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)     

Attitudinal consequences of commitment to unpleasant behavior.

"This study tested a 'nonobvious' hypothesis derived from Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance: given the fact that a person is committed to an unpleasant behavior, he tends to increase his disliking for that behavior more if he is exposed to information against engaging in it than if he is exposed to information favorable to engaging in it… . the… hypothesis… was supported." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reduction of cognitive dissonance by seeking consonant information.

"An experiment was conducted to test two hypotheses about the reduction of cognitive dissonance by seeking information. The hypotheses were: (a) a person in whom dissonance has been produced by exposure to a communication advocating an opinion contrary to the person's is more likely to seek information than a person exposed to a compatible communication, and (b) a person in whom dissonance has been produced by a contrary communication tends to seek information from a source agreeing with his opinion. The opinions of 100 mothers on the importance of hereditary and environmental factors in child rearing were ascertained by personal interview; they were then exposed to a tape recorded, authoritative communication espousing a hereditary or an environmental point of view… . The results supported the first hypothesis." From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:3GG74A. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reduction of cognitive dissonance through task enhancement and effort expenditure.

This study tested the hypothesis that task performance can facilitate dissonance reduction. It was predicted that dissonance induced by compliance with a negatively valued task setter would be reduced by task enhancement and high effort expenditure. Increased effort was assumed to aid dissonance reduction by validating the initial enhanced valuation of the task. A concept-attainment task was given to 50 undergraduate students who "chose" to comply with an inconsiderate E for no experimental credit (NC), and to 50 students who received credit (C). The NC group persisted longer on an insoluble problem, completed more trials, scored fewer penalty points, and forgot less information than the C group. They also maintained a more performance-anchored level of aspiration and rated the experiment as more interesting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissonance processes as self-affirmation.

Tested the hypothesis that an experience that simply affirms a valued aspect of the self can eliminate dissonance and its accompanying cognitive changes. Three experiments were conducted using the conventional forced-compliance procedure. In Study 1, some of the 76 college student Ss were allowed to affirm an important, self-relevant value (by completing a self-relevant value scale) immediately after having written unrelated dissonant essays and prior to recording their attitudes on the postmeasure. Other Ss underwent an identical procedure but were selected so that the value affirmed by the scale was not part of their self-concept. The value scale eliminated dissonance-reducing attitude change among Ss for whom it was self-relevant but not among Ss for whom it was not self-relevant. This occurred even though the value scale could not resolve or reduce the objective importance of the dissonance-provoking inconsistency. Study 2, conducted with 24 Ss with a strong economic and political value orientation, showed that the self-affirmation effect was strong enough to prevent the reinstatement of dissonance. Study 3, testing generalizability with 24 Ss, replicated the effect by using a different attitude issue, a different value for affirmation, and a different measure of dissonance reduction. Results imply that a need for psychological consistency is not part of dissonance motivation and that salient, self-affirming cognitions may help objectify reactions to self-threatening information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biochemical studies and bone tissue biopsy in primary hyperparathyroidism

Insomnia in 11 general hospital in-patients was treated by a placebo. The conditions of administration of the placebo were experimentally varied, and a hypothesis derived from Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory was tested. Consistent with this hypothesis, it was found that patients who were required to make meaningful decisions concerning their treatment derived significantly greater hypnotic (therapeutic) value from it than did patients whose treatment was simply administered to them and who were not required to make such decisions. The power of cognitive dissonance theory to explain the placebo effect, and the therapeutic potential of this approach are discussed.     

Personal responsibility and salience of the request for help: Determinants of the relation between negative affect and helping behavior.

148 female undergraduates participated in 3 experiments. The hypothesis that attribution of responsibility to self for one's experimentally induced depressed mood would induce greater inclination to offer help when subsequently asked was tested in Exp I through a design that manipulated mood (negative vs neutral) and attribution of responsibility for it (internal vs external). The obtained opposite result seemed attributable to the low salience of the request for help. Exp II replicated Exp I using a highly salient request for help and confirmed the initial hypothesis. In Exp III, a negative mood was induced in all Ss, and attribution of responsibility (internal vs external) was crossed with salience of the helping request in a 2 by 2 factorial design. The obtained interaction confirmed the prediction that internal attribution of responsibility increases willingness to help (as measured either behaviorally or attitudinally) when the request is salient, but inhibits it when the request lacks salience. Self-focus, as measured by the Stroop Color-Word Test, was shown to mediate these effects. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivational basis of dissonance: The singular role of behavioral consequences.

This article provides the first empirical test of the idea that discrepancy is not needed in order to arouse cognitive dissonance. Dissonance was aroused when Ss felt responsible for some aversive consequence, regardless of whether their behavior was consistent (writing a proattitudinal essay) or inconsistent (a counterattitudinal essay) with beliefs. The data demonstrate that in both situations, dissonance is aroused. This result, based on the dissonance motivation model of J. Cooper and R. H. Fazio (1984), strongly suggests that the motivational basis for dissonance is the felt responsibility for aversive consequences. The theoretical implications of this outlook are explored, including a discussion of the many ways that it expands the applicability of dissonance theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vicarious dissonance: Attitude change from the inconsistency of others.

Three studies support the vicarious dissonance hypothesis that individuals change their attitudes when witnessing members of important groups engage in inconsistent behavior. Study 1, in which participants observed an actor in an induced-compliance paradigm, documented that students who identified with their college supported an issue more after hearing an ingroup member make a counterattitudinal speech in favor of that issue. In Study 2, vicarious dissonance occurred even when participants did not hear a speech, and attitude change was highest when the speaker was known to disagree with the issue. Study 3 showed that speaker choice and aversive consequences moderated vicarious dissonance, and demonstrated that vicarious discomfort--the discomfort observers imagine feeling if in an actor's place--was attenuated after participants expressed their revised attitudes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interaction between self-monitoring and manipulated states of self-awareness.

We conducted four experiments to examine the differential responses of high and low self-monitors to variations in public and private self-awareness. The first 2 experiments used an attribution of responsibility paradigm to test the hypothesis that high self-monitors would show greater responsiveness than low self-monitors to manipulations of public self-awareness. This hypothesis was supported. Two additional experiments tested the hypothesis that low self-monitors would be more responsive than high self-monitors to manipulations of private self-awareness. Manipulations of private self-awareness following a Velten (1968) positive-mood induction exercise strengthened the induced mood in low but not in high self-monitors. Thus, when the dependent measure had implications for their public self, high self-monitors were more responsive than low self-monitors to public self-awareness manipulations; low self-monitors, on the other hand, were more responsive than high self-monitors to manipulations of private self-awareness when the dependent measure required subjects to access aspects of their private self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of group diffusion of cognitive effort on attitudes: An information-processing view.

232 undergraduates participated in 2 experiments that tested whether persons process a stimulus less extensively when they are part of a group that is responsible for the task than when they are individually responsible. In addition to a group size manipulation, the quality of the stimulus to be evaluated was varied to determine the mediator of the different evaluation of stimuli provided by group (GEs) and individual evaluators (IEs). When evaluating a high quality stimulus, IEs generated more favorable thoughts and evaluated the stimulus more positively than did GEs (Exps I and II); but when evaluating a stimulus of low quality, IEs generated more unfavorable thoughts and evaluated the stimulus more negatively than did GEs (Exp II). This result favors an information-processing view over dissonance, deindividuation, and commodity theory interpretations. Together the studies indicate that Ss will diffuse the responsibility for a cognitive task. The reduction in individual processing that accompanies an increase in the number of persons responsible can thus lead to either enhanced or reduced evaluations, depending on the subjective quality of the stimulus to be evaluated. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping With Stereotype Threat: Denial as an Impression Management Strategy.

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that people who are concerned with impression management cope with stereotype threat through denial. Consistent with this hypothesis, temporary employees threatened by a stereotype of incompetence (Study 1) and hostel-dwelling older adults (Study 2) were more likely to deny incompetence if they were high in impression management. African Americans (Study 3) showed a similar pattern of denying cognitive incompetence, which emerged primarily when they were interviewed by a White experimenter and had attended a predominantly Black high school. In Study 4, White students who expected to take an IQ test and were threatened by a stereotype of being less intelligent than Asians were more likely to deny that intelligence is important if they were high in impression management. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional dissonance, burnout, and in-role performance among nurses and police officers.

Two studies including 108 nurses and 101 police officers tested the proposition that emotionally demanding interactions with recipients may result in emotional dissonance, which, in turn, may lead to job burnout and impaired performance. More specifically, on the basis of the literature on burnout and emotional dissonance, the authors hypothesized that emotional job demands would explain variance in burnout (i.e., exhaustion and cynicism/disengagement) through their influence on emotional dissonance. In addition, the authors predicted that emotional dissonance would be (negatively) related to in-role performance through its relationship with burnout. The findings of a series of structural equation modeling analyses supported both hypotheses. The implications for research and practice are discussed, as well as avenues for additional research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some problems in dissonance theory research on information selectivity.

Inconsistent results obtained from information selectivity experiments based upon dissonance theory may result from fundamental problems in research designs. The hypotheses tested do not necessarily follow from dissonance theory when the research design uses 2 levels of dissonance. The theory predicts curves of seeking and avoiding with at least quadratic components. In many experiments, the curves are treated instead as positively sloped, linear functions of dissonance. The methods used do not clearly separate seeking from avoiding. Interest in information, used as an index of both seeking and avoiding, is not necessarily an index of avoiding. Ratings, rankings, and time spent looking at information, as they have been used in dissonance research, do not allow separation of seeking and avoiding. A typical research design uses a choice between supporting and opposing information, both to create dissonance and to measure its effects. This technique creates a situation in which both dissonance and dissonance reduction would be expected prior to the choice of information. Selectivity research is concerned with seeking behavior which would also be predicted from curiosity motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive dissonance: Private ratiocination or public spectacle?

Examines various interpretations of cognitive dissonance. A review of the conditions which have reliably produced dissonance indicates that the phenomenon will occur whenever an individual can be held intentionally responsible for his behaviors and is concerned with the attributions others make about him. A social-psychologically based theory of impression management is offered to account for the results of dissonance studies. According to the theory, an individual learns that he must appear consistent in order to maintain his credibility as a social communicator. Additionally, he is constrained by normative considerations. Dissonance reduction will only be observed when a person believes that an outside o imputes intentionality to both of 2 contradictory statements or actions, and the 2nd action is believed to be counternormative or harmful in nature. The theory integrates the various viewpoints of L. Festinger, D. Bem, V. Allen, and M. Rosenberg, is supported by the existing dissonance literature, is rooted in socialization processes, and offers an alternative to the traditional intrapsychic explanations of dissonance. (50 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alternative explanations for self-fulfilling prophecy.

Discusses alternative explanations for 1 type of self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon: where a person's expectations for his own behavior alter his actual behavior. These explanations include claims that events fitting prophecies are sought out in order to reduce cognitive dissonance (dissonance reduction) or anxiety (anxiety reduction); or that events are inadvertently altered because the goal or effort changes (defensive effort), because the prophet is distracted from the task (anxiety distraction), or because prophecy-induced arousal adversely affects performance (energizing arousal). Although the defensive effort explanation is most clearly supported by available research, there is not enough information to adequately evaluate the alternative explanations. Suggested strategies for future research include (a) using measures of alternative processes within the same experiment; and (b) manipulating dissonance, anxiety, effort, distraction, and/or arousal independently of prophecies. These strategies allow inferences about the frequency with which various processes occur and the sufficiency and necessity of these processes as explanations for self-fulfilling prophecy. (56 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fear and social comparison.

Schachter (1959) had found a positive relationship between fear and the desire to be with others (affiliation). Schachter concluded, following Festinger (1954), that a person will attempt to reduce cognitive dissonance with regard to his self-picture in terms of information obtainable from others. This investigation attempts to determine the validity of this hypothesis by focusing on the dimension of the intensity of the emotion. "If a person is uncertain as to the intensity of his emotional reaction, he should seek information from others that will help him measure it. To the extent that he has information from others regarding the intensity of their reactions, his desire to be with them prior to the impending experience should be reduced." The hypothesis was supported; however, factors such as sex and order of birth were seen to affect S's reaction to threat. From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4GE86G. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of counselors' etiology attributions on college students' procrastination.

Clients come to counseling with personal theories about their problems' etiology. Counselors bring other hypotheses to the table. Counselors may be more helpful either when they accept clients' theories or when they provide new ones. A third option is that problem etiology is irrelevant in finding solutions. This study tested the cognitive dissonance theory of interpretations (L. Levy, 1963; S. R. Strong, J. A. Welsh, J. L. Corcoran, & W. T. Hoyt, 1992), which argues that discrepant interpretations are most helpful. Eighty two college-aged procrastinators (25 men, 57 women; ages 17–23, M?=?18) interacted with a counselor who (a) agreed with them about procrastination's causes, (b) disagreed with them, or (c) said it was not important to specify a cause. Contrary to prediction, the 3rd condition led to more improvement in participants' self-reported procrastination. This finding is discussed in terms of possible responsibility attributions implicit in the 3rd condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of emotional dissonance and resources at work on job burnout among Chinese human service employees.

The authors extended Hobfoll's Conservation of Resources (COR) model to examine the influence of emotional dissonance and work resources on burnout among 392 Chinese human service employees. Bivariate correlation results showed that emotional dissonance correlated positively with display rules and burnout, but negatively with work resources, specifically, satisfactory work relations and job rewards. Results of structural equation modeling analyses supported the extension of the COR model to study the dissonance-resources-burnout association. In the revised model, display rules had a direct impact on emotional dissonance, which in turn influenced burnout indirectly through the mediation of work resources. Limitations of the study and implications for work stress management are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)