Cognitive Dissonance Theory Essay

Summary

Cognitive dissonance theory is the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort we feel when two of our thoughts are inconsistent. There are three methods that dissonance can be condensed. Individuals can modify one or more of the beliefs, attitude, behaviors, and more, this way the connection between the two elements are in agreement with one another. Another method is to gather new information that will compensate the dissonant beliefs. The third method is to decrease the importance of the beliefs, attitudes, behavior, and etc. Dissonance theory does not say that these methods will work; only people in the state of cognitive dissonance will use these methods to condense the degree of their dissonance. Cognitive dissonance theory

has been reached in multiple conditions in order to improve basic ideas in more specifically and many causes that have been acknowledged which may be important in attitude change. The research is divided into three, forced compliance behavior, decision making, and effort.
Forced compliance occurs when an individual is pressured by another individual to do an action that is contradictory with his or her beliefs. Festinger and Carlsmith conducted an experiment, in 1959, and asked individuals to perform a chain of dull tasks, to see if making people complete dull tasks would create cognitive dissonance through forced compliance behavior. Festinger and Carlsmith used 71 male students as participants; the students were paid one dollar or twenty dollars to tell a waiting participant that the boring experiment would be really interesting. Those who were paid one dollar said the boring task was more exciting than those who were paid twenty dollars to do the same. In the end, those who were paid one dollar experienced dissonance, because being paid one dollar is not a satisfactory motivation for lying.
You make decisions every day and decisions kindle dissonance. Making decisions takes off the likelihood that you can like the benefits of the other selection. For an example, say you had the opportunity to marry a rich, but less attractive individual, or marry a poor, but very attractive individual. You would experience dissonance with whatever option you select. If you marry the rich, but the person less striking person, you will have to deal with the fact that your partner is not attractive to you, but if you marry the poor, but very striking person, you have to deal with the fact that your wife or husband does not have a lot of money. There are two ways to reduce dissonance that is kindled by making a decision. One method is to change the behavior and the more common method is to raise the appeal of the chosen alternative and to cut the appeal of the excluded alternative.
People tend to value high goals or objects that involve significant effort to accomplish.

Dissonance would be caused if you put in a lot of effort to accomplish something and then valued it negatively. Someone could dedicate so much time and energy into completing something, but the ending results be garbage, to escape dissonance, that person may attempt to convince themselves that the work wasn’t really that long and or hard, and that you actual enjoyed the work. This method of reducing dissonance is called effort justification. Aronson and Mills demonstrated a classic dissonance experiment, to investigate the relationship between dissonance and effort. In the experiment, female students volunteered to be involved in a discussion on the psychology of sex. The mild embarrassment condition read to the male experimenter out loud sex-related words like “virgin” and “prostitute.” The severe embarrassment condition had to read very explicit sexual passage and filthy words out loud. The control condition went right into the main study. All conditions listened to boring discussion about sex in lower animals. At the end the females were asked to rate how interesting the discussion was and the people involved. The most positive rating came from the severe embarrassment condition. The experiment showed if a voluntary experience that requires a good deal of effort, but does not turn out good, by redefining the experience as interesting will reduce dissonance, justifying the effort

completed.