decide to deny the evidence showing a link between sun exposure and skin cancer.
They add other (consonant) thoughts. They might think that sun exposure is necessary for the body to produce vitamin D, which is important for bone health, among other benefits. Therefore, they may decide that a little sunbathing is good for their health.
They trivialize the inconsistency. They might think that facts like that have been disproven plenty of times before and disregard the information altogether.

In fact, it is a psychological mechanism that helps us perceive our world (and our place in it) consistently. It is a mechanism that alerts us when we are not acting in line with our beliefs, attitudes, or plans.

In that sense, the experience of cognitive dissonance is an opportunity to learn and grow, as long as we deal with it constructively and respond in a way that we choose and is beneficial.

1. Mindfulness

Often, we deal with cognitive inconsistencies without being aware of them. The first step is to notice inconsistencies between our thoughts. We can raise our awareness through mindfulness practice . This includes refraining from judgment and instead being accepting of our observations.

2. Challenge current beliefs

The next step is to identify the cause of inconsistencies in our thoughts. Understanding your beliefs and values behind the inconsistencies is an opportunity to develop deeper self-knowledge.

Sometimes, it’s helpful to challenge our current beliefs . This can be a difficult and uncomfortable process and involves getting additional information.

3. Consider the importance of dissonant thoughts

Sometimes the dissonant information appears to be important at first sight but can be diminished upon deeper reflection.

A good example is the prospect of embarrassing ourselves in front of others, such as by forgetting our words during a speech. However, after further thought, we may decide that it does not matter what others think of us and can thus reduce the dissonance.

4. Justifying behavior

We may perceive dissonance when we engage in a new behavior (e.g., when we decline an invitation to an event we usually attend in order to protect our leisure time). While this can feel uncomfortable at first, it’s helpful to reflect on the reasons behind our behavior.

cognitive dissonance experiment conclusion

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Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) conducted one of the first studies examining cognitive dissonance.

In a three-group experimental design, they asked participants to complete a boring and monotonous task. Subsequently, intervention group participants were offered either $1 or $20 (under random selection) to engage in so-called counter-attitudinal behavior: telling the next participant that the task was enjoyable.

The researchers hypothesized that the intervention group participants would experience cognitive dissonance as a result of two conflicting thoughts: 1) the task is boring and 2) I am telling someone the task is fun.

They further presupposed that participants would be driven to reduce the dissonance by justifying their behavior. Since participants in the $20 condition had a more substantial justification (higher pay) already, they were further assumed to perceive less dissonance than those in the $1 condition.

Cognitive dissonance was measured indirectly by asking participants about changes in their opinion about how enjoyable the task was following the experiment.

As hypothesized, those in the $1 condition reported a significantly greater change of their opinion about the task than the other two groups. You can watch the following video clip about the study.

One of the criticisms about cognitive dissonance is that we cannot measure it directly (Harmon-Jones, 2019). Thus far, research studies have typically assessed cognitive dissonance using various indirect measures including:

Changes in attitude toward a specific, context-dependent topic, such as enjoyment of the mundane task in the experiment described above (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959)
Information seeking following a change in usual behavior (Engel, 1963)
Differences in task performance as a result of the physical arousal associated with dissonance (Elliot & Devine, 1994)
Galvanic skin responses (Elkin & Leippe, 1986)

More recently, psychometric measurement scales were developed. Since cognitive dissonance often naturally occurs after a decision such as a purchase, this is what questionnaires have focused on.

Sweeney, Hausknecht, and Soutar (2000) developed a 22-item scale measuring cognitive dissonance immediately following a purchase. It examines three dimensions of cognitive dissonance:

Emotional consequences of the purchase (‘After I bought this product, I felt annoyed’)
Judgment regarding the wisdom of the purchase (‘I wonder if I made the right choice’)
Concern over the deal (‘After I bought this product, I wondered if they had fooled me’)

The questionnaire can be downloaded free from ResearchGate .

Koller and Salzberger (2007) developed an eight-item consumer behavior scale. Their questionnaire includes items regarding the decision-making process before and after the purchase. The full text can be requested from the authors free of charge via the ResearchGate website .

Therapists aim to help their patients by understanding and changing their attitudes, emotions, or behaviors. Dissonance can be hard to address constructively. The following tips consider its use or presence in therapy.

1. Induce effort

Cognitive dissonance theory itself suggests that if patients are investing time, money, and emotional effort in the therapy, they will be likely to work hard to reach their therapeutic goals in order to justify their efforts.

2. Provide choice

If patients are provided with the opportunity to co-design aspects of their therapy, they may be more likely to act in line with their choices by reaching their therapeutic goals.

3. Provide a safe space and consider the use of relaxation techniques

Patients are likely to feel uncomfortable when dissonant thoughts are discussed, which can impede their ability to think constructively.

4. Discussing discrepant behavior

Therapy can help patients by reflecting on and taking control of their thoughts . Sometimes when patients engage in a new, more constructive behavior, they can perceive dissonance simply because it is contrary to the way they used to act. Providing the space and time to understand their new behavior and justifying it can help to reduce the dissonance.

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Cognitive dissonance and the way we cope with it regularly affect our relationships, too, both positively and negatively.

Relationships are typically built on shared attitudes, beliefs, and values. When our friends or partners act contrary to our beliefs and values, we perceive dissonance.

Coping mechanisms can include justifying their behavior (and our relationship with them), trivializing their behavior or the importance of it, attempting to change their behavior, or changing our own behavior.

This offers opportunities to discuss the discrepancies, deepen the relationship, and re-align values. Conversely, we may justify or trivialize negative behavior or even end the relationship.

In romantic relationships, important values represent hotspots for cognitive dissonance and typically center on big decisions, such as the wish to have children , lifestyle choices (e.g., buying a house vs. traveling the world), and issues related to family and friends.

The expectation of shared beliefs, values, and attitudes from family members can additionally influence romantic relationships. If these don’t align, we might consider justifying our relationship or breaking up. An extreme example of the negative consequences of cognitive dissonance is when we justify our partner’s harmful behavior toward us and get stuck in a toxic relationship.

1. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance – Leon Festinger

The original book by Leon Festinger is a staple on every (social) psychologist’s bookshelf.

It provides an introduction to the theory and covers the topics of cognitive dissonance following decisions, the effects of forced compliance, the impacts of voluntary and involuntary exposure to information, and the role of social support.

Find the book on Amazon .

2. Cognitive Dissonance: 50 Years of a Classic Theory – Joel Cooper

Psychologist Joel Cooper recently published a comprehensive update of cognitive dissonance theory after more than 50 years of research.

This book includes examples of cognitive dissonance in today’s world.

The Psych Files is hosted by psychologist Dr. Michael A. Britt and has several episodes on cognitive dissonance:

Episode 8 : Cognitive Dissonance Theory: Why Contradictions Bother Us So Much
Episode 10 : Cognitive Dissonance Strikes Again! What Your Search on Amazon Says About You
Episode 63 : Cognitive Dissonance, the Monty Hall Problem and a Possible Resolution?

This episode of the podcast Behavioral Grooves features an interview with Dr. Kathleen Vohs on cognitive dissonance theory. Dr. Vohs discusses the topic as it relates to supporters of Former President Donald Trump justifying one of his controversial tweets in 2019.

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The following resources will make great supplemental support on the topic:

20 Most Popular Theories of Motivation in Psychology provides an introductory overview of motivation theories.
Identifying and Challenging Core Beliefs : 12 Helpful Worksheets will help you identify core beliefs that play a role in your experience of cognitive dissonance.
You can use the Setting Valued Goals tool to help your clients reflect on their personal values and begin living into these in a more purposeful, satisfying way.
Our Mindfulness Masterclass© provides a comprehensive opportunity to understand and cultivate mindfulness practice.
The Meaning and Valued Living Masterclass© provides you with the means to help your clients understand their core values.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others through CBT, this collection contains 17 validated positive CBT tools for practitioners. Use them to help others overcome unhelpful thoughts and feelings and develop more positive behaviors.

Cognitive dissonance is a well-researched psychological phenomenon. It occurs in all of us frequently, not just when planning to diet and justifying a doughnut with a delayed diet start.

Negative consequences of cognitive dissonance reduction include procrastination or acting seemingly contrary to our values and beliefs. However, it can be beneficial to remind ourselves that it exists as a psychological safety mechanism to help us perceive the world consistently and to protect the perception we have about ourselves.

Understanding our mechanisms with which we reduce dissonance and recognizing when it occurs are key to making informed and constructive decisions. Self-awareness and mindfulness practice empower us to notice inconsistencies in our thinking and find the space between dissonance triggers and our reaction so we can choose a response we are truly happy with.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive CBT Exercises for free .

Cooper, J. (2007). Cognitive dissonance: 50 Years of a classic theory . SAGE Publications.
Cooper, J. (2016). Vicarious cognitive dissonance: Changing attitudes by experiencing another’s pain. In J. P. Forgas, J. Cooper, & W. D. Crano (Eds.), The psychology of attitudes and attitude change . Psychology Press.
Cooper, J., & Worchel, S. (1970). Role of undesired consequences in arousing cognitive dissonance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 16 (2), 199–206.
Elkin, R. A., & Leippe, M. R. (1986). Physiological arousal, dissonance, and attitude change: Evidence for a dissonance-arousal link and a “don’t remind me” effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 51 (1), 55–65.
Elliot, A. J., & Devine, P. G. (1994). On the motivational nature of cognitive dissonance: Dissonance as psychological discomfort. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 67 (3), 382–394.
Engel, J. F. (1963). Are automobile purchasers dissonant consumers? Journal of Marketing , 27 (2), 55–58.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance . Stanford University Press.
Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , 58 (2), 203–210.
Harmon-Jones, E. (Ed.) (2019). Cognitive dissonance: Reexamining a pivotal theory in psychology (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association.
Koller, M., & Salzberger, T. (2007). Cognitive dissonance as a relevant construct throughout the decision-making and consumption process – An empirical investigation related to a package tour. Journal of Customer Behaviour , 6 (3), 217–227.
Linder, D. E., Cooper, J., & Jones, E. E. (1967). Decision freedom as a determinant of the role of incentive magnitude in attitude change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 6 (3), 245–254.
Sweeney, J. C., Hausknecht, D., & Soutar, G. N. (2000). Cognitive dissonance after purchase: A multidimensional scale. Psychology & Marketing , 17 (5), 369–385.

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory (CDT)

Cognitive dissonance theory: a review, introduction.

Cognitive dissonance theory was first presented by Leon Festinger in 1957 in order to explain the relationships between the motivation, perceptions and cognitions of an individual (Festinger, 1962). It clarified the conditions that motivate individuals to change their opinions, attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. Festinger (Festinger, 1962) defined the ‘cognition’ as any piece of knowledge that an individual has about themself or their environment. The theory was based on the belief that people strive toward consistency within themselves and are driven to make changes to reduce or eliminate an inconsistency (Cooper, 2007). Cognitive dissonance theory began by postulating that pairs of cognitions can be either relevant or irrelevant to one another. If two cognitions are relevant and concurring, there is consonance. However, if two cognitions are relevant, but conflicting, the existence of dissonance would cause psychological discomfort and motivate the individual to act upon this. The greater the magnitude of dissonance, the greater the pressure for the individual to reduce the dissonance (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 2019). The existence of dissonance and the mechanisms that humans used to cope with it captured Festinger’s interest in developing cognitive dissonance theory.

The concept of cognition was relatively new at the time of the introduction of cognitive dissonance theory. Before that, the relationship between human attitudes and behaviours was understood as a complex process that involved motivational, emotional, affective and perceptual factors (Krech, 2019; Rosenberg, 1966). Therefore, the theory was one of the breakthroughs for research in the psychology field as it revolutionised thinking about human psychological processes. More specifically, the theory explains how rewards affect attitudes and behaviours and how behaviours and motivations affect cognitions and perceptions (Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2007). Although the concepts of harmony and conflict were not new and had been proposed earlier by Heider (Heider, 1946), Cognitive Dissonance theory made a major contribution to the concept of consistency (Cooper, 2007). The theory is different compared to other consistency theories as it defines dissonance and consonance in relation to a specific cognition, which usually is related to a behaviour (Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2007). Cognitive Dissonance theory made it possible to identify the determinants of attitudes and beliefs, the internalisation of values, the consequences of decisions, the effects of disagreement among individuals and other important psychological processes (Mills & Harmon-Jones, 1999). Hence, the theory received good attention from scholars in its early days, due to its few fundamental and uncomplicated principles, which could make novel and non-obvious predictions.

Cognitive Dissonance theory has two basic underlying hypotheses:

The existence of a dissonance will cause mental discomfort and motivate the individual to reduce the dissonance and restore consonance
To reduce the dissonance, the individual will try to reduce it as well as avoid situations or information that are likely to increase the dissonance

In simple terms, a dissonance is an inconsistency in cognitive elements, which can be knowledge, opinions, beliefs, or the behaviours of an individual. The existence of such inconsistency causes mental discomfort and motivates the individual to take some actions to reduce or eliminate it. We have millions of cognitions, many of which are in our awareness but most are not (Marx, 1976). Festinger (Festinger, 1962) theorised that a pair of cognitive elements may relate to each other in three ways. Firstly, two cognitive elements may be relevant and consonant. Secondly, two cognitive elements may be relevant but dissonant. However, identification of the relationship may also be difficult, as two elements may be dissonant in one context, but not in another (Festinger, 1962). Dissonance can arise from many sources, including, but not limited to, logical inconsistency, cultural differences, contradictions between specific opinions and their related general stand, and a disconfirmation of a past experience to a current situation (Westmeyer, 2012). Lastly, two elements can be irrelevant to each other. The is a case when a pair of cognitive elements does not imply anything concerning one another. 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).

One of the features that distinguished cognitive dissonance theory from other consistency theories was the concept of dissonance magnitude. The magnitude of dissonance depends on the number and importance of cognitions that the person experiences a consonance or dissonance with. Its calculation is summarised in the mathematical expression below (Festinger, 1962). The total tension of a dissonance is the proportion of the inconsistent cognitions to the consistent cognitions that one has, each weighted by its importance.

Induced compliance behaviour: Festinger and CarlsmithFestinger & Carlsmith, 1959) used cognitive dissonance theory to study induced compliance behaviours. They set up an experimental study and asked participants to undertake a boring task for an hour. Then, the participants were rewarded either $1 or $20. The group that was compensated with a higher amount of money did not experience much dissonance, while the other group had to change their attitude and convinced themselves that the task was interesting to counter the aroused dissonance. In cognitive dissonance theory, monetary compensation can be viewed as a supportive cognition that promotes consonance. Therefore, an individual would experience minimal to no dissonance when the amount or importance of the supportive cognitions is great enough. On the other hand, if the supportive cognitions are not large or strong enough to counter the dissonance, the individual would be motivated to change attitude to be more positive as a justification for the counter-attitudinal behaviour.

Applications

Cognitive dissonance theory has been successfully applied in many fields. It has been used to explain and predict the motivational nature of dissonance that led to attitude and behaviour changes at both the individual and organisational level.

The literature that is based on cognitive dissonance theory has broadly covered four phases of the process, namely, cognitive discrepancy, dissonance, motivation and discrepancy reduction (Hinojosa et al., 2017). The cognitive discrepancy phase considered a conflict between two or more cognitive elements. The dissonance phase concerned the existence of a dissonance. The motivation phase focused on the motivational nature of dissonance to reduce the psychological discomfort. Lastly, the discrepancy reduction phase related to dissonance reduction mechanisms. The concept of dissonance is predominantly related to the post-decision or post-purchase situation (Oliver, 2009). The research on this phase commonly focused on the impacts of post-purchase touchpoints on product or service evaluation (Cohen & Goldberg, 1970), satisfaction (Engel, 1963) intention to repurchase (Hunt, 1970) and the back-out rate (Donnelly & Ivancevich, 1970) of customers. Negative emotion was another concept that has been closely invested with cognitive dissonance. Previous studies have examined the impact of anger, pain, guilt and regret on the strength of dissonance and customer coping mechanisms (Higgins, 1997; Marikyan, Papagiannidis & Alamanos, 2020; Harmon-Jones, 2004; Harmon-Jones, Harmon-Jones & Summerell, 2017; Gilovich, Medvec & Chen, 1995). Some studies also investigated moderators, such as income and product involvement (Gbadamosi, 2009), on consumer decision making. Dissonance can also be extended to other purchase phases, but its purposes will be different (Koller & Salzberger, 2009; Koller & Salzberger, 2012).

Organisational studies researchers have also applied cognitive dissonance theory to examine many issues, such as, emotional labour in the workplace (Bhave & Glomb, 2016), team dissonance (Stoverink et al., 2014), information search for decision making (Jonas & Frey, 2003) and employee job change (Boswell, Boudreau & Tichy, 2005). A review of cognitive dissonance theory at the organisation level was also conducted to integrate the relevant knowledge that was published from 2000 to 2016 (Hinojosa et al., 2017). The review revealed that most of the related studies focused on a specific stage rather than the whole process of cognitive dissonance, with the least coverage on the motivation phase. The two most studied phases of cognitive dissonance in the organisational context were the cognitive discrepancy and the discrepancy reduction phase. The cognitive discrepancy phase focused mainly on decision justification, effort justification and induced compliance behaviours as sources of dissonance in various situations, whilst the discrepancy reduction phase investigated methods that organisations used to reduce dissonance, including changes in attitudes, behaviours, values, information selection, as well as no dissonance reduction (Hinojosa et al., 2017).

Limitations

Cognitive dissonance theory has become popular among social psychology and social science researchers since its early days, due to its few tenets that are able to explain the complex process of dissonance. However, the parsimonious nature of its formulation and application made the theory subject to the paradox of simplicity and raised concerns about overlooking confounding variables (Festinger, 1957; Osgood, 1960; Zajonc, 1960). Since dissonance is not restricted to logical inconsistencies, but is also bounded by other psychological and cultural factors (Festinger, 1962), several scholars argued that dissonance was more complicated than as presented by the Cognitive Dissonance theory and not easy to create in an experiment, which also raised concerned over the experimental paradigms that have been used to demonstrate the theory (Chapanis & Chapanis, 1964; Marx, 1976). In response to the limitations of the theory, three revisions of cognitive dissonance theory have been proposed. Firstly, the self-consistency model (Abelson, Aronson & McGuire, 1968; Aronson, 1999) addressed the paradox of the simplicity of the original theory by adding self-concept as a further explanation of dissonance. Secondly, the self-affirmation model (Berkowitz, 1988) focused on the overall self-image of moral and adaptive adequacy as an alternative explanation for attitude change. Lastly, the aversive consequences model (also commonly known as ”a new look at dissonance ”) (Cooper & Fazio, 1984) also presented an alternative view on mental discomfort. This model proposed that the psychological stress was caused by the feeling of being self-responsible for inducing aversive consequences, rather than the inconsistency in cognitive elements.


Cognition	An opinion, knowledge or belief about the environment, about oneself, or about one's behaviour.	Independent
Cognitive Dissonance	The existence of non-fitting relations among cognitions.	Dependent
Cognitive Dissonance Reduction	The existence of dissonance causes psychological discomfort and motivates the individual to act upon this by changing their opinions, attitudes, beliefs or behaviours.	Dependent

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Ying Tueanrat (Business School, Newcastle University, UK) & Eleftherios Alamanos (Business School, Newcastle University, UK)

How to Cite

Tueanrat, Y.& Alamanos, E. (2023) Cognitive Dissonance Theory: A review . In S. Papagiannidis (Ed), TheoryHub Book . Available at https://open.ncl.ac.uk / ISBN: 9781739604400

Theory Profile

Discipline Psychology Unit of Analysis Individual

Operationalised Qualitatively / Quantitatively Level Micro-level

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ISBN: 978-1-7396044-0-0

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

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Cognitive dissonance of Leon Festinger

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While at the University of Minnesota , Festinger read about a cult that believed that the end of the world was at hand. A woman, “Mrs. Keech,” reported receiving messages from extraterrestrial aliens that the world would end in a great flood on a specific date. She attracted a group of followers who left jobs, schools, and spouses and who gave away money and possessions to prepare to depart on a flying saucer that, according to Mrs. Keech, would arrive to rescue the true believers. Given the believers’ serious commitment, Festinger wondered how they would react when the prophecy failed. He and his colleagues, posing as believers, infiltrated Mrs. Keech’s group and kept notes on the proceedings surreptitiously.

The believers shunned publicity while they awaited the flying saucer and the flood. But when the prophecy was disconfirmed, almost immediately the previously most-committed group members made calls to newspapers, sought out interviews, and started actively proselytizing .

Festinger was unsurprised by the sudden proselytizing after the prophecy’s disconfirmation; he saw the cult members as enlisting social support for their belief to lessen the pain of its disconfirmation. Their behaviour confirmed predictions from his cognitive dissonance theory, whose premise was that people need to maintain consistency between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.

Festinger’s theory proposes that inconsistency among beliefs or behaviours causes an uncomfortable psychological tension (i.e., cognitive dissonance ), leading people to change one of the inconsistent elements to reduce the dissonance or to add consonant elements to restore consonance. Mrs. Keech’s followers actively enlisted new believers to obtain social support (and thereby add consonant elements) to reduce the dissonance created by the disconfirmation.

In 1955 Festinger left the University of Minnesota for Stanford University , where he and his students launched a series of laboratory experiments testing cognitive dissonance theory and extending it to a wide range of phenomena. One of the best known was the forced-compliance paradigm, in which the subject performed a series of repetitive and boring menial tasks and then was asked to lie to the “next subject” (actually an experimental accomplice) and say that the tasks were interesting and enjoyable. Some subjects were paid $1 for lying, while others were paid $20.

Based on dissonance theory, Festinger correctly predicted that the subjects who were paid $1 for lying later evaluated the tasks as more enjoyable than those who were paid $20. The subjects who were paid $20 should not have experienced dissonance, because they were well rewarded and had ample justification for lying, whereas those paid $1 had little justification for lying and should have experienced cognitive dissonance. To reduce the dissonance, they reevaluated the boring task as interesting and enjoyable.

In 1964, Festinger moved from social psychology to research on visual perception . Although a seemingly radical departure, it was in fact a continuation of a theme. Festinger’s work on visual perception concerned how people reconcile inconsistencies between visual perception and eye movements to see coherent images. His social psychological research concerned how people resolve conflict (group dynamics), ambiguity (social comparison), and inconsistency (cognitive dissonance)—all manifestations of pressures for uniformity.

In 1968 Festinger was appointed the Else and Hans Staudinger Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research in New York City . In the late 1970s he turned to questions about human nature raised by archeological data. His work resulted in a monograph, The Human Legacy , published in 1983. A general theme of that work was that humans often bring about problems unwittingly, as a result of intellectual and creative talents—for example, creating new technologies without being fully able to foresee their long-term consequences. Initially, Festinger’s “archeological” work was perceived as being at the margins of social psychology, but it was later seen as prescient of contemporary developments in evolutionary and cultural psychology .

What Is Cognitive Dissonance?

The definition of cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort people feel when trying to hold two conflicting beliefs in their mind.

The ground-breaking social psychological experiment of Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) provides a central insight into the stories we tell ourselves about why we think and behave the way we do.

The experiment is filled with ingenious deception so the best way to understand it is to imagine you are taking part. So sit back, relax and travel back.

The time is 1959 and you are an undergraduate student at Stanford University…

(Alternatively, you can skip straight to what is cognitive dissonance .)

As part of your course you agree to take part in an experiment on ‘measures of performance’.

You are told the experiment will take two hours.

As you are required to act as an experimental subject for a certain number of hours in a year – this will be two more of them out of the way.

Little do you know, the experiment will actually become a classic in social psychology.

And what will seem to you like accidents by the experimenters are all part of a carefully controlled deception.

For now though, you are innocent.

Cognitive dissonance: the set-up

Once in the lab you are told the experiment is about how your expectations affect the actual experience of a task.

Apparently there are two groups and in the other group they have been given a particular expectation about the study.

To instil the expectation subtly, the participants in the other groups are informally briefed by a student who has apparently just completed the task.

In your group, though, you’ll do the task with no expectations.

Perhaps you wonder why you’re being told all this, but nevertheless it makes it seem a bit more exciting now that you know some of the mechanics behind the experiment.

So you settle down to the first task you are given, and quickly realise it is extremely boring.

You are asked to move some spools around in a box for half an hour, then for the next half an hour you move pegs around a board.

Frankly, watching paint dry would have been preferable.

At the end of the tasks the experimenter thanks you for taking part, then tells you that many other people find the task pretty interesting.

This is a little confusing – the task was very boring. Whatever. You let it pass.

Effects of cognitive dissonance

Then the experimenter looks a little embarrassed and starts to explain haltingly that there’s been a cock-up.

He says they need your help.

The participant coming in after you is in the other condition they mentioned before you did the task – the condition in which they have an expectation before carrying out the task.

This expectation is that the task is actually really interesting.

Unfortunately the person who usually sets up their expectation hasn’t turned up.

So, they ask if you wouldn’t mind doing it.

Not only that but they offer to pay you $1.

Because it’s 1959 and you’re a student this is not completely insignificant for only a few minutes work.

And, they tell you that they can use you again in the future.

It sounds like easy money so you agree to take part.

This is great – what started out as a simple fulfilment of a course component has unearthed a little ready cash for you.

You are quickly introduced to the next participant who is about to do the same task you just completed.

As instructed you tell her that the task she’s about to do is really interesting.

She smiles, thanks you and disappears off into the test room.

You feel a pang of regret for getting her hopes up.

Then the experimenter returns, thanks you again, and once again tells you that many people enjoy the task and hopes you found it interesting.

Then you are ushered through to another room where you are interviewed about the experiment you’ve just done.

One of the questions asks you about how interesting the task was that you were given to do.

This makes you pause for a minute and think.

Now it seems to you that the task wasn’t as boring as you first thought.

You start to see how even the repetitive movements of the spools and pegs had a certain symmetrical beauty.

And it was all in the name of science after all.

This was a worthwhile endeavour and you hope the experimenters get some interesting results out of it.

The task still couldn’t be classified as great fun, but perhaps it wasn’t that bad.

You figure that, on reflection, it wasn’t as bad as you first thought.

You rate it moderately interesting.

After the experiment you go and talk to your friend who was also doing the experiment.

Comparing notes you found that your experiences were almost identical except for one vital difference.

She was offered way more than you to brief the next student: $20!

This is when it first occurs to you that there’s been some trickery at work here.

You ask her about the task with the spools and pegs:

“Oh,” she replies. “That was sooooo boring, I gave it the lowest rating possible.”

“No,” you insist. “It wasn’t that bad. Actually when you think about it, it was pretty interesting.”

She looks at you incredulously.

What the hell is going on?

What is cognitive dissonance?

What you’ve just experienced is the power of cognitive dissonance.

Social psychologists studying cognitive dissonance are interested in the way we deal with two thoughts that contradict each other – and how we deal with this contradiction.

In this case: you thought the task was boring to start off with then you were paid to tell someone else the task was interesting.

But, you’re not the kind of person to casually go around lying to people.

So how can you resolve your view of yourself as an honest person with lying to the next participant?

The amount of money you were paid hardly salves your conscience – it was nice but not that nice.

Your mind resolves this conundrum by deciding that actually the study was pretty interesting after all.

You are helped to this conclusion by the experimenter who tells you other people also thought the study was pretty interesting.

Your friend, meanwhile, has no need of these mental machinations.

She merely thinks to herself: I’ve been paid $20 to lie, that’s a small fortune for a student like me, and more than justifies my fibbing.

The task was boring and still is boring whatever the experimenter tells me.

Examples of cognitive dissonance

Since this experiment numerous studies of cognitive dissonance have been carried out and the effect is well-established.

Its beauty is that it explains so many of our everyday behaviours.

Here are some examples provided by Morton Hunt in ‘ The Story of Psychology :

When trying to join a group, the harder they make the barriers to entry, the more you value your membership. To resolve the dissonance between the hoops you were forced to jump through, and the reality of what turns out to be a pretty average club, we convince ourselves the club is, in fact, fantastic.
People will interpret the same information in radically different ways to support their own views of the world. When deciding our view on a contentious point, we conveniently forget what jars with our own theory and remember everything that fits.
People quickly adjust their values to fit their behaviour, even when it is clearly immoral. Those stealing from their employer will claim that “Everyone does it” so they would be losing out if they didn’t, or alternatively that “I’m underpaid so I deserve a little extra on the side.”

Once you start to think about it, the list of situations in which people resolve cognitive dissonance through rationalisations becomes ever longer and longer.

If you’re honest with yourself, I’m sure you can think of many times when you’ve done it yourself.

I know I can.

Being aware of this can help us avoid falling foul of the most dangerous consequences of cognitive dissonance: believing our own lies.

→ This post is part of a series on the best social psychology experiments :

Halo Effect : Definition And How It Affects Our Perception
Cognitive Dissonance: How and Why We Lie to Ourselves
Robbers Cave Experiment : How Group Conflicts Develop
Stanford Prison Experiment : Zimbardo’s Famous Social Psychology Study
Milgram Experiment : Explaining Obedience to Authority
False Consensus Effect : What It Is And Why It Happens
Social Identity Theory And The Minimal Group Paradigm
Negotiation : 2 Psychological Strategies That Matter Most
Bystander Effect And The Diffusion Of Responsibility
Asch Conformity Experiment : The Power Of Social Pressure

Author: Dr Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. View all posts by Dr Jeremy Dean

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Respectable Challenges to Respectable Theory: Cognitive Dissonance Theory Requires Conceptualization Clarification and Operational Tools

Despite its long tradition in social psychology, we consider that Cognitive Dissonance Theory presents serious flaws concerning its methodology which question the relevance of the theory, limit breakthroughs, and hinder the evaluation of its core hypotheses. In our opinion, these issues are mainly due to operational and methodological weaknesses that have not been sufficiently addressed since the beginnings of the theory. We start by reviewing the ambiguities concerning the definition and conceptualization of the term cognitive dissonance . We then review the ways it has been operationalized and we present the shortcomings of the actual paradigms. To acquire a better understanding of the theory, we advocate a stronger focus on the nature and consequences of the cognitive dissonance state itself. Next, we emphasize the actual lack of standardization, both in the ways to induce cognitive dissonance and to assess it, which impairs the comparability of the results. Last, in addition to reviewing these limits, we suggest new ways to improve the methodology and we conclude on the importance for the field of psychology to take advantage of these important challenges to go forwards.

Introduction

Among the major theories in psychology, Cognitive Dissonance Theory (CDT; Festinger, 1957 ) holds a honorable position (Haggbloom et al., 2002 ; Devine and Brodish, 2003 ; Gawronski and Strack, 2012 ; Kruglanski et al., 2018 ). For more than six decades, CDT suggests that cognitive inconsistency leads to a motivational state that promotes regulation, which comes mainly through a change of opinions or behaviors. Many investigations of this theory have relied on the inconsistency between attitudes and behaviors, usually resulting in an attitude shift toward more consistency with the behaviors (e.g., Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959 ). Despite the quantity of publications supporting the model (Harmon-Jones and Mills, 1999 ; Vaidis, 2014 ; Harmon-Jones, 2019 ), and despite our deep attachment to this theory, we consider that research on CDT presents flaws which call into question the relevance of the methodology underpinning the theory. In the present paper, we stress and list what appear to us as major issues threatening the validity of CDT and we suggest means to cope with them. Finally, we invite the field to take advantage of these important challenges to go forward, and thus improve or complete the whole theory.

A General Need for Clarification

About twenty-six centuries before our time, Sun Tzu's philosophy stated that “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Knowledge of weaknesses is just as important as awareness of strengths. Similarly, scientists should be alert to methodological flaws surrounding their models so as to confront empirical challenges serenely.

Recently, several important theories which contributed to social psychological knowledge were partially discarded or relegated to a secondary role (Open Science Collaboration, 2015 ). This has been the case for ego depletion theory (Hagger et al., 2016 ), as well as for priming effects on impression formation (McCarthy et al., 2018 ), and cognitive performance (O'Donnell et al., 2018 ). These revisions follow from the methodological and replication crisis started in 2011 (see Nelson et al., 2018 ), a landmark year for social psychology with Bem's publication (Bem, 2011 ) that raised a statistical and methodological shield wall, and with the exposition of a renowned scholar's fraud (Levelt Noort and Drenth Committees, 2012 ) that brought to light the existence of dishonest practices. The field reacted by increasing standards for scientific evidences in social psychology. For some, this process has been perceived as questionable (e.g., Schwarz and Clore, 2016 ) and sometimes as harsh (Fiske, 2016 ), and has sometimes been called the “data police,” the “inquisition” or even “methodological terrorists.” However, one reacts to the affliction, we consider that these hard times contribute to the debate and improve psychological science. Indeed, questions about the methodology of a field and requests for meta-analyses or multiple laboratory replications should not be seen as frightening enemies but as valuable assets, with the only purpose to contribute to a clarification of what is real, reliable, and could constitute solid knowledge for the future of social psychology.

In this context, does CDT needs to worry about its future and could it be reclassified from major league to classic-but-wrong-theory? Until now, replication projects have not yet focused on CDT and have spared this theory. But there is no reason to rejoice. We did definitely learn a lot from the six decades of existence of CDT and it influenced many fields and theoretical descendants (e.g., Aronson, 1992 ; Harmon-Jones and Mills, 1999 ; Gawronski and Strack, 2012 ). However, even the most fervent proponents of the theory –including ourselves– should admit that the field has avoided addressing some major criticisms which persisted through the years and that are still relevant today. These questions echo insistently in this time of methodological crisis, and we believe that the field should make a special effort to address them. Moreover, as one of the rare social psychology theories that propose a general pattern characterizing the human psyche and construction of reality, CDT is a very important theory for the field. This status should motivate scrupulous research and evaluation. Despite its status as the old lady of the discipline, CDT should be questioned as thoroughly as a young theory.

In the following sections, we discuss the weakness of CDT operationalization and suggest methodological improvements. In our opinion, these major issues have to be addressed, and focusing on these points should help the theory, the field and the whole discipline, to move forward.

The Operationalization Issue: Problems and Ways Forward

Festinger ( 1957 ) states that non-fitting relations among cognitions generate a state of discomfort, now generally considered as involving negative arousal, that motivates people to cope with this situation, typically by adjusting one cognition to the other. The term he used to refer to this state of discomfort was dissonance. To stress the homeostatic nature of dissonance, he made a parallel with hunger: Deprived of food, people feel hungry and find a way to cope with their hunger. However, as if the same construct defined food deprivation and hunger, Festinger used the term dissonance for both the triggering relation and the state of discomfort that occur. Although CDT has been extensively revised, the original theory is still a central point of agreement and constitutes the core of the theory 1 (see Vaidis, 2014 ; Harmon-Jones, 2019 ). Two main issues have ensued from this overlap: one regarding the definition of dissonance and one regarding its operationalization. Some additional issues to address follow from this: the key variables suffer serious theoretical misconceptions and the lack of methodological standardization restrains breakthroughs.

Definition of “Dissonance”

One term for one concept: dissonance or inconsistency.

In science, it is normative and considered appropriate to use specific words to define specific concepts. A primary issue with CDT concerns the ambiguous term dissonance . In his original publication, Festinger ( 1957 ) used the term dissonance to refer to three different entities: the theory itself, the triggering situation and the generated state. This single terminology is still commonly used today and leads to imprecisions in studies (e.g., Martinie et al., 2017 ; McGrath, 2017 ; Cancino-Montecinos et al., 2018 ). Common sense suggests to consider using three different terms to define these entities. To improve clarity, Vaidis and Bran ( 2018 ) suggested calling the trigger inconsistency , the evoked arousal a cognitive dissonance state (CDS) and the theory cognitive dissonance theory (CDT).

The use of the term inconsistency to point out the presence of unfitting relations has already been proposed in the literature (e.g., Harmon-Jones, 2002 ; Gawronski and Strack, 2012 ). However, the state of cognitive dissonance, or CDS, is not always distinguished from the term for the theory, and they should be clearly differentiated. Various more or less precise suggested alternatives exist. Proulx and Inzlicht ( 2012 ), for instance, mischievously suggest disanxiousuncertlibrium as a term for the state of cognitive dissonance, while Harmon-Jones et al. ( 2009 ) suggest keeping the term dissonance for the state and refer to cognitive discrepancy for the triggering situation. Although the use of a unique terminology would definitely improve clarity, our point here is not to specify the consensual terms to be used, but rather to emphasize the necessity of using specific terms to designate distinct concepts instead of relying on one general term such as dissonance.

Refining the terminology used in CDT could not only clarify the theory, but also impact the whole conception of the theory regarding ways to cope with “dissonance” (Vaidis and Bran, 2018 ). In Festinger's view (1957), regulation strategies are supposed to reduce “dissonance,” but does that mean resolving the inconsistency or does that mean alleviating the arousal? This issue is never clarified in the original presentation of the theory, and differences in scholars' implicit definitions could result in radically different views about the nature of dissonance regulation. In our view, avoiding a confusing conceptualization of CDT requires specifying that the regulation strategy aims at CDS and not necessarily directly at the inconsistency. To serve that purpose, the term regulation fits best with the idea of generally decreasing the motivational state, while the term reduction could be reserved for regulation specifically aimed at reducing the inconsistency. In our opinion, this terminology is more integrated with the general theory (see Vaidis and Bran, 2018 ), as well as more connected to current knowledge (see also Proulx et al., 2012 ; Jonas et al., 2014 ; Levy et al., 2017 ).

Assessing Reduction Is not Assessing “Dissonance”

Investigating strategies for reduction has historically been the overwhelming focus of CDT research. For decades, studies have been focused only on attitude change (for historical reviews, see Vaidis and Gosling, 2011 ; Vaidis and Bran, 2018 ), but the regulation strategies can be numerous (see McGrath, 2017 ). Traditionally, regulations are used to infer the existence of the CDS and authors reason that if individuals have changed their attitude, then they must have experienced cognitive dissonance (Devine et al., 1999 ). A fundamental perspective we take in this paper is that attitude change is only a means of regulation that occurs in specific conditions, but is not a synonym for CDS, nor is any other regulation strategy. Assuming an equivalence between the occurrence of regulation and the existence of a CDS is a logical error and must be avoided. Indeed, if the process conceptualized by CDT involves three steps (inconsistency-CDS-regulation), then regulation is only the third part of a triptych causal-relation. Because there is a constellation of possible regulation strategies and many variables are supposed to influence them (McGrath, 2017 ; Vaidis and Bran, 2018 ), the absence or presence of any given mode of regulation neither confirms nor disconfirms the presence of a CDS 2 .

While attitude and behavior change are the regulation strategies that have been the most studied, plethora of regulations can occur, including, for instance, trivialization (Simon et al., 1995 ), denial of responsibility (Gosling et al., 2006 ), self-affirmation (Steele and Liu, 1983 ) or even value affirmations (Randles et al., 2015 ). Given the number of possible regulation strategies, assessing only one of them limits the conclusion that can be drawn. For instance, the absence of use of a single strategy does not suggest that no regulation has occurred through others, even more as we know very little about what influence the choice of a strategy (Weick, 1965 ; McGrath, 2017 ; Vaidis and Bran, 2018 ). Hence, a serious assessment of regulation strategies that avoid false negatives would have to include all possibilities. Because it is difficult to predict which strategy will be used, it seems unreliable to postulate the existence of CDS and its magnitude on the sole basis of the use of a regulation strategy.

Collectively, the methodological issues concerning assessment in CDT invite consideration of the examination of regulation as a secondary goal for now. As a first step, it seems essential to direct efforts at the development of a clear instrument for measuring the CDS before expecting a clear relation with regulation. These points will be developed further.

The Right Operationalizations to Test the Theory

A particular strength of CDT is the simplicity of its main hypotheses. The detection of an inconsistency arouses a state of discomfort (i.e., CDS) that motivate the individual to reduce it. So how to test such theory? Experimental method suggests to manipulate the hypothesized responsible variable and to assess the suspected effects. This seems trivial from a methodological point of view, but most paradigms in cognitive dissonance do not comply with this principle. Indeed, classic paradigms in CDT manipulated, for instance, the pay for a discrepant behavior (Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959 ), the severity of the pressure to inhibit a behavior (Aronson and Carlsmith, 1962 ), or the deployed effort to join a group (Aronson and Mills, 1959 ). From a theoretical and methodological point of view, these variables are not manipulations of inconsistency but moderator variables linked to the situation (i.e., incentive, justification, effort) that decrease or increase the CDS (Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959 , pp. 203–204). Indeed, cognitions consistent with the behavior (presumed the most resistant) are supposed to decrease the magnitude of the CDS, while inconsistent ones are supposed to increase it. These variables are thus supposed to modulate the magnitude of the CDS and, in some specific cases (i.e., commitment), they bolster the resistance to change and thus orientate the occurrence of reduction strategies (Vaidis and Gosling, 2011 ; Vaidis and Bran, 2018 ). Therefore, these moderators can influence the magnitude of dissonance but do not constitute a manipulation of the inconsistency, as would be comparing an inconsistent situation to a neutral or consistent one.

In this vein, the commitment variable is the archetype of a confounded variable. When using a counter-attitudinal task, the central variable since Linder et al. ( 1967 ) turns out to be commitment, mainly manipulated through choice (e.g., Zanna and Cooper, 1974 ; Elliot and Devine, 1994 ; Simon et al., 1995 ). Within this framework, problematic behaviors that are freely chosen (i.e., High choice) are the “dissonance condition” while the same behaviors occurring under pressure (i.e., Low choice) are supposed to be the “no-dissonance condition.” Therein lies the rub: the choice variable is fundamentally distinct from inconsistency (see Kiesler, 1971 ). In fact, these experiments do not study how people react to an inconsistency, they study how commitment (via choice) influence people's reaction to an inconsistency. In other words, we want to stress that inconsistency without commitment is still inconsistency, and that the commitment variable is first and foremost a factor that will influence the resolution (Kiesler, 1971 ; Vaidis and Gosling, 2011 ). Early warnings of this error were made in the past (Chapanis and Chapanis, 1964 ; Kiesler, 1971 ; Festinger, 1987/1999 ), but this issue is still present today, as commitment continues to be the paradigmatic variable in many recent publications (e.g., Blackman et al., 2016 ; Martinie et al., 2017 ).

This issue could be fixed by redefinition of core concepts and a paradigm change for a systematic manipulation of inconsistency. The easiest way to achieve this would be to compare counter-attitudinal tasks to neutral or pro-attitudinal tasks. Some recent paradigms have indeed shifted their focus to the manipulation of inconsistency. For instance, the hypocrisy paradigm (Aronson, 1992 ; Stone and Fernandez, 2008 ; Priolo et al., 2019 ) compares inconsistent conditions to neutral or consistent ones. Likewise, some new paradigms focus on minimal inconsistencies, that is, inconsistencies that involve very few cognitions other than the inconsistency per se (e.g., Levy et al., 2017 ), and compare inconsistent conditions to neutral ones. These new paradigms are encouraging, but researchers in the field must still clearly realize that varying factors such as commitment is not the same as varying inconsistency.

Inconsistency: Operationalization of Both Manipulation and Measure

Variable operationalization refers to two distinct things (e.g., Leary, 2014 ): on the one hand, it could be the translation of a variable into experimental language, and on the other hand, it could refer to the measurement of said variable. For instance, it can be the means to manipulate hunger in an experimental setting and also the measurement of such hunger. Both operationalizations provide important means to assess a model and, concerning CDT, both need refinement.

Given that CDT deals with inconsistency, one should systematically ensure that there is inconsistency, and ideally assess it. Indeed, the model suggests a relation between the variables involved in the inconsistency, the CDS and its regulation. Festinger considered that the “magnitude of the dissonance will be a function of the importance of the elements” (p.16, 1957/1985). Hence, a higher level of CDS is evoked when the involved cognitions are important (Festinger, 1957 ). For instance, exposure to slight belief disconfirmation would generate a lower degree of CDS than exposure to a strong disconfirmation. Similarly, being forced to kill a snail should raise a somewhat lower CDS than having to kill a cute kitty. As an indicator, we bet that the last part of the previous sentence has generated a more intense reaction to the readers. This is because the involved elements are subjectively more important, and thus generate more CDS.

The relation between inconsistency and CDS is more than a presence-absence relation and it forms a main axiom of CDT. As a consequence, to achieve a test of the model and clear predictions, one must measure the degree of inconsistency or other factors responsible for its magnitude which are supposed to impact the CDS (e.g., strength, importance, centrality). This relation between inconsistency and CDS has been under-examined in the literature, and an effort must be made to operationalize inconsistency rigorously. This means that operationalization of both the assessment of inconsistency and the manipulation of inconsistency is required, and that only systematic measures would allow for investigation of the relations between inconsistency, CDS and the regulation process. Moreover, in the present state of conceptualization, assessing the inconsistency may also be the most relevant way to assess the “dissonance” construct. As a consequence, resolving the issue of the relation between inconsistency and the CDS could be achieved by using conditions that involve several degrees of inconsistency (e.g., low; medium; high), assessing it, and by measuring the CDS generated by these different conditions.

On the Nature of the Cognitive Dissonance State

In a seminal paper, Elliot and Devine ( 1994 ) made a major advance by confirming the existence of discomfort prior to attitude change (Exp. 1) and a decrease of such discomfort following the attitude change (Exp. 2). This paper stressed a fundamental point by examining the hypothesized state, but several questions remain concerning the nature and the exact role of the CDS. Indeed, at our knowledge, the existing studies examining the CDS are subject to the same methodological issues we raised previously, and the field lacks a reliable instrument to assess the CDS. Further research is crucial to define and explore the exact nature of the CDS.

Concerning the nature of CDS, we still know quite little. By nature, we mean the parameters that allow a clear definition of this “state,” such as the experience of a specific emotion or the state's intensity, valence or motivational capacity. Conceptually, Festinger ( 1957 ) defined cognitive dissonance as a state of psychological discomfort that motivates its regulation, then later, as a state of arousal (e.g., Lawrence and Festinger, 1962 ). Likewise, other authors have described the CDS as a state of tension (Croyle and Cooper, 1983 ; Kruglanski and Shteynberg, 2012 ), an unpleasant feeling (Harmon-Jones, 2000 ), or a state of aversive arousal (Proulx et al., 2012 ). From all these definitions, it is not clear if the CDS is supposed to be a distinct and specific state, or if it can be expressed by emotions. Several researchers have for instance considered guilt (Stice, 1992 ), surprise (Noordewier and Breugelmans, 2013 ), and anger (Geschwender, 1967 ) as evidence of CDS. However, this view is not consensual. When constructing a self-report questionnaire, Elliot and Devine ( 1994 ) used only three items to assess the nature of CDS ( uncomfortable, bothered, uneasy ), excluding many other items, such as guilt . They emphasized afterwards that different affect assessments could capture the nature of cognitive dissonance depending on the situation (Devine et al., 1999 ). Despite this clarification, most researchers using the scale continue to use the index in its original form, thus dissociating CDS from the other items (Galinsky et al., 2000 ; Harmon-Jones, 2000 ; Norton et al., 2003 ; Monin et al., 2004 ; Vaidis and Gosling, 2011 ). In another perspective, Kenworthy et al. ( 2011 ) have suggested that guilt could be the most relevant predictor of dissonance effects instead of a specific CDS, thus making a clear distinction between the two. For their part, Gosling et al. ( 2006 ) used the Elliot and Devine's scale but relied on negative-self oriented affect to assess dissonance instead of their dissonance specific index. While these different views co-exist in the literature, there has not been a clear debate yet on the nature and the specificity of the CDS. Altogether, according to the diversity of specific emotion studied, focusing on one specific affect or on a cocktail of affects to capture the nature of CDS seems inappropriate.

Another perspective is to consider CDS as a non-specific emotion and to look for more general features of CDS. In this perspective, most agree on a negative valence and an aversive feature (i.e., individual are motivated to avoid it). Nevertheless, it is not so obvious and could even be debated. Actually, the field has rarely set up situations that could evoke something other than a negative valence: Most studies deal with undesired inconsistencies (i.e., writing against what you want; being exposed to undesired information), while there is a lack of data about affect evoked by an inconsistent but positive cognition (e.g., performing better than expected; Aronson and Carlsmith, 1963 ). In a recent model, Kruglanski et al. ( 2018 ) suggest that the evoked affect could differ depending on expectancy and desirability of outcomes. This assumption implies that disconfirmation of a positive expectancy generates a negative affect while the disconfirmation of a negative expectancy generates a positive affect. An interesting parallel could be drawn with surprise (see Noordewier et al., 2016 ): the initial detection of surprise has a negative valence, but the final valence depends on the valence of the outcome. In a similar vein, Martinie et al. ( 2013 ) demonstrated a temporality of valence: assessing facial activity, the initial reaction to dissonance is undifferentiated and it is only after some time that negative valence appears. This invites the examination of the nature of the CDS by taking into account a time course.

Finally, another possible feature of CDS concerns its relation to action tendencies. For the Action-Based Model (ABM; Harmon-Jones, 1999 ; Harmon-Jones et al., 2015 ), CDT serves the ultimate goal of reducing the interference with effective and unconflicted action. As a consequence, the CDS is supposed to be activated when it conflicts with action and triggers an approach-oriented state. This model is supported by several observations including neural activation of zones linked to conflict and its resolution, such as the anterior cingulate cortex (Harmon-Jones et al., 2008a , b ; van Veen et al., 2009 ; Izuma and Murayama, 2019 ). However, some models suggest that approach is not necessarily the sole answer. Based on an extensive analysis of low level processes in reaction to threat, Jonas et al. ( 2014 ) assume that inconsistency triggers at the very beginning the inhibition system (BIS) and then, if no resolution has occurred, only in a second step is the behavioral approach system (BAS) activated. Hence, once more the time course could be relevant to understand the CDS process.

In regard to current knowledge, we have to admit that despite CDS being the core of the model, we know very little about it. Its affective properties are unclear and the time course is yet understudied. We believe that the intensive examination of its nature is necessary to develop an operational assessment of the CDS, which is a fundamental requirement before drawing further conclusions about the CDT. Finally, as noted previously, the diversity of the induction tasks could also explain a large part of the variance in the observed nature of CDS and the lack of clear paradigms limits current understanding. Additionally, a large part of the studies examining the nature of dissonance rely on a manipulation of choice instead of inconsistency, which could partially bias the conclusions. The specificity of elicited emotions, valence or action tendencies could depend on the task, but also on the operationalization and on the design, and one could hypothesize either that the specific state or regulation of it could stem from the specificity of the induction. So in addition to a better operationalization and a better measurement instrument, we also call for better standardization.

Arguments for Standardization of Procedures

Paradigms can be defined as scientific “traditions”: models, techniques and expected results. While they can be good or bad for the evolution of science (see Kuhn, 1962 ), their main interest is that they are supposed to reduce the variations to the minimum level to permit evaluation of the outcomes in a cumulative science perspective. Concerning CDT, for years, the general paradigm was based on the manipulation of choice and the assessment of the attitude, although in the same time many other points were subject to variation. For instance, the importance of the involved cognitions (e.g., the topic) varied greatly from a study to another, as well as the presence and kind of control condition (e.g., without inconsistency, consistency), or the assessment of the CDS. We consider that a paradigm shift taking more into account the central variables of the theory would be an important step. In addition, the standardization of both the induction and the assessment would help in testing the core hypotheses of the theory.

Standardization of the Induction Task

The CDT field is fruitful, with hundreds of studies covering a large array of tasks and topics. This number of studies is a strong argument for the conceptual validity of the theory. However, some of the core hypotheses of CDT have not been as thoroughly examined and, in their case, the field may benefit from an increased standardization. One of our main concerns here is about the CDS and its investigation. Overall, cognitive dissonance studies have many variations with one another. For instance, counter-attitudinal essays have been investigated with various topics and many differences concerning the instructions, the time course (e.g., length, temporal distance between the induction and the assessments) and the task (e.g., argument, essay, speech). In addition, these studies are strongly socially contextualized and thus may have different impacts depending on place, culture, and temporality. All these variations are likely to alter a number of variables theoretically linked with the CDS and its regulation, such as the importance of the involved cognition, the evoked emotions, the level of self-involvement, or the perceived choice. As we emphasized above, this large variation in the induction is beneficial for the conceptual validity of the theory. However, all these variations can also be impairments when trying to study some specific hypotheses, such as those about the nature and role of the CDS, and its regulations. Each variation between two studies creates room for a potential confounded variable.

In the same vein, the nature of the induction could be fundamentally different from one another (e.g., counter-attitudinal essay, hypocrisy paradigm, free-choice paradigm). These differences can have important impacts on the following assessments. For instance, we developed previously that the CDS may be linked to various emotions, such as guilt or surprise . Depending on the nature of the induction, it seems logical that some emotions may be more evoked than others. For instance, when someone deliberately and publicly accepts to write a counter-attitudinal essay, or remembers behaviors that are inconsistent with previously preached values, this is more likely to evoke guilt . In the meantime, seeing a perceptual anomaly is more likely to be associated with surprise . An interesting perspective is also to consider inconsistencies that could evoke a positive valenced emotion, such as expecting a low grad on an exam and receiving a high one (Gawronsky and Branon, 2019 ). If there is a common CDS to all these situations then its investigation is made particularly difficult in the actual variation in the inductions, and it also makes more complex the examination of the regulation process as these emotions could promote different strategies (Higgins, 1987 ; Devine et al., 1999 ; Niedenthal et al., 2006 ). The same reasoning applies when assessing the CDS through physiological measures. Because several emotions are likely to be evoked, how to distinguish the physiological activity associated to the CDS from the “noise” due to these emotions? Actually, there seems to be some variabilities here depending on the nature of the induction: counter-attitudinal essays have been related to increased GSR (Croyle and Cooper, 1983 ; Elkin and Leippe, 1986 ), but feedbacks inconsistent with expectancies have not (Etgen and Rosen, 1993 ). Likewise, the free-choice paradigm has been related to elevated heart-rate (Etgen and Rosen, 1993 ), but counter-attitudinal essays have not (Croyle and Cooper, 1983 ).

We think therefore that the field would benefit from increased standardization. This standardization of the induction would rely on both a better operational definition of the manipulated variables, as we mentioned above, and also on the report of variables that are likely to influence the CDS, and thus its regulation. For instance, the hypocrisy paradigm has been investigated with very different topics and methods, and Priolo et al. ( 2019 ) found no evidence in their meta-analysis for the existence of a CDS. This conclusion could question either the theory or either the relevance of the methodology. These authors stress the lack of available studies and their important variations to explain this null result, what is in line with our concerns.

In our opinion, we consider that more standardization could permit to examine such specific hypotheses and to investigate more precisely the effects. To achieve this goal, and reduce variation between studies, the standardization of the induction would also require moving away from tasks grounded in social background, temporal, or cultural references. This would reduce many biases and allow multilab studies. Also, to capture fine variations with lower noise and to be able to modelize the process, these requirements suggest movement toward lower level processes. It could require to look at the very minimal prerequisite for CDT, that is to manipulate inconsistency while the other socially contextualized variables are reduced to their strict minimal (e.g., commitment). Finally, in accordance with the operationalization issue, one of the first thing to assess is probably inconsistency, which could permit more relevant comparisons between studies and help to correct local or individual biases. The assessment of additional parameters that could influence the CDS and its regulation (e.g., self-involvement) may also facilitate the investigations and ultimately permit to estimate the independent effects due to each of these variables. Finally, in addition to this standardization of the induction task, one has to rely on standard assessment of the CDS.

Standard Assessment of Cognitive Dissonance State

Reliable tools are necessary to examine the nature of the CDS. Because the CDS is the core motive of the model and could vary depending on the induction situation, we must get closer to standardized instruments. The prevalence of a unique tool should permit comparison and reliable expected effects (i.e., size and quality).

Explicit self-reported scales have been useful at times (e.g., Elliot and Devine, 1994 ) but present limits. Indeed, they imply that individuals can consciously and accurately assess and report their emotions. Moreover, there is a lack of standardization in the field in the instruments that are used. For instance, even when referring to the same scale, scholars use different methods of scoring, different instructions, and even different sets of items. This absence of standard rules favors HARKing (Kerr, 1998 ) in the choice of indicators for CDS.

We identify three main perspectives on capturing the CDS. One classic approach relies on assessing the specific emotion. By doing so, it suggests listing the affects that could fit with cognitive dissonance and assessing all of them. This is probably the worst perspective because the affect may vary depending on the nature of the task and because this method mostly relies on individuals to reliably assess their emotion, which is not ensured (Niedenthal et al., 2006 ). A second option is to assess the specific features of the CDS. It implies sharply defining these features (e.g., valence, aversivity, intensity, action tendency). It also requires taking into account the time course, as it is supposed to be relevant. Finally, a last and complementary perspective relies on physiological proxies. Not so distinct from measurement of subjective intensity, its main interest is that this can be done in parallel to the previous approaches to provide convergent validity. Finally, the development of an efficient tool to assess the CDS should probably rely on multiple measures.

Three other points seem necessary to achieve this standardization: Assessment of the CDS must be (a) non explicit, (b) non-invasive, and (c) follow open science principles. (a) By non-explicit, we mean that the respondent should be unaware of what is being assessed. Otherwise, participants may falsely reports their feelings, for instance due to social desirability or attribution errors (e.g., Rosenthal and Rosnow, 1969 ; Nisbett and Wilson, 1977 ). For this purpose, the use of implicit assessments that are less likely to be influenced by awareness and conscious control, such as reaction time or implicit association (e.g., Nosek and Banaji, 2001 ; Quirin et al., 2009 ) could reliably assess the evocation of CDS (e.g., Levy et al., 2017 ). (b) By non-invasive, we mean that respondents should not be impacted by the assessment itself. Indeed, studies have shown that participants could misattribute the CDS to other sources (e.g., Zanna and Cooper, 1974 ). If participants attribute arousal to the measurement instrument, this could alter the regulation process (e.g., Croyle and Cooper, 1983 ). This point is specifically important for physiological measures which are useful for the achievement of a standardization tool. Considering the physiological measures, many have been invested in the past, such as GSR/EDA (e.g., Croyle and Cooper, 1983 ), heart rate (e.g., Gerard, 1967 ) or even f MRI (e.g., de Vries et al., 2014 ), but most are likely to be perceived as invasive and could trigger a misattribution process. An interesting development could stem from pupillometry, because this method does not require invasive apparatus nor a potentially threatening context (as would f MRI), and participants could be unaware of the assessment. Some initial results indicate that pupil dilatation is a potential proxy for the detection of inconsistency and could be used to capture the evocation of CDS as well as specific action mindset (e.g., Sleegers et al., 2015 ; Proulx et al., 2017 ). Although these two suggestions cannot efficiently capture the nature of the CDS, they could therefore present interesting methods to detect and assess the magnitude of CDS with a low odd of response bias and of misattribution.

Finally, according to (c) open science (e.g., Klein et al., 2018 ), the tool and more specifically the data have to be shared, accessible, and transparent. A major point is that raw data must be provided and publicly available. In our opinion, this is especially important for the current issues of CDT. For instance, investigating the time course of CDS and some of its influence could already be possible if authors shared their data along with the time course of their protocol. The affective nature of the CDS is another area that could be enlighten if more data were available and ready to be aggregated. It would help the field if data were collected with fully informed standardized designs and were accessible, thus allowing researchers to reach a sufficient amount of observations to fully understand the process.

Testing the General Model

The general model of CDT suggests that the detection of an inconsistency will evoke a CDS, which will motivate a regulation strategy. Most investigations have focused on these regulation strategies, however they may have been done too early and some conclusions may have been drawn without sufficient understandings of the preceding parts of the model (see Weick, 1965 ; Greenwald and Ronis, 1978 ; Vaidis and Gosling, 2011 ). In the previous paragraphs, we made several suggestions for testing CDT in a more reliable way and, as the model is sequential, the suggestions should also respect a step sequence. Thus, regulation should be the last part of the examination, not the first. In addition, a serious evaluation of the theory requires assessing the whole model and not only the last sequential part. In the current state, the general model of cognitive dissonance (inconsistency-CDS-regulation) has to be put to the test. This consideration could imply reexamining many former conclusions drawn in the first decades of CDT. All the information gathered from this examination could provide rich understanding for the theory and help in reconnecting the CDT to the whole field.

Verdict of Not Proven

Science requires time. Once the inconsistency induction and the CDS issues are fixed—and only after that—the research could finally focus seriously on the regulation sequence and the whole model. Indeed, the genuine model considers regulation to be driven by the CDS and thus the theory expects individuals to be motivated for regulation. Hence, with a clear operationalization of inconsistency and CDS, the total absence of regulation should be a refutation of the theory. But because assessing all the strategies is nearly impossible, it would be more interesting to examine the factors influencing the choice of regulation.

As expressed previously, while this assessment is premature for now, a comprehensive understanding of the former sequences could facilitate the identification of reliable factors that orientate the most likely strategies in a given situation. This evaluation could as well confirm some previously suggested factors (see McGrath, 2017 ) but also reassess a large part of the literature. However, this examination requires a step-by-step process, starting with the first sequence proposed and finishing with the regulation predictors. Finally, only the examination of the full inconsistency-CDS-regulation sequence will allow for testing the theory as a whole.

Until these prior steps are accomplished, studies cannot rely on regulation strategies as a unique cue for examining the model. More crucially, when the CDS is not present, the conclusions drawn from the only partial occurrence of one or two reduction strategies could bias assessment of the model. Of course, this does not preclude investigating specific strategies, such as attitude or behavioral changes, in a relevant applied setting. But we would like to stress that, given the current state of knowledge, studying regulation strategies has little interest for the evaluation of the general model or its improvement. Thus, this position does not imply avoiding measuring regulation, but stresses the necessity of assessing the CDS.

With a Little Help From the Community

Examination of the theory's validity requires examining all the core fundamentals. Many hypotheses will require reexamination in light of new tools and knowledge, while some other core hypotheses are yet unexamined for now and could be crucial in the assessment of the model. To our knowledge, no studies have clearly investigated, for instance, the functional relation between the inconsistency-CDS-regulation triptych, this point being nevertheless a central element of the theory. Despite being central to the model, this expected positive relation function has not been seriously examined yet. Furthermore, examining the form of the relation is essential. However, testing such a model would require a huge amount of data with a high degree of precision, something that could only be attained with cooperation between cognitive dissonance scholars.

The examination of the theory will require high powered studies with strictly relevant variables. We do not recommend investing resources in large scale replication projects of earlier studies. Indeed, as we stressed previously, these studies have methodological flaws that limit their interpretation. Instead of replicating the errors made in the past, resources should be devoted to developing reliable, smart, and well-powered tests of the theory and of its hypotheses. To limit the bias, these designs should be computer based to avoid experimenter effects (e.g., Rosenthal and Rosnow, 1969 ). Using standardized scripts should also facilitate replications and variations all over the globe. Moreover, with a little help from the community, crowdsourced research tools (e.g., Collaborative Replications and Education Project, 2018 ; Moshontz et al., 2018 ) could allow a rapid, clear and high powered evaluation of the theory.

Connectivity to Broader Theories

Finally, the suggested working plan is huge. What could this extensive examination provide for CDT and for the field of social psychology? The dissonance model is one of the few models to suggest a general base for human functioning, but regrettably there is a lack of connection with other fields. The overspecialization of its operationalization and its historically restricting paradigms could have explained part of this side-lining (e.g., Aronson, 1992 ; Swann, 1992 ). In a way, we assume that most will agree that CDT has deeply influenced the field and shaped the conception of major trends such as, for instance, attribution theories (Jones and Davis, 1965 ; Kelley, 1967 ), social cognition (Fiske and Taylor, 1984 ), motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990 ), and self-regulation models (e.g., Scheier and Carver, 1988 ; Blascovich and Tomaka, 1996 ), but some would also contend that CDT is fossilized, with outdated paradigms, and distant from science, with tautological or unfalsifiable considerations (e.g., Lilienfeld, 2005 ; Griffin, 2012 ). With the recent methodological crisis, calls for conceptual cleaning and merging of general models have appeared. This could be the occasion for CDT to reconnect with broader theories and several attempts have already been made. For instance, the Meaning Maintenance Model (MMM; Heine et al., 2006 ; Proulx and Inzlicht, 2012 ) is a proposal for such merging. For the MMM, expectancy violation, mortality salience, or exposure to inconsistency all follow a common phenomenon of meaning violation that triggers the same neurocognitive and psychophysiological systems (see Jonas et al., 2014 ) and that motivates compensatory behaviors. This means that whatever the induction and the specific setting of the theory, the general process could be the same. Recent data (Randles et al., 2015 ) support that CDT is similar to many other meaning violations and such suggestions are real opportunities to gain a deeper comprehension of human functioning. Investigations of CDT in social neuroscience (e.g., van Veen et al., 2009 ; Harmon-Jones et al., 2015 ; Izuma and Murayama, 2019 ) also show similitudes in the activated areas with other theories. For instance, the anterior cingulate cortex is consistently activated in CDT paradigms, but also in MMM paradigms (see Proulx et al., 2012 ) and in mortality salience paradigms (Quirin et al., 2012 ). Last, suggestions about the induction procedure, such as the use of implicit inconsistency exposure (Levy et al., 2017 ), also permit merging several procedures which are widespread in close fields (e.g., Stroop task) but that were unusual for CDT.

The inclusion of CDT into broader models also proposes to expand our thoughts about the theory. From an evolution perspective, the process underpinning CDT should serve an important function to be present today. Moreover, it does not appear as a human specific process as many other species have shown evidence of cognitive dissonance (Egan et al., 2007 , 2010 ; Harmon-Jones, 2017 ). For the action-based model of CDT (Harmon-Jones, 1999 ; Harmon-Jones and Harmon-Jones, 2002 ; Harmon-Jones et al., 2009 ), this process preserves the efficacy of action: when confronted with choices, regulating our attitudes toward these choices helps to go ahead and to promote action over inaction. In our personal view, one could also consider that the cognitive dissonance process serves the ultimate goal to control our environment: when exposed to events that confront expectations, a physiological reaction triggers the motivation for a regulation; that is to revise the expectations or reject the new information. Finally, cognitive dissonance process could have played an important role in the entire human evolution. Following this last perspective, Perlovsky (Masataka and Perlovsky, 2012 ; Perlovsky, 2013 , 2017 ) considers that CDT could explain the fundamental role of music and prosody in humanity. In his view, music could be a means allowing to overcome CDS, thus it would have promoted the acceptance of new knowledge. Altogether, this promotes to reconsider CDT along with its connections to other psychological processes. This represents a wide area of research, but we think that there is much to gain in widening the scope of CDT.

CDT is an old and respectable theory, but at the same time is still under construction. One can acknowledge the impressive contribution of this theory to psychology, but one cannot avoid recognizing that many critical questions remain and many methodological deficiencies are obviously present.

In the current paper, we exposed what we considered major flaws in the theory, which are mainly conceptual shortcomings and a need for stricter operationalization. Because a better understanding of the methodological flaws is important to future theoretical progress, we suggested some ways to address these shortcomings. Our essential take home message is, first, to focus on an operational distinction for the triptych elements of CDT, that is the inconsistency, the dissonance state (CDS) and the regulation strategies. In addition to investing effort in systematic and standard operationalization of these concepts, the examination of the whole model could deeply improve the theory and the understanding of human psychology.

Finally, looking on the bright side, social psychology is not suffering a decade of crisis. It is only leading the way for the next generation of researchers who will take steps to move the discipline toward stronger and more reliable knowledge about the human mind. As a final word, and as fervent supporters of CDT, we affirm that it is definitely an elegant theory. However, science should not concern itself with the gracefulness of a theory but only about the solidity of the evidence supporting it and its own falsifiability.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

1 One could consider here that we are addressing an old point of view about CDT as the theory has been revised very early and very extensively since its beginning (for a review, see Harmon-Jones, 2019 ). However, all the revisions fit with Festinger's original statement, and while most of the revisions have been questioned (Greenwald and Ronis, 1978 ; Harmon-Jones et al., 1996 ; Vaidis and Gosling, 2011 ), the original statement has never been empirically proven wrong. For instance, while the required involvement of the self has been an important suggestion for the theory (e.g., Aronson, 1969 , 1992 ; Steele and Liu, 1983 ), its role has then been considered as a potential moderator (Stone and Cooper, 2001 ), and even of secondary importance (e.g., Egan et al., 2007 ; Proulx et al., 2012 ). Some of the most recent views concerning CDT are even going back to Festinger's original statement (Gawronski and Strack, 2012 ; e.g., Levy et al., 2017 ). However, we should emphasize that this position is not yet consensual and most of the issues we raise are observable in the current publications of CDT.

2 More formally, in a triptych logical relation A → B → C, if the universe of possible Ci is not finite, the observation of any Ci or non-Ci cannot state anything concerning B, and only the assessment of B permits confirming or disconfirming the causal relation.

Funding. AB is jointly supported by Pacifica and the Association Nationale de la Recherche et de la Technologie (Grant/Award Number: ANRT, CIFRE grant 2017/0245).

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Cognitive Dissonance: What Does It Do To Our Brain?

Discovery of cognitive dissonance, festinger’s cognitive dissonance experiment, what happens in our brains during such dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological scenario in which the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of an individual are at odds with one another. The brain undergoes significant activity to resolve this dissonance (conflict), most often by changing the attitude of the person so that their behavior and beliefs once again align.

It’s a weekday night, you have homework due tomorrow, but also want to watch a TV show that’s been the talk of the town. You decide to throw caution to the wind and get cozy in bed to watch the show.

However, while watching the show, there’s an uncomfortable itch at the back of your head, like something is just not right. You know that you should really start your homework if you want to complete it before going to bed, but nevertheless, you can’t seem to stop watching the show!

There is a clear conflict between what you think you should be doing and what you are actually doing, and this contradiction makes you very uncomfortable.

This feeling of discomfort has a name: cognitive dissonance.

When our actions are wildly disparate from our thoughts, there is a discord in our brain that generates this dissonance.

Another example of an activity generating cognitive dissonance is that of smoking.

It is widely known and understood that smoking is injurious to health, but smoking remains a notoriously popular habit. Knowing that smoking is an unhealthy activity, but being unable to give it up creates dissonance in the mind.

Smoking is a common activity that creates cognitive dissonance in people.

As we know, if an itch makes us uncomfortable, we don’t just sit with it, we scratch it! Similarly, our brain has a few tricks up its sleeve to resolve the uncomfortable itch brought on by these types of conflicting emotions.

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

One weakness that scholars point out relates specifically to our criterion of testability, discussed in Chapter 3. As you recall, testability refers to the theory's likelihood of ever being proven false. Theories that have a seeming escape clause against being falsified are not as strong as those that do not. Researchers have pointed out that because Cognitive Dissonance Theory asserts that dissonance will motivate people to act, when people do not act, proponents of the theory can say that the dissonance must not have been strong enough, rather than concluding that the theory is wrong. In this way it is difficult to disprove the theory.

Further, some critics argue that dissonance may not be the most important concept to explain attitude change. For instance, some researchers believe that other theoretical frameworks can explain the attitude change that Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) found in the one dollar/twenty dollars experiment. The Research Note describes a study that tested CDT against a competing explanation. Irving Janis and Robert Gilmore (1965) argue that when people participate in an inconsistency, such as arguing a position they do not believe in, they become motivated to think up all the arguments in favor of the position while suppressing all the arguments against it. Janis and Gilmore call this process This biased scanning process should increase the chances of accepting the new position—for example, changing one's position from evaluating the spool-sorting task as dull to the position that it really was an interesting task.

Janis and Gilmore (1965) argue that when a person is overcompensated for engaging in biased scanning, suspicion and guilt are aroused. Thus, they are able to explain why the large incentive of twenty dollars does not cause the students in Festinger and Carlsmith's (1959) experiment to have an increased attitude change.

Other researchers (Cooper & Fazio, 1984) argue that the original theory of cognitive dissonance contains a great deal of "conceptual fuzziness." Some researchers note that the concept of dissonance is confounded by self-concept or impression management. refers to the activities people engage in to look good to themselves and others. For example, Elliot Aronson (1969) argues that people wish to appear reasonable to themselves and suggests that in Festinger and Carlsmith's (1959) experiment, if "dissonance exists, it is because the individual's behavior is inconsistent with his self-concept" (p. 27). Aronson asserts that the Stanford students' dissonance that resulted from seeing themselves as upright and truthful men contrasted with their behavior of deceiving someone else because they were being paid to do so.

In the study we discussed earlier by Patrice Buzzanell and Lynn Turner (2003) concerning family communication and job loss, we could conceive of the strategies the families adopted as employing impression management rather than reducing dissonance. When fathers reported that nothing had changed in their family despite the job loss, they may have been rationalizing to continue to seem reasonable to themselves, just as Aronson suggests.

In the preceding critiques, researchers disagree about what cognitive state is at work: dissonance, biased scanning, or impression management. Daryl Bem (1967) argues that the central concept of importance is not type of cognition but, rather, is behavioral. Bem states that rather than dissonance in cognitions operating to change people, self-perception is at work. simply means that people make conclusions about their own attitudes the same way others do—by observing their behavior. Bem's alternative explanation allows more simplicity in the theory as well.

In Bem's conceptualization, it is not necessary to speculate about the degree of cognitive dissonance that a person feels. People only need to observe what they are doing to calculate what their attitudes must be. For instance, if I am not working out regularly, but I believe fitness and health are important goals, I must not really believe working out is so important to good health. In our chapter opening story about Ali Torres, Bem would argue that the longer Ali works at the Alliance, the more likely she is to come to believe that she is doing something worthwhile. Bem's argument suggests that if Ali's mother asks her if she likes her job, she might reply, "I guess I do. I am still there."

Claude Steele's work (Steele, 1988; Steele, Spencer, & Lynch, 1993) also offers a behavioral explanation for dissonance effects: However, unlike Bem, Steele and his colleagues argue in Self-Affirmation Theory that dissonance is the result of behaving in a manner that threatens one's sense of moral integrity. You can see how this explanation might work quite well in Ali Torres's situation. Her discomfort might not be because she holds two contradictory beliefs but because she doesn't respect herself for staying in a job where she is not accomplishing anything of significance.

Finally, CDT has been critiqued for not having enough utility. These critics note that the theory does not provide a full explanation for how and when people will attempt to reduce dissonance. First, there is what has been called the "multiple mode" problem. This problem exists because, given a dissonance-producing situation, there are multiple ways to reduce the dissonance. As we discussed earlier in the chapter, there are several ways to bring about more consonance (such as changing your mind or engaging in selective exposure, attention, interpretation, or retention). The weakness in the theory is that it doesn't allow precise predictions.

This prediction problem is also apparent in the fact that the theory does not speak to the issue of individual differences. People vary in their tolerance for dissonance, and the theory fails to specify how this factors in to its explanation.

Other scholars believe that Cognitive Dissonance Theory is basically useful and explanatory but needs some refinements. For example, Wicklund and Brehm (1976) argue that Cognitive Dissonance Theory is not clear enough about the conditions under which dissonance leads to a change in attitudes. They believe that choice is the missing concept in the theory. Wicklund and Brehm posit that when people believe they have a choice about the dissonant relationship, they will be motivated to change that relationship. If people think they are powerless, then they will not be bothered by the dissonance, and they probably will not change. Regarding our beginning scenario about Ali Torres, Wicklund and Brehm would argue that we could predict whether she will leave her job based on how much choice she believes she has in the matter. If, for instance, she is tied to Gary, Indiana, because of family responsibilities or if she believes she would have trouble locating a new job in the city, she may not be motivated to act on her dissonant cognitions. On the other hand, if nothing really ties her to Gary, or there are plenty of other job opportunities, she will be motivated to change based on those same cognitions.

Another refinement is suggested by the work of Joel Cooper and Jeff Stone (2000). Cooper and Stone point out that in the more than 1,000 studies using Cognitive Dissonance Theory, only rarely has the group membership of the person experiencing dissonance been considered. Cooper and Stone believe that group membership plays an important role in how people experience and reduce dissonance. For example, they found that social identity derived from religious and political groups had an impact on how people responded to dissonance.

Although Cognitive Dissonance Theory has its shortcomings, it does offer us insight into the relationship among attitudes, cognitions, affect, and behaviors, and it does suggest routes to attitude change and persuasion. Social cognition researchers as well as communication scholars continue to use many of the ideas from CDT. As Steven Littlejohn (2002) observes, Festinger's theory is not only the most important consistency theory; it is one of the most significant theories in social psychology. CDT has been the framework for over a thousand research studies (Perloff, 1993), most of which have supported the theory. Additionally, numerous critiques and interpretations have refined and revised the theory. And some researchers (Harmon-Jones, 2000) believe that continuing to refine the theory by examining cognitions more specifically, for example, will yield rich theoretical insights. Cognitive Dissonance Theory has contributed greatly to our understanding of cognitions and their relationship to behaviors. The concept of dissonance remains a powerful one in the research literature, informing studies in psychology, cognitive psychology, communication, and other related fields.

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Cognitive Dissonance

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Cognitive dissonance is a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. The clashing cognitions may include ideas, beliefs, or the knowledge that one has behaved in a certain way.

Understanding Cognitive Dissonance
Dealing With Cognitive Dissonance

The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people are averse to inconsistencies within their own minds. It offers one explanation for why people sometimes make an effort to adjust their thinking when their own thoughts, words, or behaviors seem to clash with each other.

When one learns new information that challenges a deeply held belief, for example, or acts in a way that seems to undercut a favorable self-image , that person may feel motivated to somehow resolve the negative feeling that results—to restore cognitive consonance. Though a person may not always resolve cognitive dissonance, the response to it may range from ignoring the source of it to changing one’s beliefs or behavior to eliminate the conflict.

When someone tells a lie and feels uncomfortable about it because he fundamentally sees himself as an honest person, he may be experiencing cognitive dissonance. That is, there is mental discord related to a contradiction between one thought (in this case, knowing he did something wrong) and another (thinking that he is honest).

Psychologist Leon Festinger published the book A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in 1957. Among the examples he used to illustrate the theory were doomsday cult members and their explanations for why the world had not ended as they had anticipated. Many experiments have since been conducted to illustrate cognitive dissonance in more ordinary contexts.

No. Hypocrisy involves a contradiction between a person’s supposed principles, beliefs, or character and who they really are or how they behave. Cognitive dissonance is the unpleasant mental state that may result if someone really does have certain beliefs but thinks or acts in a way that contradicts them.

It’s not clear. While cognitive dissonance is often described as something widely and regularly experienced, efforts to capture it in studies don’t always work , so it could be less common than has been assumed. People do not necessarily experience discomfort in response to every apparent contradiction in their thoughts and beliefs.

Cognitive dissonance poses a challenge: How can we resolve the uncomfortable feeling that arises when our own thoughts or actions clash with each other? Some responses may be more constructive than others.

A man who learns that his eating habits raise his risk of illness feels the tension between his preferred behavior and the idea that he could be in danger. He might ease this feeling by telling himself that the health warning is exaggerated or, more productively, by deciding to take action to change his behavior. If a woman reads that her favorite politician has done something immoral, she could conclude that the charges have been invented by his enemies—or, instead, rethink her support.

It may lead us to alter our attitudes to be more consistent. Study participants who complete an uninteresting task have been found to rate the task as more enjoyable if they were first asked to tell someone else it was enjoyable—an effect attributed to cognitive dissonance . Theoretically, dissonance may contribute to a variety of changes in behavior or beliefs.

There are a variety of ways people are thought to resolve the sense of dissonance when cognitions don’t seem to fit together. They may include denying or compartmentalizing unwelcome thoughts , seeking to explain away a thought that doesn’t comport with others, or changing what one believes or one’s behavior.

Not necessarily. By bringing attention to the inconsistencies in our minds, cognitive dissonance may present an opportunity for growth. People who feel it could realize, for example, that they need to update their beliefs to reflect the truth, or change their behavior to better match the person they want to be.

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Collection: Cognitive Dissonance: theoretical advances and current practices

Research article

Cognitive dissonance: where we’ve been and where we’re going.

Joel Cooper

Cognitive dissonance has been one of the most enduring and successful theories in the history of social psychology. This paper examines the origins of the theory and the controversies it engendered. I then examine the evolution of dissonance as it emerged from a theory focused solely on the inconsistency among cognitions to a more complex set of principles that accommodated the voluminous data that had been gathered throughout the ensuing decades. The paper considers what I refer to as the “Roadway to Dissonance” – an analysis of the process that leads from the perception of cognitions in the social environment to the unpleasant arousal state of dissonance and, further, how engaging in attitude, perceptual or behavioral change regulates that arousal. I then consider the transition of dissonance research from its focus on the individual to one that envisions the individual in the context of a social group. The social group perspective enables us to consider how people feel dissonance vicariously on behalf of their fellow group member. I conclude with an appeal for a two-pronged approach to dissonance in the coming decades in which we continue to make progress in the laboratory while simultaneously translating dissonance to help alleviate problems that are important in peoples lives.

Cognitive dissonance
Vicarious dissonance

More than 60 years ago, Leon Festinger made a modest proposal by suggesting that people who hold two or more cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent experience a state of psychological discomfort called cognitive dissonance. Moreover, the state of dissonance has drive-like properties, motivating people to seek its reduction. That relatively straightforward description of the relationship among cognitions led to decades of research that supported, contradicted and modified the theory. It led to innovations in understanding people’s motivations for the attitudes they hold, the behaviors they engage in and the preferences they express. It also led to innovations in leveraging the dissonance process to help people with important practical considerations such as improving their mental and physical health. In this paper, I will examine some of the initial controversies that propelled dissonance theory toward a decades-long journey as an important and controversial theoretical construct and offer a view of the current state of dissonance in the field of social psychology.

In the Beginning

Cognitive dissonance burst onto the academic scene in 1957 , but its roots can be traced back to the influence that Kurt Lewin had on Leon Festinger. Lewin was a proponent of field theory as the lens through which to view human behavior ( Lewin, 1951 ). Lewin emphasized the dynamic forces that push and pull at people as they navigate their social world, and this provided Festinger with the motivational basis for dissonance theory. In Festinger’s view, the influential factors that affected people’s lives were dynamic. People were motivated, driven and propelled by forces in the social world as well as from within their own personalities. He emphasized that view in his theory of social comparison processes ( Festinger, 1954 ) in which he asserted that, to the extent that people are uncertain of the correctness of their own opinions and abilities, they are driven to compare themselves with the opinions and abilities of others. For Festinger, the drive is very real. It is not a sentiment or a preference, but rather a motivational necessity that people had to accommodate.

Social comparison generated considerable interest and addressed a basic motivation for people to engage in attitude change. Festinger proposed that people change their attitudes not only because of the legitimacy of the arguments they hear but also to satisfy a basic motivational drive. In the social comparison view, people are motivated to influence others or to succumb to others’ influence in order to satisfy their drive to have correct and appropriate opinions.

Festinger realized that social comparison theory was unnecessarily narrow. It addressed people’s motivation to change attitudes when they are confronted by discrepancies with other people’s attitudes, but did not address the myriad of other occasions in which people find themselves at odds with what they see around them. Festinger wondered how people would react if they noticed discrepancies with their past experience. In one classic example from his original work, he asked what people would feel if they were out in the rain but were not getting wet. In another, he wondered how people would feel if they noticed that their own behavior did not fit with social mores. In another, he wondered what people would experience if they found themselves behaving in ways that contradicted their own attitudes. Social comparison was an activity that people engaged in when they were confronted by a particular discrepancy in a particular circumstance. It occurred to Festinger that a social psychological theory needed to be broader than social comparison in order to accommodate the extraordinary number of circumstances in which people felt driven to avoid and reduce inconsistency. Cognitive dissonance theory was the expansion of social comparison. And much more.

Dissonance Theory as Innovation

Cogntive dissonance theory was both innovative and provocative. Arguably, the least appreciated feature of dissonance theory was also its most innovative. Festinger used the term “cognitive” to precede dissonance, arguing that all types of thoughts, behaviors and perceptions were represented in people’s thinking by way of their cognitive representations. Social psychological theories of attitudes and attitude change generally involved people comparing their own attitudes to the attitudes of others, or comparing the basis for certain attitudes with information that a communicator might offer. With Festinger’s use of the concept of cognitive representations, attitudes, behaviors, social mores, communications – that is, virtually any phenomenon that people can perceive – all are grist for the mill of cognitive dissonance.

Drive reduction is the process that makes dissonance theory convert cognitive representations into attitude change and other regulation activities. As Festinger said, “The holding of two or more inconsistent cognitions arouses the state of cognitive dissonance, which is experienced as uncomfortable tension. This tension has drive-like properties and must be reduced.” Although Festinger had no direct evidence that drive-like properties actually existed, it rendered the dissonance process different from other theories that suggested that consistency is preferred to inconsistency. For Festinger, consistency among cognitions was not a preference but a drive. Just as people need to reduce their thirst by drinking and their hunger by eating, people who perceive inconsistency must find a way to reduce it. The drive to reduce inconsistency can be accomplished by a number of means, but attitude change became the most frequent resolution in the early research on dissonance.

A third innovation in dissonance research was to posit that dissonance has a magnitude. Various theories discussed preferences for symmetry, balance and consistency. Only dissonance theory discussed magnitudes . Just as people can be slightly hungry or extremely hungry, Festinger’s theory provided for different magnitudes of dissonance. The greater the dissonance, the greater the urgency to make the cognitive changes necessary to reduce the unpleasant tension state.

Dissonance Upsets Conventional Wisdom

In the history of science, a theory or perspective can become important because it is bold and controversial. It may not be correct in all of its details, but it upsets the conventional wisdom that came before. I would argue that the most fundamental assumption about human and infrahuman behavior in the decade of the 1950’s was learning theory. Scholars argued about the relative merits of approaches such as Skinner’s behaviorism or Hull’s drive theory, but few dared to question the fundamental notion that organisms approach rewards and avoid punishments. This was as true of humans in the workplace as it was for pigeons and rats in experimental cages.

Festinger and Carlsmith’s ( 1959 ) experiment upset the conventional assumptions. They established dissonance by having participants publicly rave about the pleasantness of a task that, in fact, had been quite dull and boring. The contradiction between their true attitude about the boring task and their statement that it was interesting created dissonance. The need to reduce dissonance led people to change their attitudes in the direction of their public statements. That prediction was not controversial. The controversial prediction arose from the nuance that Festinger & Carlsmith added to the experiment. Some participants had been offered a small amount of money to make the attitude discrepant statement (U.S. $1) while others had been offered a substantially larger amount (U.S. $20). Festinger & Carlsmith made the prediction that the $20 incentive would lead to less dissonance than the small incentive because it helped people understand why they had acted in contradiction to their true beliefs. Participants who had only been offered $1 had much less comfort from their small incentive and thus were predicted to experience a greater tension state. Consistent with those predictions, participants in the $1 condition changed their attitudes more than the participants who were offered the large reward.

There are two ways in which this elegantly straightforward experiment upended traditional thinking. Within social psychology, the study made clear that dissonance theory was not the same as previous balance theories. The fact that dissonance has a magnitude and the magnitude can predict different degrees of cognitive change was different from prior theorizing. Psychology was no longer limited to describing balanced and imbalanced states but could now operate with dynamic predictions about the magnitude of the imbalance and the degree to which people would be motivated to change their cognitions.

The second, and perhaps most iconoclast contribution was its apparent reversal of the predictions that would be made by learning theories. Rather than creating change as a direct function of its magnitude, reward seemed to have had the opposite effect in the dissonance situation. People who made statements for large rewards were less likely to believe their statements than people who acted for small rewards. This seemed so antithetical to the existing zeitgeist that it led to a flurry of important work trying to show that Festinger & Carlsmith’s study produced its results from flawed operations ( Chapanis & Chapanis, 1964 ; Elms & Janis, 1965 ; Janis & Gilmore, 1965 ; Rosenberg, 1965). The criticisms were useful not only because they brought attention to cognitive dissonance theory, but primarily because they led to numerous studies from a new group of dissonance researchers that ultimately supported many of Festinger’s unorthodox predictions. By the end of the 1960’s, dissonance was arguably the most prominently researched theory in social psychology.

Dissonance was also propelled forward by a spate of non-obvious predictions that were derived from the theory but that seemed as discordant with everyday observations as Festinger and Carlsmith’s study was with learning theory:

People come to like what they suffer to attain – and the more they suffer, the more they like it (Aronson & Mills, 1959).
Children devalue a precious toy if they are warned not to play with it. Ironically, the milder the warning, the greater the devaluation ( Aronson & Carlsmith, 1962 ).
When confronted with a choice between two products, people raise their evaluation of the item they chose and lower their evaluation of the item they rejected, solely by the force of their having made a choice. Ironically, the more reason they had to like the rejected alternative before the choice, the more they devalue it after the choice ( Brehm, 1956 ).
People so abhor inconsistency that they may prefer to fail rather than succeed at a task if their prior experience led them to have expectations of failure ( Aronson & Carlsmith, 1963 ).

As proponents of the theory continued to gather evidence the far-reachig nature of reduction, it also became clear that there were important theoretical issues that needed to be solved. Not every instance of inconsistent cognitions led to dissonance arousal. Modifying conditions were identified that needed to be accommodated. Moreover, at its core, what evidence was there for the mechanisms that cause people to change?

The Drive Properties of Dissonance: Reality or Metaphor?

Festinger fashioned dissonance to have drive-like properties. While he did not label dissonance as a drive, he designed the concept so that it functioned like one. The three important features of his concept were that (1) it is experienced as discomfort, (2) it propels people to take action and (3) people feel more comfortable after the action has been taken. It is not clear whether he thought research would eventually find evidence for the drive or whether he was content to liken dissonance to a drive and use it as a metaphor to predict intriguing outcomes.

The first studies to examine whether dissonance functioned like a drive borrowed from research in human learning. A robust finding in the learning literature was that humans and lower organisms who are in a heightened drive state show specific patterns of interference with learning. Whether it is a pigeon in a cage, a rat in a maze, or a human studying for an exam, high drive states interfere with complex learning and facilitate simple learning. Waterman and Katkin ( 1967 ) reasoned that if dissonance is truly a drive, then people who have high degrees of dissonance should have difficulty learning complex tasks but should easily learn simple tasks. They aroused dissonance by having students write an attitude-discrepant essay and then asked them to solve simple and complex learning tasks. The results showed facilitation of simple learning but not interference with complex learning. Pallack and Pittman (1972) conducted a conceptually similar experiment and found evidence for the other prediction: Dissonance resulted in interference with complex learning but, contrary to predictions, it did not lead to facilitation of the simple task.

A series of studies that I was involved in with my colleague Mark Zanna took a different approach. We ( Zanna & Cooper, 1974 ) argued that if people changed their attitudes in dissonance experiments because they experienced aversive affect, then we should be able to reduce the attitude change if people attributed their arousal to a different source. We asked participants to ingest a pill as part of what they thought was a completely separate study. We had people engage in a counterattitudinal essay writing task and told half of them that any arousal they might be experiencing was due to the pill. The other half had no external attribution for their arousal. We reasoned that if attitude change is based on the arousal caused by inconsistent cognitions, then those participants who could blame their arousal on the pill would not be motivated to change their attitudes. Only those who thought their arousal was due to the inconsistency between their attitudes and their essay-writing behavior should change their attitudes, for that would be the way to reduce their arousal. And that is what we found.

In subsequent experiments, we increased our confidence that the engine that motivates attitude change following counterattitudinal advocacy is unpleasant arousal. In one experiment, we artificially decreased participants’ arousal level by administering a mild sedative. We found that participants showed little attitude change after writing an attitude-discrepant essay because the sedative reduced their arousal levels. We also had some participants ingest a mild stimulant and, as predicted from the drive concept, found that the increased arousal levels led to greater attitude change ( Cooper, Zanna & Taves, 1978 ).

Later, Croyle and Cooper ( 1983 ) took a more direct approach to find physiological markers of cognitive dissonance. A ubiquitous finding in the neuroscience literature is that stress and arousal affect a number of physiological markers including altered skin conductance responses. In essence, stress and arousal are accompanied by increasing sweating that can be measured on the skin through devices such as galvanic skin response. We confirmed the presence of changes in skin conductance: the higher the dissonance following a counterattitudinal essay, the greater the change in skin conductance. Croyle and Cooper did not assess attitude change and skin conductance simultaneously in the same session, but Losch and Cacioppo ( 1990 ) did. They replicated Croyle & Cooper’s findings, adding yet additional evidence that the arousal needed to be interpreted as negative and aversive in order for it to lead to the reduction of dissonance.

Why Is There a Dissonance Drive?

Festinger invited us to use what we know about drives to make predictions about dissonance. As we have seen, the properties of drives seem to manifest when people’s cognitions are inconsistent. Psychological discomfort is experienced ( Elliot & Devine, 1994 ) and physiological markers of stress are activated ( Croyle & Cooper, 1983 ). In addition, modern neuroscience has identified a number of brain regions that are activated when dissonance is present (Jarcho, Berkman & Lieberman, 2011 ; Van Veen, Krug, Schooler & Carter, 2009 ). As exciting as these findings have been, they leave open the question of why humans should have a drive for consistency. Normally, drives serve functions that are adaptive. The experience of hunger motivates eating and leads to survival. What function does dissonance serve that can confer it an adaptive value?

One answer to that question is provided by the Action-Orientation Model ( Harmon-Jones, 1999 ). Harmon-Jones suggests that people’s stance toward events in the world is adaptively better without ambivalence and conflict. Inconsistent cognitions interfere with our action tendencies and create a negative emotion, motivating us to rid ourselves of the inconsistency. We are not driven to reduce inconsistency per se, but rather driven to have an unambivalent stance toward the world to prepare us for effective action.

Another possibility, and one that I endorse, is that dissonance is a learned drive. I consider dissonance to be a secondary drive that is learned early in childhood and then becomes generalized to myriad issues that we deal with as we develop. In order to make this case, I present evidence for the revision of dissonance theory that Fazio and I called the New Look Model of Dissonance ( Cooper & Fazio, 1984 ), which I believe more fully incorporates the findings and limitations of dissonance. The New Look model also makes children’s learning of dissonance a more plausible aspect of normal development.

THE ‘NEW LOOK’ MODEL: A cure for the ‘but-onlys’

When Festinger and Carlsmith ( 1959 ) revealed counterattitudinal advocacy changed people’s attitudes more when it was done in response to a small incentive rather than a large incentive it became immediately controversial. It initiated a flurry of studies by researchers who supported reinforcement incentive theories aimed at showing that the result was a mistake. Rosenberg (1965) asked participants to write essays taking a very unpopular position at The Ohio State University. He found that students who wrote the essays in return for a large incentive changed their attitudes more than those who wrote in return for a small incentive.

Studies that attempt to replicate previous research often do so in a different context, with a different attitude issue, and with wording that is similar, but not identical, to the original work. Linder, Cooper & Jones ( 1967 ) suspected that some of the changes made in Rosenberg’s replication were not trivial, but vitally important. We tested the idea that participants in Rosenberg’s research had not been given a choice in whether to write their attitude-discrepant essay whereas Festinger & Carlsmith’s participants had volunteered to make their counterattitudinal statements. We found that decision freedom made an enormous difference in results. In a balanced replication, we showed that decision freedom was a crucial moderator of the dissonance effect. With decision freedom set high, people changed their attitudes as predicted by dissonance theory, but dissonance did not operate when people were forced to behave.

Therefore, dissonance emerged from the argument between incentive theorists and dissonance theorists unscathed, but only under conditions of high decision freedom (choice). As research accumulated, dissonance continued to receive support by finding additional moderator variables that allowed dissonance to function. For example, Davis and Jones ( 1960 ) found that advocating a counterattitudinal position led to attitude change but only if the communicator was publicly committed to her stance but not if she could take it back at a later date. In addition, Cooper & Worchel ( 1970 ) replicated Festinger and Carlsmith’s original study and found support for the inverse relationship between incentive magnitude and attitude change but only if the communicator had actually convinced someone to believe in the counterattitudinal position. Cooper & Worchel’s finding meant that the dissonance effect was dependent on having produced something unwanted – in this case, convincing a fellow student that a boring task was actually fun and exciting.

By the early 1980s, an image of dissonance emerged that reinforced the stability of the phenomenon: people change their attitudes in order to reduce inconsistency among their cognitions. However, the breadth of the phenomenon was limited by the spate of ‘but onlys’. If the moderators were satisfied, then discrepancy led to the experience of dissonance. It could be said that cognitive inconsistency evokes dissonance,

– But only under conditions of choice
– But only under conditions of high commitment
– But only when it leads to an aversive or unwanted consequence
– But only when the consequence was foreseeable at the time of the choice.

If dissonance is a ubiquitous drive state that has to be reduced, the number of moderators seemed perplexing. Why doesn’t the perception of inconsistency invoke the drive whenever that perception appears? Why does it need to be freely chosen? Why does it need to lead to a foreseeable aversive consequence in order for dissonance to occur?

Fazio and I concluded that dissonance is ubiquitous but its conceptualization is incomplete. In our view, dissonance begins with a behavior – i.e., it begins when people act. Actions have consequences and it is the perception of those consequences that drives the dissonance process. As cognizant human beings, we assess the results of our actions, including the valence. We typically strive to engage in situations with consequences that are desirable and acceptable. Most of the time we are successful at this and thus most of the time we are not in a dissonant state. However, sometimes we notice that the consequences of our behavior are unwanted or negative. This happens in the real world and, with proper stagecraft, can be made to happen in the research laboratory. When we realize that we have brought about negative events, we are traveling on the road toward dissonance.

On The Dissonance Roadway

In the New Look view, the road to dissonance begins with the perception that we have brought about a consequence that is aversive. By aversive, Fazio and I meant that a consequence of our behavior is unwanted. People can differ about what is unwanted. In the well-known report of a doomsday cult that was arguably the first published report of cognitive dissonance ( Festinger, Riecken & Schachter, 1956 ), a group of California citizens known as the “Seekers” gave up their homes, jobs and possessions in order to prepare for the cataclysm that would put an end to the Earth. When the cataclysm did not occur, we can imagine that the Seekers realized that having lost so many relationships and possessions were unwanted consequences of their errant prophecy. We can also imagine that in classic laboratory experiments in cognitive dissonance, students must have found it aversive to have duped a fellow student to believe that a research experience was going to be exciting when it was actually boring or to convince someone to adopt an unwanted political position. In general, if our behavior leads to a consequence that we would rather not have brought about, it is considered aversive and leads to the possibility of dissonance arousal.

The next step in the dissonance process is a crucial one. When our actions result in unwanted consequences, we naturally ask ourselves who is to blame for having brought about the aversive events. Who is responsible? If I am responsible, then I experience dissonance. That is why choice or decision freedom is so important in producing dissonance. If we are forced to behave in a particular manner, then we can and do absolve ourselves of responsibility. If a person with legitimate authority tells me to advocate in favor of a position with which I disagree, I will conclude that it is not my fault that I did it. It is the authority’s responsibility.

The motivating factor of responsibility is necessary for dissonance to occur. When we first realized how important free choice was to the dissonance process, we viewed it as a moderating variable that permitted inconsistent cognitions to result in dissonance. In the New Look model, Fazio and I saw personal responsibility as part of the very fabric of dissonance. Being responsible for an aversive consequence does not merely facilitate dissonance, it is dissonance.

Two corollaries to the New Look view can be derived. Because experiencing dissonance is unpleasant, we are motivated to avoid it. If we must accept responsibility for having brought about an aversive consequence, we experience dissonance and then engage in any of the now-familiar strategies to reduce it. But if we can avoid it, we will do so. The first corollary, then, is that if responsibility is ambiguous, we are motivated to perceive our actions as being the responsibility of others. Gosling, Denizeau & Oberlé ( 2006 ) asked students at the University of Paris to write attitude-inconsistent essays about the university’s admission policy. The degree of responsibility was made intentionally ambiguous. One group of students was given an opportunity to absolve themselves of responsibility by filling out a rating scale on the degree of responsibility they felt to write the essay. These participants seized the opportunity. They used the rating scale to convince themselves that they were not responsible. Gosling et al. ( 2006 ) found that the students who had not been asked about their responsibility changed their attitudes toward the admission policy. Those who completed the responsibility scale used the scale to avoid taking responsibility and did not change their attitudes.

The second corollary is that people will avoid responsibility for a consequence if they can convince themselves that it was unforeseeable at the time of their decision to act. For example, someone who agrees to write an essay favoring a position with which they privately disagree will not experience dissonance if they thought no one would read it. In the absence of a consequence, there is no dissonance. However, if the same person found that, contrary to what she was told, her attitude discrepant essay would indeed be read by a policy-making committee, she still will avoid dissonance because that consequence was not foreseeable at the time she made her decision ( Cooper & Goethals, 1974 ; Goethals, Cooper & Naficy, 1979 ).

Why Ride the Dissonance Roadway?

What is the purpose of venturing down the metaphorical dissonance roadway? What do people accomplish by changing their attitudes? For Festinger, it was the reduction of inconsistency. In the New Look perspective, the arousal state is not caused by inconsistency, but rather by the perception of having been responsible for bringing about an aversive event ( Scher & Cooper, 1989 ). Cognitive inconsistency is relevant because having inconsistent representations often produces unwanted consequences – but not always. Scher & Cooper ( 1989 ) compared the role of consistency between cognitions with the role of consequences. We found that dissonance was aroused whenever a course of action produced unwanted consequences, regardless of whether behavior was consistent or inconsistent with attitudes.

This provides us with a new perspective on why people change their attitudes following attitude-inconsistent behavior. The motivation for change is to render the consequences of a person’s behavior non-aversive . In Festinger & Carlsmith’s ( 1959 ) foundational study, if a participant convinced a fellow student to believe that they are about to participate in an exciting experiment, that would create an unwanted consequence – unless the participant comes to believe that the experiment really was fun and exciting. In that case, the consequence of convincing the fellow student is no longer aversive. If a student writes an essay that might convince a fellow student or a Dean to raise tuition rates, that consequence would no longer be aversive if the student comes to believe that a tuition increase would be a good idea. In summary, the motivational state of cognitive dissonance leads to cognitive changes, such as attitude change, that are specifically designed to render the consequence of a freely chosen behavior wanted and desirable rather than unwanted and aversive.

The Ontogeny of Dissonance: Further Thoughts

I raised the rhetorical question of why we have a drive to reduce dissonance. One answer to that question was provided by Harmon-Jones ( 1999 ) in his action orientation model, described earlier. In that view, people need to take an unconflicted stance toward action, which is made difficult by indecision and ambivalence. As elegant as this view is, it has difficulty handling some of the caveats in the dissonance literature. People who are forced into inconsistency do not seem to feel a need to become consistent. People who choose to behave inconsistently do not feel a need to become consistent in the absence of aversive consequences, or if aversive consequences are unforeseeable.

I think it is likely that, at an early age, children learn to avoid dissonance ( Cooper, 1998 ). If we think about dissonance as the avoidance of responsibility for bringing about negative consequences, the learning framework makes sense. In any household, children are taught to avoid bringing about negative events. This is not a statement about morality, although moral behaviors may be relevant. This is an assertion about not doing things that socializing agents such as parents, teachers and caregivers find unwanted. Did a child spill milk, knock over a lamp, hurt his sibling or act rudely? Did a child say a bad word, fail to put his belongings away or lie to his parents? By impulse or design, parents react to these transgressions with aversive responses including anxiety, punishment or withdrawal of positive regard, all with the aim of avoiding such actions in the future. Although each behavior is met with a specific aversive reaction, it may be that the general lesson for a child is that he or she must not act in a way that brings about an unwanted event. It becomes associated with negative parental reactions and, as would be predicted from models of classical conditioning, becomes a learned drive. Although the notion of dissonance as a learned drive is admittedly speculative, it does provide a partial answer to the question of why we adults experience the aversive arousal state of cognitive dissonance.

Vicarious Dissonance and the Social Group: Dissonance Moves Into the 21 st Century

As an outgrowth of an accidental meeting between a psychologist who studied cognitive dissonance and one who studied social identity theory, Cooper and Hogg ( 2007 ; see also Norton, Monin, Cooper & Hogg, 2003 ; Monin, Norton, Cooper & Hogg, 2004 ) outlined the way people can experience dissonance on behalf of members of their social group. Consider the following hypothetical event: You are attending a political meeting in a western democratic country and you, a conservative in this scenario, watch as a member of the conservative party rises to speak. The question being debated is whether the government should increase or decrease its subsidies to universities in the upcoming budget. The conservative party has long campaigned on reducing subsidies, thus putting pressure on universities to raise tuition rates or cut back on expenses. You support this position, the conservative party endorses this position and you are fairly certain that the member rising to speak endorses this position. As he begins to speak, you realize that he is advocating the opposite position. He is advocating higher subsidies and lower rates of tuition. You are sure that this is not your representative’s position, your group’s position or your position. Nonetheless, he seems to have voluntarily spoken on the more socialist side of the issue. How does that make you feel?

Hogg and I thought this would make you very uncomfortable based substantially on the vicarious arousal of cognitive dissonance. All that we know about cognitive dissonance suggests that our conservative politician would experience dissonance. His behavior has initiated a dissonance process: He voluntarily gave a speech that might convince people to support a policy with which he privately disagrees. But how would you feel? Would you feel annoyed by the politician’s behavior, perhaps change your attitude to become more conservative as a counterbalance to what the politician just said? We thought there would be a different reaction; that people would come to feel the uncomfortable arousal state of cognitive dissonance. Precisely because you share common group membership with the politician, his behavior has an effect on you. Because of your shared group membership, we thought that you would experience an emotion similar to the politician’s – i.e., you would experience dissonance. From what we know about the effects of cognitive dissonance on the person making the attitude discrepant statement, we can predict he will change his attitude in the direction of supporting greater government aid for education. Because of your shared group membership with the politician, so will you. You will experience dissonance vicariously, and need to resolve it as though you had been the person whose action was discrepant from your attitude.

The prediction that people can experience dissonance vicariously is based on a combination of dissonance theory with social identity theory ( McKimmie, 2015 ; Tajfel, 1970 ; Tajfel & Turner, 1986 ; Hogg, 2001 ). The social group takes paramount importance in social identity theory because it is one of the major roots of people’s self-worth. They form common bonds with fellow group members, taking satisfaction in the success of their group and the successes of the individuals who comprise the group. They also share the negative emotions (Mackie & Smith 1998), which we predicted would include cognitive dissonance.

As an illustration of vicarious dissonance, Norton, Monin, Cooper& Hogg ( 2003 ) asked Australian students at the University of Queensland to observe a fellow student who was asked to make a strong statement taking the position that university fees should be increased. The fellow student indicated that he was against a fee increase but nonetheless accepted the invitation to write it. Choosing to write a counterattitudinal statement knowing that it might be used to increase fees at the university should cause the speech writer to experience dissonance and change his attitude toward the fees. Our interest was not the writer (who was actually a confederate of the experimenter) but rather the observer. The observer was a member of the same social group as the writer and we predicted that the observer would experience cognitive dissonance. We predicted the observer would become more favorable to increased fees.

The results showed that the observer changed his attitude in the direction of the writer’s behavior. This occurred under the same conditions that we know are crucial for dissonance arousal:

The writer had a free choice to write or decline to write his essay,
There was the likelihood of an aversive event (convincing university officials) occurring from the behavior.
Consistent with the melding of social identity theory and dissonance theory, attitude change occurred as a function of participants’ attraction to their group. The more positively people felt about their group, the greater the attitude change.

We also found that vicarious dissonance was mediated by vicarious arousal. We asked participants how uncomfortable they thought they would have felt if they were in their fellow group member’s shoes. The greater the discomfort they thought they would have felt in their partner’s shoes, the greater the attitude change.

Hypocrisy: Experiencing dissonance by saying what you believe

Elliot Aronson was one of the founders of cognitive dissonance theory. As a graduate student working with Festinger, Aronson was involved in many of the ingenious paradigms that produced the non-obvious findings of dissonance theory. Aronson and Festinger always disagreed on one major point: Aronson never believed that dissonance was caused by a discrepancy between any pair of cognitions, but rather that one of those cognitions had to be about the self ( Aronson, 1968 , 1999 ). Good people, he reasoned, do not do bad things. If I have a good sense of self-worth and feel positively about myself, then I would not dupe a fellow student to believe something that is not true nor would I suffer to attain a mediocre goal, and I certainly would not make a bad decision among choice alternatives. Dissonance, he believed, was a discrepancy between action and self-esteem.

Aronson also disagreed with the New Look version of dissonance. Thibodeau & Aronson ( 1992 ) argued that aversive consequences are not necessary for dissonance to be aroused. In support of their position, Aronson, Fried & Stone ( 1991 ) created a procedure to study dissonance that has become known as the hypocrisy paradigm. In two studies on AIDS prevention, Aronson et al ( 1991 ; Stone, Aronson, Crain, Winslow & Fried, 1992) had participants write speeches in favor of using condoms during every sexual encounter in order to reduce the risk of AIDS. Ostensibly, the reason for making the speeches was to convince younger adolescents to use condoms. The feeling of hypocrisy was created by asking participants to recall any instances in their own recent pasts that they had failed to use condoms. In Thibodeau & Aronson’s ( 1992 ) view, this procedure established dissonance by having participants focus on the discrepancy between their advocacy and their past behavior. They suggest that there were no aversive consequences, yet dissonance was aroused. Participants whose dissonance was created by hypocrisy increased their intention to use condoms.

In a subsequent analysis, Stone & Cooper ( 2001 ) challenged Thibodeau & Aronson’s analysis of hypocrisy. We argued that hypocrisy creates dissonance because people’s recall and awareness of their past behavior is, by definition, the recollection of a potential aversive consequence. Recalling the decision not to use condoms is, in itself, remembering when you freely behaved in a way that could have caused AIDS or unwanted pregnancy. In our view, speaking in favor of what you believed aroused dissonance because it brought to awareness your prior decision to act in a way that could have had gravely aversive foreseeable consequences.

The theoretical controversy notwithstanding, the hypocrisy paradigm propelled dissonance research into a new era. By invoking memories of the past as the source of potential aversive consequences, cognitive dissonance theory can become the theoretical basis for efforts to change behaviors in a way that is supportive of greater physical and mental health.

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: From theory to application and back

The field of social psychology has always had equal interest in theoretical advancement and practical applications of its theories. A premature application of theory into practice, however, can be risky for both uses, as such an application can lead to incorrect application of the theory because the theory was not sufficiently researched before it is applied. On the other hand, exclusive interest in theory building risks an indulgence on nuance while missing the opportunity to demonstrate the usefulness of our theoretical understanding.

The time is right for dissonance to show its mettle as a principle for real world change. This is not to say that dissonance has remained a laboratory science without practical application. To the contrary, When Prophecy Fails ( Festinger et al., 1956 ) was an analysis and prediction of what would happen to real people in the real world who had committed themselves to a prediction that would be contradicted by reality. Cooper, Darley and Henderson ( 1974 ) studied the impact of dissonance on political election campaigns. Staw ( 1974 ) used dissonance theory to understand the reactions of Americans to the lottery that determined whether they would be drafted for the Vietnam War. However, research in the 21 st century shows an accelerating trend for dissonance to be translated to real world problems from the business world, to health, politics and more. I believe that social scientists have learned so much about the dissonance concept as a force that drives our thoughts and behaviors, that we are in an excellent position to apply it confidently to improve aspects of people’s lives.

Let us consider dissonance applied to mental health. Many decades ago, I argued that cognitive dissonance might be the underlying mechanism behind successful psychotherapy, regardless of the type of therapy being offered ( Cooper, 1980 ). From psychoanalytic approaches to cognitive and behavioral interventions, clients find themselves in a situation much like participants in Aronson & Mills’ (1959) classic effort justification experiment. Aronson & Mills’ participants came to like a goal they were trying to achieve as a function of the amount of effort they expended to achieve the goal. The greater the effort, the greater the liking for the goal. In psychotherapy, clients are asked to engage in difficult and unpleasant activities such as talking about their anxieties, resurrecting painful memories, interpreting some of their embarrassing behaviors and all the while paying for all of it with their time and their money. These freely chosen effortful behaviors lead to dissonance and, following Aronson & Mills’ (1959), can lead to increased value of the goal that the clients are trying to achieve.

In order to test this proposition, I asked volunteers who had a self-diagnosed phobia about snakes to volunteer for a study designed to help them reduce their fear ( Cooper, 1980 ). When participants arrived at the laboratory, they were introduced to Oz, our 6-foot boa constrictor, that was innocently curled up in a glass tank. An experimenter asked the participant to move as close to Oz as he possibly could. That distance was surreptitiously measured with marks that had been placed on the floor. The experimenter then asked half of the participants if they were willing to undergo our therapy, forewarning them that it might be difficult or embarrassing. The other half were not given any choice about engaging in the difficult, embarrassing therapy. The therapy itself was indeed effortful, but not in a way that participants may have anticipated. It was a purely physical effort therapy, involving lifting weights and doing gymnastic exercises. At the conclusion of several minutes of the effortful therapy, participants returned to the room in which Oz was lying and were asked to approach the snake a second time. The difference in how close they came to Oz served as our measure of success of the therapy. The results showed that the effects of effort were quite successful. As predicted by dissonance, participants in the high choice condition came more than 10 feet closer to the snake after the therapy, but in the low choice and test-retest control conditions, there was no improvement.

Several other studies supported the prediction that dissonance might be an active factor in producing positive changes in people’s mental health. Using an effort justification approach, Axsom (1989) demonstrated that being personally responsible for engaging in an effortful therapy could help students alleviate speech anxiety. Similarly, effort justification was also found to be useful to alleviate clients’ fear of assertiveness ( Cooper, 1980 ). In the realm of physical health, Axsom & Cooper ( 1985 ) showed that dissonance could be used to help clinically obese people lose a significant amount of weight, and that the dissonance-produced weight loss lasted for at least six months following the procedure. Using a different dissonance-inducing paradigm, Mendonca & Brehm ( 1983 ) showed that giving obese children the perception that they chose which of two therapies to engage in produced greater weight loss than assigning children to a therapy.

In my view, these studies are interesting because they provided a link between theoretical issues that we have studied in the laboratory and real-world practices that can improve lives. However, many researchers stop short of the goal of turning the research into bona fide practices. My suggestion is for dissonance theorists to become more engaged in people’s lives by providing treatments that are available for people to use. Axsom & Cooper ( 1985 ) used laboratory procedures to demonstrate that people can lose weight if they are motivated by dissonance, but no such treatment ever became available for people to use. Most of us remained wedded to our laboratories while practitioners were either unaware of the studies or unconvinced of their usefulness.

Times are beginning to change and dissonance theorists have been part of that change. 21 st century literature shows an accelerating number of practical procedures that are being used and assessed, particularly in the health improvement field. Based on cognitive dissonance theory, the Body Project was developed as an intervention to help people with faulty body images and eating disorders ( Stice, Rohde & Shaw, 2013 ). Evaluation studies have shown this approach to have significant impact on eating disorders among women in a United States sample ( Green et al., 2018 ) and body image satisfaction among men in the United Kingdom ( Jankowski et al, 2017 ). Dissonance theory has spawned other therapeutic procedures including therapies to help with smoking cessation ( Simmons, Heckman, Fink, Small & Brandon, 2013 ), exercise ( Azdia, Girandella & Andraud, 2002 ), substance abuse ( Steiker, Powell, Goldbach & Hopson, 2011 ) and depression ( Tryon & Misurell, 2008 ). This is as it should be, as arguably no theory has been more frequently studied, criticized, supported and modified than cognitive dissonance. In the laboratory and in the field, we have studied the subtleties and nuances of the dissonance process. It is appropriate that we accelerate the application of dissonance to processes and institutions that can provide real help to people.

Back to the Lab

The call to place more emphasis on putting dissonance research into practice is simultaneously a call to continue studying dissonance in the laboratory. New perspectives on dissonance and new combinations of dissonance with other processes remain to be discovered. Any number of them may lead to new and valuable approaches that help people in their daily lives. One example of our own current research is the study of vicarious hypocrisy. As we noted earlier, the idea that dissonance can be experienced by one group member because of counterattitudinal behavior on the part of another group member arose from a union of dissonance theory with social identity theory. In social groups, members experience an intersubjectivity with other members of their group and feel as one with those members. We found ( Norton et al, 2003 ) that group members experienced dissonance when their fellow group members chose to make statements that were contrary to their attitudes.

Recently, we suggested that a combination of personal hypocrisy with social identity can create vicarious hypocrisy ( Focella, Stone, Fernandez, Cooper & Hogg, 2016 ), much as common in-group membership caused vicarious dissonance in previous research. As an illustration, Focella et al. ( 2016 ) established vicarious hypocrisy by having participants witness a fellow student make a public pro-attitudinal statement about using sunscreen whenever one goes outdoors. The participants also witnessed the speaker admit that there had been occasions when she failed to follow her own advice – that is, she had forgotten or neglected to use sunscreen in the past. In a series of studies, we found that witnesses bolstered their own attitudes and intentions to use sunscreen, and also purchased more sunscreen, after observing the admission of hypocrisy by the fellow student. As predicted by vicarious hypocrisy theory, this occurred when the hypocritical student was in the same group as the participant and when the participant strongly identified with her group.

Vicarious hypocrisy raises an exciting new possibility for translating dissonance theory from experimental research to real-life application that would help people work to improve their health. The irony is that people generally agree with pro-health behaviors, but fail to have sufficient motivation to do them. The smoker wants to quit, the obese person wants to exercise and diet, the sunbather wants to be protected from skin cancer. Because these behaviors are pro-attitudinal rather than counterattitudinal, the best way for achieving change is to arouse the dissonance-based motivational drive of hypocrisy. As we have seen in laboratory research, arousing dissonance via hypocrisy has led to increase condom intentions to protect against HIV/AIDS, greater use of sunscreen to protect against cancer and other prosocial behaviors including water conservation.

Vicarious hypocrisy has the potential to be a magnifier; to spread the motivation efficiently to an entire group of people simultaneously. To this point, we have studied vicarious hypocrisy within contexts in which a single individual has observed another group member make a strong pro-attitudinal statement on an important health behavior such as using sunscreen, and also observed the individual admit to times that she or he has acted hypocritically. In principle, the vicarious hypocrisy procedure can be adapted for an entire social group. All of the members of a group can witness one of its members admit to hypocrisy. Vicarious dissonance predicts that all of the group members would experience hypocrisy and the entire group would be motivated to adopt the healthy behavior that is the focus of the intervention.

Future researchers should adopt a two-pronged approach to dissonance. While we continue to look for nuance and novelty in the laboratory, we need to accelerate the translation of dissonance from a well-respected laboratory tradition into principles that are important in people’s lives. This may be accomplished most readily in the area of health, but can also affect the political and economic realms as well. How do we understand irrational behavior in the financial markets? How do we understand some of the unusual political attitudes of modern democracies that fawn over leaders who seem prepared to compromise those democracies? More than six decades of research in cognitive dissonance should make us confident that we can effect these translations productively.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge Lauren A. Feldman and Joseph J. Avery for their help on prior drafts of this manuscript.

Competing Interests

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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What Is Cognitive Dissonance Theory?

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

How Attitude Change Takes Place

What Causes Cognitive Dissonance?

Forced Compliance Behavior

Example of Cognitive Dissonance

Decision Making

How To Reduce Cognitive Dissonance

Change one or more of the attitudes, behavior, beliefs, etc., to make the relationship between the two elements a consonant one.

Acquire new information that outweighs the dissonant beliefs.

Reduce the importance of the cognitions (i.e., beliefs, attitudes).

Critical Evaluation

What is the difference between cognitive dissonance theory and balance theory?

Leon Festinger and Cognitive Dissonance

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3. Consider the importance of dissonant thoughts

4. Justifying behavior

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1. Induce effort

2. Provide choice

3. Provide a safe space and consider the use of relaxation techniques

4. Discussing discrepant behavior

World’s Largest Positive Psychology Resource

1. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance – Leon Festinger

2. Cognitive Dissonance: 50 Years of a Classic Theory – Joel Cooper

17 Science-Based Ways To Apply Positive CBT

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory (CDT)

Applications

Limitations

How to Cite

Theory Profile

Theory Tags

Psychosocial archeology

Cognitive dissonance of Leon Festinger

What Is Cognitive Dissonance?

Cognitive dissonance: the set-up

Effects of cognitive dissonance

What is cognitive dissonance?

Examples of cognitive dissonance

Author: Dr Jeremy Dean

Respectable Challenges to Respectable Theory: Cognitive Dissonance Theory Requires Conceptualization Clarification and Operational Tools

Introduction

A General Need for Clarification

The Operationalization Issue: Problems and Ways Forward

Definition of “Dissonance”

Assessing Reduction Is not Assessing “Dissonance”

The Right Operationalizations to Test the Theory

Inconsistency: Operationalization of Both Manipulation and Measure

On the Nature of the Cognitive Dissonance State

Arguments for Standardization of Procedures

Standardization of the Induction Task

Standard Assessment of Cognitive Dissonance State

Testing the General Model

Verdict of Not Proven

With a Little Help From the Community

Connectivity to Broader Theories

Author Contributions

Conflict of Interest Statement

Cognitive Dissonance: What Does It Do To Our Brain?

What Causes Conflict In Our Minds? What Is Id, Ego And Superego?

Why Do People Believe In Conspiracy Theories?

The Doorway Effect: Why Do We Forget What We Were Supposed To Do After We Enter A Room?

Why Do We Zone Out And Daydream?

Why Do We Get Used To Happiness So Fast?

How Does Our Conscience Work? Do We Have Some Aspect Of It At Birth Or Do We Acquire It With Age?