Dissonance arousal: Physiological evidence.

Two studies examined whether cognitive dissonance is accompanied by physiological arousal. In Exp I, a standard induced-compliance paradigm was replicated and found to produce the expected pattern of attitude change in 30 male undergraduates. In Exp II, physiological recordings were obtained from 30 additional male undergraduates within the same paradigm. Ss who wrote counterattitudinal essays under high-choice conditions displayed significantly more nonspecific skin conductance responses than other Ss, but they did not change their attitudes. Results support dissonance as an arousal process. Results also indicate that the Ss misattributed their arousal to the physiological recording device. Findings are discussed in terms of dissonance theory, misattribution phenomena, and social psychophysiological research methods. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Private and public self-attention, resistance to change, and dissonance reduction.

Three experiments with 257 undergraduates investigated the effects of self-directed attention on dissonance reduction. Ss were induced to write counterattitudinal essays. In Exp I, mirror presence during either an attitude premeasure or the counterattitudinal behavior led to reduced attitude change. Exp II explored whether the discrepancy between present and prior research was due to the manner in which self-attention was manipulated. Ss were exposed either to a mirror or to a TV camera and were asked to report both their post-behavioral attitudes and their perceptions of their counterattitudinal behavior. Consistent with the results of the 1st study, Ss in the mirror condition again showed the least amount of attitude change. They did, however, reduce dissonance by altering their perceptions of their behavior. Consistent with prior findings, Ss in the camera condition tended to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, but did not distort their behavior. Exp III conceptually replicated these results by selecting Ss on the basis of their chronic levels of private and public self-consciousness. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissonance and alcohol: Drinking your troubles away.

Hypothesized that dissonance arousal would increase the amount of drinking and that drinking, in turn, would reduce dissonance and subsequent attitude change in 3 studies with 133 college students over age 21. In Studies 1 and 2, Ss rated brands of an alcoholic beverage to measure the amount of drinking immediately after dissonance was aroused by having them write a counterattitudinal essay. Ss' attitudes were measured immediately after the drinking. Both studies found that although dissonance arousal had little effect on the amount of drinking, whatever drinking occurred was sufficient to eliminate dissonance-reducing attitude change. Study 2 established that these results occurred for light as well as heavy social drinkers. Studies 2 and 3 showed that neither water nor coffee drinking was sufficient to eliminate attitude change in this paradigm. The implications are that some forms of alcohol abuse may evolve through the reinforcement of drinking as a means of reducing dissonance, and that dissonance may be frequently reduced through behaviors that ameliorate the feelings of dissonance without involving cognitive change. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-persuasion and self-presentation as mediators of anticipatory attitude change.

Three experiments with 197 undergraduates determined when anticipatory attitude change occurs via self-persuasion or self-presentation and identified the implications for attitude persistence of a shift by either process. In Exp I, Ss' thoughts and attitudes were assessed while they expected either a counterattitudinal or a proattitudinal message. Ss generated thoughts and reported attitudes consistent with the direction of the anticipated message, even though their responses were anonymous. In the final 2 experiments, the publicness of Ss' attitudes was varied to examine the impact of self-presentational concerns on thoughts and attitudes. In Exp II, Ss in the private condition spontaneously generated more thoughts relevant to the anticipated counterattitudinal message than did Ss in the public condition. In Exp III, some Ss were told that the anticipated counterattitudinal message was not forthcoming. When the message was canceled in the public condition, Ss failed to show an anticipatory shift in attitude; in the private condition, however, anticipatory attitude change was obtained. It is concluded that when self-presentation concerns are manifest, temporary changes in attitude occur in response to these concerns. In contrast, when pressures to self-present are low, anticipatory changes reflect genuine shifts in attitude resulting from an active consideration of the merits of the counterattitudinal position. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conformity and counterattitudinal behavior: The effect of social support on attitude change.

Tested dissonance and attribution theory predictions regarding the effect of social support on attitude change due to counterattitudinal advocacy in 4 studies. Social support among 67 college students who were given course credit was manipulated in a counterattitudinal essay-writing situation by the compliance or noncompliance of a confederate. Contrary to predictions, Ss showed a more positive attitude toward the counterattitudinal issue after the confederate's compliance rather than noncompliance, regardless of choice. Exp II manipulated social support and severity of consequences under consistently high choice with 47 paid male university students. Data support dissonance and attribution predictions under high consequences and replicate the findings of Exp I under low consequences. Exp III, conducted with 53 paid high school students, varied social support and choice under high consequences and showed that noncompliance led to more change than compliance under high choice and the reverse effect under low choice. Exp IV manipulated social support among 67 paid female university students and the confederate's stated attitude in a 2-factor design (under consistently high choice and high consequences), resulting in main effects for both factors. Ss changed more under noncompliance than compliance and with an attitudinally dissimilar rather than similar confederate. Results suggest a functional equivalence of social support as social reward and the financial rewards used in previous studies. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trivialization: the forgotten mode of dissonance reduction.

Trivialization as a mode of dissonance reduction and the conditions under which it is likely to occur were explored in 4 studies. Study 1 tested and supported the hypothesis that when the preexisting attitude is made salient, participants will trivialize the dissonant cognitions rather than change their attitudes. Study 2 tested and supported the hypothesis that following a counterattitudinal behavior, participants will choose the first mode of dissonance reduction provided for them, whether it is trivialization or attitude change. Study 3 tested and supported the hypothesis that following a counterattitudinal behavior, the typical self-affirmation treatment leads to trivialization. Study 4 demonstrated that providing a trivializing frame by making an important issue salient also encourages trivialization rather than attitude change even when there was no opportunity for self-affirmation. The implications for cognitive dissonance theory and research are briefly discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Arousal as a necessary condition for attitude change following induced compliance.

In a 2?×?3 design, 63 university students were induced to write counterattitudinal essays under either high- or low-choice conditions. All Ss were led to believe that a pill, which they had just taken in the context of a separate experiment, was a placebo. In reality, Ss were given a pill that contained either 30 mg of phenobarbital (tranquilizer condition), 5 mg of amphetamine (amphetamine condition), or milk powder (placebo condition). In this last condition, the results yielded the usual dissonance effect: High choice produced more attitude change in the direction of the essay than low choice. When Ss were given a tranquilizer, this effect was virtually eliminated; when Ss were given amphetamine, attitude change increased under high choice and was exhibited for the 1st time under low choice. These results are consistent with the notion that attitude change is in the service of reducing arousal and with the idea that arousal from other sources can be misattributed to attitude-discrepant behavior. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of need for cognition on message evaluation, recall, and persuasion.

Studied the relation among need for cognition (NFC), message processing, and persuasion. 57 pairs of undergraduates holding approximately the same attitude toward instituting senior comprehensive exams but differing widely in their scores on a NFC scale participated in Exp I. Ss read a set of either strong or weak arguments supporting the recommendation that senior comprehensive exams be instituted. Results reveal that argument quality had a greater impact on the message evaluations and source impressions provided by Ss high than by those low in NFC and that Ss high in NFC reported expending more cognitive effort and recalled more message arguments regardless of argument quality. The findings from Exp I were replicated in Exp II (110 female undergraduates) with a different topic (i.e., raising student tuition) and cover story. The inclusion of a postcommunication attitude measure revealed that the attitudes of Ss high in NFC were more affected by argument quality than those of Ss low in NFC. These studies document a reliable difference among individuals in their tendency to derive information from and elaborate on externally provided message arguments. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive dissonance in an intergroup context.

42 student members of a campus group supporting Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election participated in a study of the effects of group membership on dissonance reduction. In a 2?×?2 factorial design, half of the Ss were asked to write arguments contrary to their attitudes, whereas the other half were required to write such arguments. Half of the Ss were then asked to advocate a position that was counter to the attitude that defined their membership in the group. The other half produced arguments that were counter to attitudes relevant to but not definitional of group membership. It was predicted that attitude change would be used as a way to reduce dissonance only by those Ss who freely wrote arguments counter to nondefinitional attitudes. Attitude change was not possible, however, for Ss who freely produced arguments counter to a definitional attitude; these Ss were expected to misattribute their arousal to the existence of a competing out-group and to reduce their dissonance by derogating that group. Results supported these predictions. The importance of group membership in affecting attitude change is discussed. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood effects on attitude judgments: Independent effects of mood before and after message elaboration.

Investigated the independent effects of induced mood on the encoding of persuasive messages and on the assessment of attitude judgments. In Exp 1, positive or negative mood was induced either before the encoding of a counterattitudinal message or before the assessment of attitude judgments. When mood was induced before message presentation, Ss in a bad mood were more persuaded by strong than by weak arguments, whereas Ss in a good mood were equally persuaded by strong and by weak arguments. When Ss encoded the message in a neutral mood, however, the advantage of strong over weak arguments was more pronounced when Ss were in a good rather than in a bad mood at the time of attitude assessment. In Exp 2, Ss exposed to a counterattitudinal message composed of either strong or weak arguments formed either a global evaluation or a detailed representation of the message. Positive, negative, or neutral mood was then induced. Ss in a good mood were most likely and Ss in a negative mood least likely to base their reported attitudes on global evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of self-presentation and choice in cognitive dissonance under forced compliance: Necessary or sufficient causes?

In 3 experiments, 114 undergraduates performed counterattitudinal behaviors under choice or no-choice conditions in which the behaviors were public or private and anonymous. Results indicate that self-presentation and choice should be considered as sufficient but not necessary causes of cognitive dissonance. In the absence of self-presentation (private condition), manipulations of perceived choice affected attitude change. In the absence of choice, self-presentation produced attitude change. Supplementary findings suggest that the effects of choice and self-presentation on dissonance were additive and that attitude change was maintained across different audiences among Ss who believed the 2 audiences to be unrelated. The implication that neither choice nor self-presentation is necessary for the occurrence of attitude change suggests a view of cognitive dissonance as multiply determined. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional expression and the reduction of motivated cognitive bias: Evidence from cognitive dissonance and distancing from victims' paradigms.

Two experiments tested whether expression of emotions from which motivated cognitive biases presumably provide protection would reduce the extent of such biases. In Study 1, it was hypothesized that expressing any tension produced by writing a counterattitudinal essay would reduce the extent of dissonance-reducing attitude change. To test this hypothesis, Ss were induced to write an essay arguing for higher tuition. High-choice Ss were either encouraged to express their emotions, to suppress them, or to do neither. As expected, high-choice-express Ss exhibited the least attitude change. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that expressing fear of cancer would reduce the extent of defensive distancing from cancer patients, but expressing sympathy would not. Although control Ss clearly distanced from cancer patients, fear-expression Ss did not. Implications for understanding the role of affect in defense are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Misattribution of dissonance and behaviour-consistent attitude change.

Examined the prediction that people who have misattributed dissonance arousal to an external source may come to question the appropriateness of this attribution and may then be motivated to alter their attitudes. This was tested by having an experimenter discredit the plausibility of an external source after misattribution had presumably occurred. 80 female undergraduates participated in the study, with 16 of these Ss serving as controls. 64 Ss were given a pill described as having either unpleasant side effects or no side effects and then were committed to write counterattitudinal essays under high-choice conditions. Some Ss were then told that a mistake had been made and that they had actually been given the other form of the pill. As predicted, Ss who had initially been led to believe that the pill had aversive side effects but were later told that it did not manifested behavior-consistent attitude change. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood changes, physiological responses, and self-statements during social rejection imagery.

Exp I, partially replicating M. Goldfried and D. Sobocinski's (see record 1975-26824-001) methodology, evaluated the cognitive behavioral assumption that one's images and correct verbalizations mediate emotional and physiological arousal. Ss were 32 female university students who scored at the extremes on the importance of social approval scale from the Irrational Beliefs Test. It was hypothesized that relative to the low-irrational Ss, high-irrational ones would emit more negative and fewer positive tasks- and self-referent self-statements, report greater emotional arousal, and exhibit greater increases in physiological arousal while visualizing social rejection scenes. The major finding was that the groups differed significantly in the frequency of negative self-referent self-statements; virtually no support was obtained for the other hypotheses. Exp II, which used 24 females and which did not employ self-statements or physiological measures but was otherwise similar to Exp I, was a more exact replication of the Goldfried and Sobocinski study. Exp III, with 36 Ss, was a complete replication of the Goldfried and Sobocinski study. The data from the latter 2 studies indicate no differences in the reported moods of high- and low-irrational Ss following visualizations of social rejection scenes. Conceptual and clinical implications are discussed. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of source magnification of cognitive effort on attitudes: An information-processing view.

In Exp I 120 undergraduates viewed a videotape of 1 or 3 speakers presenting 1 or 3 arguments in favor of a counterattitudinal position. The 3-source/3-argument message produced significantly more persuasion than any of the other conditions, which did not differ from each other. It is suggested that each time a speaker appears, the recipient "gears up" to process the message and that if either speaker or argument is repeated, further thinking about the arguments is minimal. Exp II (30 Ss) excluded an alternative to this processing interpretation by showing that Ss exposed to the multiple-source/multiple-argument message did not infer that the pool of proproposal arguments was larger than that inferred by other Ss. In Exp III (100 Ss), Ss exposed to 3 compelling arguments purportedly produced by 3 different persons generated more positive thoughts and were more persuaded than Ss who read the same high quality arguments presumably generated by 1 person. However, Ss exposed to 3 weak arguments purportedly produced by 3 different persons generated more negative thoughts and were less persuaded than Ss who read the same low quality arguments attributed to 1 source. Overall, results indicate that increasing the number of sources of a message increases thinking about the message content. This increased thinking can result in either increased or decreased persuasion, depending on the cogency of the message arguments. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Generalization of dissonance reduction: Decreasing prejudice through induced compliance.

Three studies involving a total of 318 White college students demonstrated that induced compliance can change socially significant attitudes and that the change generalizes to broader beliefs. Ss wrote an essay endorsing a pro-Black policy that was costly to Whites. In Exps 1 and 2, attitudes and general beliefs about Blacks became more favorable in both high- and low-choice conditions, provided publicity of the essay was high. Overall, choice and publicity had additive effects on attitude change. Some high-choice Ss wrote only semipositive (semicompliant) essays and did not change their essay attitudes. Yet their beliefs about Blacks still became more favorable. In Exp 3, racial ambivalence, but not prior attitude, predicted essay compliance. Ambivalent Ss were more likely to comply than were less ambivalent Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributional complexity as a moderator of dissonance-produced attitude change.

The complexity of one's attributional schemas was predicted to attenuate dissonance-produced attitude change after one writes a counterattitudinal essay (favoring yearly tuition increases). In both Experiments 1 and 2, participants high on attributional complexity (AC) exhibited less of a dissonance (choice) effect than those low on AC. The proposed explanation that AC allows for better external justification of a dissonant act was supported in Experiment 2, in which participants listed their reasons for writing the counterattitudinal essay. No support was found for the views that high-AC participants reduce dissonance through "trivialization" or that high-AC participants are more tolerant of dissonance than low-AC participants. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissonance and humor: Evidence for the undifferentiated nature of dissonance arousal.

33 undergraduates were committed to performing a counterattitudinal behavior under conditions of high or low choice. Thereafter, the order of presentation of two potential sources of arousal was manipulated. Some Ss first watched and rated a cartoon and then completed a posttreatment attitude measure. Other Ss first completed the attitude measure and then viewed the cartoon. It was thought that the presentation of the attitude measure first would lead Ss to attribute any arousal they might be experiencing to their counterattitudinal behavior and hence to change their attitudes. Analogously, presentation of the cartoon first was predicted to foster an interpretation of any arousal as a humorous reaction to the cartoon. The attitude and humor ratings of high-choice Ss were more affected by the order manipulation than the ratings of low-choice Ss. It is suggested that the arousal created by an induced compliance manipulation may be a general and undifferentiated state that can be attributed to any plausible source. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of "voice" and peer opinions on responses to inequity.

Examined the effects of "voice" (participating in allocation decision making by expressing one's own opinion about the preferred allocation) on responses to an inequitable allocation. In addition to Ss' (82 female undergraduates) presence or absence of voice, Exp I manipulated (a) whether the allocation made by a "decision maker" (a confederate) was or was not made biased (due to self-interest) and (b) whether the S did or did not learn that a "co-worker" believed the allocation to be inequitable. Exp II, with 61 female high school students, manipulated presence/absence of voice and involved only a self-interested decision maker. In both experiments, the impact of voice was mediated by knowledge about the co-worker's opinion. When Ss had no knowledge about the co-worker's opinion (Exp I) or knew that the co-workers's opinion coincided with the decision maker's allocation (Exp II), there was evidence for a "fair process effect": Voice Ss expressed greater satisfaction than those with no voice. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)