COGNITIVE DISSONANCE.........................................................................

BERIL VAROL

ABSTRACT: Cognitive dissonance is a motivating state of affairs produced by two pieces of

knowledge that are psychologically inconsistant. People do not just prefer consistency, but
they are driven to reduce it. Cognitive dissonance takes form of induced compliance, belief
discomfirmation, free-choice and effort justification paradigms.

KEYWORDS: ATTRACTIVE, CONSISTENT, COGNITIVE, PERCEPTION,

DISSONANCE, CONSONANCE, JUSTIFICATION, TEMPTATION, DISCREPANCY
KEYWORD DEFINITIONS:
ATTRACTIVE: Causing interest or pleasure
CONSISTENT: Always behaving or happening in a similar, especially positive way
COGNITIVE: Connected with thinking or conscious mental processes
PERCEPTION:A belief or opinion, often held by many people and based on how things seem
DISSONANCE: Disagreement
CONSONANCE: Opposite of dissonance
JUSTIFICATION: A good reason or explanation for something
TEMPTATION: The wish to do or have something that you know you should not do or have
DISCREPANCY: A difference between two things that should be the same

A. The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

When people really like something, their relevant emotions, behaviors and opinions tend to be
more positive about what they like, which makes it almost impossible for people to be
objective about their choices.[3] People are more likely to make good comments on the thing
that they choose, but if their opinions and behaviors do not match each other, there will be
disharmony. When two of psychological representations of people are inconsistent, the state
of cognitive dissonance occurs. If one cognition is the opposite of the following cognition,
that means a pair of cognitions is inconsistent. More simply, if a person holds cognitions A
and B such that A follows from the opposite of B, then A and B are dissonant. That produce
the state of cognitive dissonance and creates a tension that drives someone to reduce it. [1][2]
Dissonance has a manitude. If two cognitions are way different and discrepant, the magnitude
of dissonance will be greater. [2]
Dissonance Magnitude:
SUM (all discrepant cognitions x importance)/SUM(all consonant cognitions x importance)

1. Dissonance Following Free Choice

The cognitive dissonance theory suggests that if someone has to be in a state where he has to
choose between two things that he likes equally, his attitude of the unchosen object will be
reduced and the chosen objects will be increased. It is a way of reducing the dissonance. [1]
For example, a man is looking for a place to eat. He sees two good restaurants, X and Y, and
both of them have his favourite foods and they are both good places that he likes to go. The
foods in X are more expensive but they are also very tasty. Foods in Y are a little cheaper but
he has to wait longer to get his meal. After a little thinking, he choose to eat in restaurant X.
He sits and orders his meal, but he feels a bit uncomfortable. Even though he made a rational
choice, he experiences the emotional state of cognitive dissonance. He has a cognition about
his decision. He will try to reduce the dissonance. The unchosen place will be less attractive
then is was before, and the chosen place will be more attractive. Also, he will find
justifications for his behaviour.[6] Like, the restaurant Y was too far, and it was a small place.
He wouldnt be comfortable while eating. Also the waiters were not friendly. Conversely, he
will think that restaurant X has a famous cook and a lot of people eat there. Who cares about
the price when he can be seen there eating, he will ask himself. People change their attitudes
to reduce the dissonance. Also, the ranking of the liked things is related to the magnitude of
dissonance. The more difficult the decision, the greater the dissonance. [1]

2. Saying What You Do Not Believe

The inconsistency between attitude and belief would bring the state of cognitive dissonance.
For example, if a speaker argues publicily about an idea that he was actually against, there
would be a dissonance between what he said and what he believed. The speaker would need
to reduce the discrepancy, so he would change his privite opinion, because it is impossible to
change what he said. Being induced to make a counterattitudinal statement would lead to
attitude change in the direction of the speech. [2]

a) How Rewarding Affects The Magnitude of Dissonance

The reward for the behavior affects the magnitude of cognitive dissonance. Giving someone a
reward for his inconsistent behavior, the dissonance will not be as great as no rewarded
persons dissonance. For example, giving money to someone to defend an idea that he does
not actually believe will not make him change his opinion because he has a reason to do it.
There is an explenation for his behavior and he can say that he did it for the money. Although
being rewarded does not create cognitive dissonance as much as not being rewarded, the
amount of the reward affects the magnitude of the dissonance.[1] Saying you love physics to
someone while you actually hate it produces dissonance, on the other hand, doing it for 1 lira

produces more dissonance than doing it for 20 liras, but their magnitudes are both smaller
than not being rewarded. The more rewarding there is, the more explenations we can make.
Having an excuse for your behavior reduces the chance of cognitive dissonance.

3. Liking What You Suffer For: Effort Justification

Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that people tend to change their negative opinions if
they are punished for what they want to do. People do not like being punished and
punishments produce negative affective states. [2] For example, a person tries to learn how to
play piano but his instructor puts him through a hard way. The instructor hits his fingers if a
note is not played correctly, make him practice 7 hours a day without a break and so on.
Although it seems like the person will change his opinions and start to dislike piano, he will
not. The suffering that goes into a given activity is inconsistent with peoples desifre not to
suffer.[2] So, he will try to find reasons for the suffering. He would raise his evaluations of the
piano playing. If he thought that playing the piano was an amazing challange and a positive
exprerience, those cognitions would support. He suffered because learning how to play the
piano was a challenging task. So, the dissonance would be reduced.

4. Self Motivation
If people underestimates their abilities, they are likely to anticipate not to succeed. Their
expectation for failure is cognition. People who think they will be successful but fail and
people who think they will fail but succeed both might experience dissonance. [2] For
instance, if there is group of two people that are working on a project, and while one person is
not getting any reward, but the other is always succeeding his or her tasks. If that person
thinks that he can do the best and he really believes in himself, he will be dissapointed
because the fact that he failed, so he will not feel comfortable. Then, to reduce his
uncomfortable feeling, the dissonance, the will find excuses. For example, he may say the
boss likes his partner and favours him or her. On the other hand, if that person really believes
that he can not be succesful at this task but if he will, that would produce a dissonance as well,
because his distrust in himself is not consonant with what he achieved. So, he may think that
his boss rewarded him to make him feel better or to support him. He would think that he did
not gain that success, it was just his bosss kindness.

5. Cognitive Dissonance in Daily Life

- Advertising and Marketing
Advertisers want to create dissonance for non-users of their product. Advertisers believe that
if an advertising for a product afferms that their product is best of its kind, the consumer will
believe that advertising. Companies use the theory of cognitive dissonance to get people like

their product by getting their logo or brand name on a positive image.[4] For example,
Sturbucks had a partnership with Pruduct RED to help people living with HIV or Aids in
Africa. After getting a drink form Sturbucks, people can say that paying such large amonts is
ridicilous to a cup of coffee. However, they can rationalize their purchase by changing their
thinking and they will tell themselves that the money is going to a good cause so, again, the
dissonance would be reduced.

References:
1. Leon Festinger (October, 1962), Scientific American
2. Joel Cooper (2007), Cognitive Dissonance: Fifty Years of a Classic Theory
3. Tesser & Schwarz (2007), Handbook of Social Psychology Intraindividual Processes
4. Pavlik & Maclntosh (2011), Converging Media: A New Introduction to Mass
Communication
5. http://w2.anadolu.edu.tr/aos/kitap/EHSM/1024/unite12.pdf
6. http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/stephens/cdback.html