Attitude Change: Dissonance Versus Self-Perception

MAR 3503

February 2, 2012

Cognitive dissonance theory

• Festinger (1957) said…– 1. Dissonance is an aversive motivational state,

giving rise to pressures to reduce itself– 2. It is aroused when 2 (or more) cognitions are

inconsistent. It is especially strong when one cognition is a belief, and the other concerns one’s own behavior

– 3. It is reduced, most importantly, by changing one or more cognitions so as to bring them into line; typically attitudes change to be consistent with behavior

Three paradigms

• 1. Post-decisional dissonance reduction

• 2. Effort justification

• 3. Induced compliance

Post-decision dissonance reduction

Chosen item Unchosen item Net change

Low dissonance +0.11 0.00 +0.11

High dissonance +0.38 -0.41 +0.79

Control (gift) 0.00

Brehm, 1956

Changes from 1st to 2nd rating

Note: A positive sign indicates an increase in attractiveness. Net change indicates the spreading apart of the alternatives after a decision. Low dissonance is a decision between items of very different value. High dissonance is a decision between items of similar value.

Dissonance at the race track

Know & Inkster, 1968

1 4 6 752 3Slight Fair Good Great

Chance to winBefore After

Dissonance at the polls

Before voting After voting

Chances of election 4.12 4.96

Beauty of foliage 5.12 5.09

Regan & Kilduff, 1988

Dissonance and amnesia

Lieberman et al., 2001

Dissonance in monkeys

• Capuchin monkeys were tested to see whether they showed equal preferences between red, green, and blue M&Ms

• Choice #1:

• Choice #2:

Egan, Santos, & Bloom, 2007

Dissonance in monkeys

Egan, Santos, & Bloom, 2007

Effort Justification: Severity of initiation & liking

Discussion ratings Participant ratings

Control group 80 90

Mild initiation 82 89

Severe initiation 98 98

Aronson & Mills, 1959

Severity of initiation & liking

Mild shock Severe shock

Initiation participants, told they passed 11.5 31.1

Initiation participants, not told they passed 26.1 41.0

Non-initiation participants 19.8 13.2

Gerard & Mathewson, 1966

Low introductory prices

• A chain of stores in the South randomly assigned certain new items to have a low introductory price or their regular price

• After a week and a half, all products were at their regular price.

• The higher priced items quickly caught up to the low priced items’ sales, and then surpassed them

• The low price people think it’s now not worth it, while the high priced people like it even more

Induced Compliance: Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959

• Students who were paid to lie to a confederate and say an objectively boring task was interesting claimed that the task was more enjoyable if they were paid just $1 than if they were paid $20 to tell the lie

Control condiiton $1 condition $20 condition

Task ratings -0.45 +1.35 -0.05

Threat and compliance

• Children were brought into the lab and presented with a set of toys, with one really attractive toy

• The experimenter told them to play with any toy except the best one, and left them alone– The instruction was either mild (“I’ll be

disappointed…”) or severe (“I’ll be very angry and have to do something about it”). All obeyed.

• 6 weeks later, a different exp’r came to school and let them play with any toy, including the best one

Freedman, 1965

Threat and compliance

High threat Low threat

# that played with toy 14 6

# that didn’t play with toy 7 15

Freedman, 1965

Threat and compliance

Reported score

Mild threat 34.1

Control 36.2

Severe threat 38.2

But…Do we know our attitudes?

• There are times when our attitudes are unclear or unknown– Novel issues or events– Jukebox theory of emotion

• Can we feel dissonance if we don’t know what our conflicting attitude even is?

Bem’s Self-Perception Theory• Self-perception works like social perception.

Namely, people come to understand themselves and their attitudes the same way that they come to understand others—by observing behavior– To the extent that internal cues are weak,

ambiguous, or uninterpretable, we are in the shoes of an observer

– These evaluations are not conscious—they are quick inferences

– We answer the question of our attitude externally, by observing our behavior

• Attitude “change” is not real change. It is a dispassionate inference process

Two-factor theory of emotion

• Different emotions are distinguished not by their physiological reactions, but instead by the cognitive interpretation for the reactions– Physiological arousal is the same across emotions,

but the strength of the arousal determines emotional intensity

– The content of the emotion is determined by the causal attribution for the emotion

Physiology + Cognition = EmotionSchacter & Singer, 1962

Misattribution of arousal

• Two paradigms– 1. Misattributing irrelevant arousal to an

emotional stimulus, thus intensifying one’s emotional reaction

– 2. Misattributing arousal due to an emotional stimulus to an irrelevant source, thus diminishing one’s emotional reaction

Love on a bridge

• Males were approached by an attractive female experimenter after having crossed either a scary bridge or a non-scary control bridge

• They were asked to complete the TAT, then were given her phone number “in case they have any later questions” about the study

Dutton & Aron, 1974

Love on a bridge

Sexual imagery % calling

Control bridge

Scary bridge

Data: Amount of sexual imagery in their TAT responses, as coded by independent judges, and the percentage of of males who called her to ask her out

Dutton & Aron, 1974

Heat produces arousal

Mean # of players hit by pitches (HBP) in games played at different temperatures

Misattributing anxiety

• Participants were told they were being bombarded with “subliminal noise”– Some told this noise would arouse them– Some told this noise would relax them– Some told this noise would have no effect

• DM: number of speech dysfluencies when reading a speech into a camera

Olson, 1988

Misattributing anxiety

Condition Dysfluencies

Arousing noise 14.2

No-effect noise 19.4

Relaxing noise 19.8

Olson, 1988

• Both cognitive dissonance and self-perception result in a match between attitude and behavior– Dissonance results in attitude change– Self-perception results in attitude creation

• How do they both exist? DO they both exist?

Attitude change?

Reconsider: Dissonance in monkeys

• Capuchin monkeys were tested to see whether they showed equal preferences between red, green, and blue M&Ms

• Choice #1:

• Choice #2:

Egan, Santos, & Bloom, 2007

Self-perception uniquely explains…

• Foot-in-the-door• 1. People look at the fact that they agreed to

comply to a small request (with no strong incentive to do so), then…

• 2. They infer that they are the kind of person who cares about that particular cause (or the kind of person who agrees to pro-social requests, in general), and…

• 3. They are more likely to agree to larger requests

Self-perception uniquely explains…

• The overjustification effect• Undermining intrinsic motivation by using

overly sufficient rewards• Self-perception explanation: just as an outside

observer would, we assume we have less interest in activities performed as a means to some outside end (or because of some outside constraints), rather than as an end in themselves

Dissonance theory uniquely explains…

• Misattribution of dissonance motivation

Zanna & Cooper, 1974

Alleged drug effect

Dissonance theory uniquely explains…

• Arousal and attitude change

Cooper et al., 1978Actual drug taken

Toward a resolution

• Dissonance processes occur when clearly-held attitudes are strongly discrepant with behavior

• Self-perception processes occur when attitudes are unclear or weak, or when behavior is not very discrepant from the attitude. Self-perception processes are particularly likely to be important in the realm of attitude formation

Summary

• At times, a person’s behavior and attitudes may conflict– Attitudes change to align with the person’s behavior

• Other times, a person acts without an underlying attitude– They will assume their attitude matches their behavior

• The circumstances under which these attitude change processes occur are systematic and predictable

• Next time: How can people be persuaded?