Leon Festinger

Leon Festinger

Theorists are people who come up logical explanations to explain a situation or a scenario. They are critical thinkers who deeply analyze an event/ phenomenon and try to come up with explanations as to why it happened. The explanations that theorists come up with are called theories and are often used for academic purposes. Behind every theory there is a theorist and Leon Festinger is one of the theorists.

Festinger was born in 1919 and died in 1989 as a renowned American social psychologist. He carried out his studies in New York at City College. He attained his bachelor’s degree in the field of psychology in City College. He further pursued did his master’s and PhD in the University of Iowa where in both he majored in psychology.

b) In a situation of dissonance, people will avoid information and events that may increase dissonance. (Twente, n.d)

Assumptions of the Theory

Cognitive dissonance is based on three main assumptions which are;

a) Humans are sensitive to inconsistencies between actions and beliefs

According to Festinger, every human at some point recognize, when they are acting that they are in contrary with their beliefs or opinions. The result is that they become cautious whenever they notice such inconsistency.

b) Recognition of this inconsistency will result in dissonance and will make the individual want to resolve the dissonance.

This assumption is that once an individual knows that he or she is going against his belief or opinion, they will experience some form of mental unrest/ dissonance –the level of dissonance depend on the importance of the violated belief. The theory has that if the dissonance is great then the urge to resolve it will be greater.

c) Dissonance will be resolved in three ways;

i) Change in beliefs- this is where an individual changes his/her stand in the beliefs that he or she holds. For example, one could decide that stealing is okay and is morally right to