Cognitive dissonance theory has been around since the late fifties.
It has inspired many psychologists to figure out the murky depths of people’s minds. The theory relates strongly to decision making, social phenomenons and mental angst. Many paradigms exist within cognitive dissonance. Two important paradigms are the Belief Disconfirmation paradigm and the Free Choice paradigm.
There are several experiments that have been studied that relate to cognitive dissonance, including the boring tasks experiment. The person who coined the phrase cognitive dissonance is the famous Leon Festinger, and he studied it inside and out.Cognitive dissonance is one of the most important topics within psychology because it questions the mind and explains social phenomena. Cognitive dissonance challenges the reinforcement theory.
The reinforcement theory has been around for a long time, much longer than the cognitive dissonance theory. The reinforcement theory states that social-psychological phenomena are explained through behavioral approaches (Metin). On the contrary, cognitive dissonance theory is based off of cognitions (the process of knowing and perceiving) and dissonance (mental distress).The theory states that individuals strive toward consistency. If there is inconsistency, people try to make up for it to have mental comfort (Metin).
Consonance means consistency and dissonance means inconsistency. Our minds constantly try to balance these two things to have a healthy mind. Depending on the magnitude of the dissonance, our mind uses cognitions to balance out the inconsistency to create a stable mindset (Metin). Dissonance might arise from logical inconsistencies, cultural morals, encompassing cognition or past experiences (Metin).There are ways to categorize different kinds of situations of dissonance.
These categories are called paradigms. The belief disconfirmation paradigm states that dissonance arises when people are confronted with information that is inconsistent with their beliefs (Wikipedia). The saying, “birds of a feather flock together” relates to this paradigm. It explains that people are drawn to others that share their beliefs. This relates strongly to religion for instance there are communities that are formed because a group of people believe the same thing.
It relieves their dissonance by flocking together. Yet if something or someone proves their beliefs wrong, they tend to relieve that dissonance by making up for it and changing their beliefs to something similar, but different enough to get rid of dissonance. Another paradigm that is quite different than the belief disconfirmation paradigm is the free choice paradigm. This free choice states when making a difficult decision, there are always aspects of the rejected choice that one finds appealing and these features are dissonant with choosing something else (Wikipedia).In the process of decision making, people handle the unpleasantness of having rejected an attractive alternative (Metin). If people doubt it, then that individual tends to make up for the poor decision by talking it up and rationalizing it (Metin).
The process of choosing is very difficult, but once that decision is made, people tend to stick to it. This phenomena is called “the freezing effect of decision” (Festinger 1957). Dissonance does not arise before the decision is made, yet it arises after it’s made. The dissonance after the decision relates to how important the decision was.If it was a very important decision, the degree of overlap is low, because the unchosen alternative is unattractive due to the importance.
Yet if it was a smaller decision, the degree of overlap (of consistency to inconsistency) would be high because the unchosen alternative seems more attractive than it did before, therefore creating more dissonance (Metin). The mind would then have to rationalize the decision and come up with reasons to be more attracted to the chosen thing. There are several famous case studies that have been conducted.One of those famous experiments is the paid to do boring tasks experiment. This questions whether or not dissonance arises when people are highly rewarded for tasks that they did not want to do, and what the magnitude of dissonance is when given different levels of reward. This experiment had three groups.
One was the control group that did not get payed (rewarded) for their task. The second group was paid one dollar to do the task, and the third group got twenty dollars to do the task. The subjects were then asked to conclude how the procedure went (not boring/boring).The group that was paid twenty dollars said the task was not boring, but the group that got paid one dollar said it was. This shows that people who receive great amounts of external justification say that the task was not boring because of the small amount of dissonance that arose from being paid a lot. The one dollar group was on the fence about how boring the task was because they received external justification, yet not enough to counteract the dissonance that arose (Metin).
The man who coined the phrase cognitive dissonance was the famous Leon Festinger. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, May 8th, 1919 (Schachter).He went to an all boys’ high school, then went to the University of Iowa where he worked with Kurt Lewin, a Gestalt theorist and psychologist (Schachter). He worked with Lewin for many years throughout working with Lewin, Festinger shifted to social psychology. After Festinger graduated, he worked as a research associate in the psychology department with Lewin.
He then moved to MIT with Lewin in 1948, then to the University of Michigan, next he went to the University of Minnesota in 1951, then Stanford in 1955 and finally, the New York School for Social Research in 1968 (Schachter).He conducted several informal experiments when he turned to social psychology at MIT. When he coined the phrase cognitive dissonance in 1957, he changed the face of social psychology with drastic new experiments and interesting ways to study social psychology. He won many awards in his time, including the Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Psychological Association in 1959 (Schachter).
In 1988 Festinger was diagnosed with lung and liver cancer, he decided to go untreated and enjoyed the rest of his life until he passed away several months later (Schachter).Cognitive dissonance is one of the most important theories within psychology, because it questions the mind and explains social phenomena. There are several paradigms within cognitive dissonance, that help explain some social phenomena. Many experiments have been conducted that are related to cognitive dissonance. The famous scientist and psychologist Leon Festinger coined the phrase and went on to help explain the wonders of the mind.
Scientists still study cognitive dissonance and question the mind and it’s decisions, making more mysteries to be solved in the future.
