COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: THEORY, FESTINGER AND EXAMPLES - ARTE - 2024

The cognitive dissonance is a kind of psychological stress that occurs when a person has beliefs, ideas or contradictory values, or when acting against their own ideas. This effect, which can cause very high levels of discomfort, was first discovered by Leon Festinger in the 1950s.

Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person is exposed to new information that contradicts some of their ideas, beliefs, or values. When this stress occurs, the individual will try to resolve the contradiction in some way, with the intention of reducing their psychological discomfort as soon as possible.

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Festinger believed that humans need to maintain a high level of psychological coherence in order to function properly in the real world. Because of this, when something contradicts our ideas, we feel great discomfort and try to resolve the contradiction as quickly as possible.

There are several possible ways to resolve a case of cognitive dissonance. Depending on their personality and the situation in which it appears, each individual will choose a different one. It is important to remember that this psychological phenomenon occurs in all people, and that it does not have to be an indication of a more serious problem.

Festinger theory

In 1957, in his book A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Leon Festinger proposed the idea that people need to maintain a high level of consistency between our thoughts and real world events in order to function properly in our day-to-day lives.

According to the author, people have a series of ideas, beliefs and thoughts about how the world works or how it should be. When we come across data that contradict what we think, we feel a certain anxiety, which would lead us to try to resolve the contradiction in different ways.

These anxiety levels will be more or less high depending on how important the belief that is being questioned is for each individual, and how contradictory the data that has been received is. To eliminate dissonance, four different strategies can be followed, which we will see below.

Strategies to reduce cognitive dissonance

When a person has to face information or facts that contradict his vision of reality, he will unconsciously choose one of four strategies to resolve the dissonance and reduce his psychological distress. It is important to note that these strategies are often not used on purpose.

The simplest strategy is to simply ignore or deny information that contradicts the belief that was being held. For example, a person who thinks that drinking alcohol is bad could say that "beer does not count as an alcoholic drink" to avoid feeling bad when drinking it.

A second strategy is to seek a justification for the apparent contradiction, often adding alternative conditions or explanations. For example, a young man who has decided to study for several hours but does not feel like doing it could justify himself by thinking that the next day he can make up for lost time without problems.

The third strategy is based on superficially modifying the thought or belief with which the conflict has occurred, without actually abandoning it altogether. For example, someone who wants to stay on their diet but has just eaten a piece of cake might think that it is okay to cheat once in a while.

Finally, the most difficult strategy at a cognitive level is to change one's behavior to make it fit the basic idea, or to completely change the belief that was held. For example, someone who believes that it is impossible to learn English would change their idea when they discover that another person in the same situation has succeeded.

Areas in which cognitive dissonance influences

The effects of cognitive dissonance can be seen in a large number of different situations. However, research in this regard has traditionally focused on three areas: in relation to forced obedience, decision-making, and effort.

Forced obedience

Some of the early research on cognitive dissonance addressed situations in which a person was forced to do something that they did not really want to do internally. Thus, there was a clash between her thoughts and her behavior.

Because the behavior is externally marked, the only way these people can reduce their cognitive dissonance is by modifying their thoughts. Thus, due to an effect known as "retroactive logic," when this occurs we tend to convince ourselves that we actually did want to do what we have done.

For example, according to this theory, a person who is forced to study a degree despite not wanting to do so could end up being convinced that he really wanted to do it.

Decision making

Life is full of decisions, and in general making one of them causes cognitive dissonance. This is because normally all the alternatives that we have to choose from have both points in favor and against, so we will always have to give up something that attracts us.

Different researchers have studied the strategies that we usually use to reduce cognitive dissonance when making a decision. The most common is to convince ourselves that the alternative we have chosen is much more attractive than it really is, and that we did not really like the others.

Effort

Another large part of the research related to cognitive dissonance has been carried out in the field of goals and personal effort. The basic idea extracted from them is that we tend to value much more those goals or objects that we have had to work hard to achieve.

The effect by which this occurs is known as "justification of effort." When we strive to achieve something, if it turns out that it is not as attractive or beneficial as we originally thought, we experience dissonance. When this happens, we tend to change our thoughts about what we have achieved to reduce it.

Because we feel bad if we try too hard to do something that is not really attractive, our first strategy is to change what we think about what we have worked for and value it as more positive than it really is.

Festinger experiment

Cognitive dissonance was first studied in 1959 by Leon Festinger. In it, he wanted to experience how participants reacted to a monotonous and repetitive task based on the reward they received after completing it.

In the first phase of the experiment, participants had to carry out an extremely boring task for two hours, after having volunteered for it. They were then divided into three different groups to study how different degrees of extrinsic motivation affected their opinion of what they had done.

The participants in the first group did not receive any type of financial reward. On the contrary, those in the second were paid one dollar for the work performed, and those in the third were given twenty dollars. Later, they were asked to take a questionnaire in which they had to write their opinions about the task.

Results and conclusions

Festinger's experiment revealed that participants who had received twenty dollars for their participation in the study and those who had not been paid at all expressed dissatisfaction with the task performed. They commented that they had found the task unpleasant, and that they would not want to do anything similar.

In contrast, participants in the group that received as little as $ 1 expressed much higher levels of satisfaction with the task, with the experimenters, and with the process in general.

Festinger and his colleagues drew two conclusions from this study. The first is that when we are forced to do something against our will, we can change our opinions to avoid feeling that we have wasted time.

On the other hand, adding an external reward can make the change of mind more noticeable; but this only happens when the reward is very small, and you cannot justify on your own the fact that the person acted in a way that they did not really want to.

Examples

Cognitive dissonance can appear in virtually any area of ​​life. However, it is especially prevalent when a person acts of their own free will in a way that goes against any of their beliefs.

The more the behavior of the person clashes with their beliefs, and the more important these are to the individual, the stronger the cognitive dissonance that occurs. Some frequent examples of this phenomenon are the following:

- A person who is on a diet but decides to eat a piece of cake will experience cognitive dissonance. Faced with this situation, you may, for example, tell yourself that cake is not really that caloric, or think that you have the right to eat badly from time to time.

- Someone who is concerned about the environment but opts for a new gasoline car instead of electric could tell himself that its impact on the well-being of the planet is not really that high, or convince himself that in fact a vehicle modern is not so polluting.

References

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3. "Cognitive Dissonance (Leon Festinger)" in: Instructional Design. Retrieved on: April 06, 2019 from Instructional Design: instructionaldesign.org.
4. "What is cognitive dissonance?" in: Psychology Today. Retrieved on: April 06, 2019 from Psychology Today: psychologytoday.com.
5. "Cognitive dissonance" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: April 06, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.