Cognitive Dissonance in Groups: The Consequences of Disagreement.

As L. Festinger (1957) argued, the social group is a source of cognitive dissonance as well as a vehicle for reducing it. That is, disagreement from others in a group generates dissonance, and subsequent movement toward group consensus reduces this negative tension. The authors conducted 3 studies to demonstrate group-induced dissonance. In the first, students in a group with others who ostensibly disagreed with them experienced greater dissonance discomfort than those in a group with others who agreed. Study 2 demonstrated that standard moderators of dissonance in past research-lack of choice and opportunity to self-affirm, similarly reduced dissonance discomfort generated by group disagreement. In Study 3, the dissonance induced by group disagreement was reduced through a variety of interpersonal strategies to achieve consensus, including persuading others, changing one's own position, and joining an attitudinally congenial group. (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)     

Physiological arousal, dissonance, and attitude change: Evidence for a dissonance-arousal link and a "Don't remind me" effect.

Two experiments, with 80 undergraduates, replicated and extended research by R. T. Croyle and J. Cooper (see record 1984-11595-001) indicating that cognitive dissonance involves physiological arousal. In Exp I, Ss wrote counterattitudinal essays under conditions of high or low choice and, to assess arousal effects owing to effort, with or without a list of arguments provided by the experimenter. In high-choice conditions only and regardless of effort, Ss showed both arousal (heightened galvanic skin response) and attitude change. Arousal, however, did not decline following attitude change. The more effortful task (no arguments provided) produced increased arousal but not greater attitude change. In Exp II, the opportunity to change one's attitude following a freely chosen counterattitudinal essay was manipulated. As in Exp I, arousal increased following the essay but did not decline following a postessay attitude change opportunity. When Ss were not given an attitude change opportunity, however, arousal did decline. It is suggested that if dissonance is a drive state, drive reduction typically may be accomplished through gradual cognitive change or forgetting. (47 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)     

Individual differences, self-presentation, and cognitive dissonance: Their concurrent operation in forced compliance.

Attempted to separate and assess the contributions of cognitive dissonance and self-presentation to the forced-compliance effect. Individual differences in self-presentation were assessed using the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale, and the Other-Deception Questionnaire. In Exp I, with 33 male undergraduates, the experimental group was induced to lie about a boring task and rate task enjoyability on pencil-and-paper and bogus-pipeline measures. One control group did not lie about the task but gave both types of rating. A 2nd control group lied about the task and then gave 2 pencil-and-paper ratings. Results indicate that dissonance reduction and self-presentation contributed independently to the forced-compliance effect. Findings were replicated in Exp II with 52 male and female Ss. The observed pattern of individual differences ruled out alternative explanations. The J. T. Tedeschi et al (1971) theory of self-presentation was supported over M. J. Rosenberg's (1965) formulation. Several theories integrating the self-presentation and dissonance views are discussed. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group.

"An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that persons who undergo an unpleasant initiation to become members of a group increase their liking for the group; that is, they find the group more attractive than do persons who become members without going through a severe initiation. This hypothesis was derived from Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance." 3 conditions were employed: reading of "embarrassing material" before a group, mildly embarrassing material to be read, no reading. "The results clearly verified the hypothesis." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effectiveness of unanticipated persuasive communications.

This study investigated the effect of cognitive dissonance on opinion changing. 2 groups of Ss were presented with an opinion rather forcefully oriented ("persuasive communication"). One group was given an orientation that would not lead Ss to anticipate the "persuasive communication"; the other group was given an orientation that might lead them to reject the opinion expressed in the "communication" but in so doing, would also reject their own opinions. Ss were high school students; the topic dealt with young drivers. One group was told the speaker's point of view (the "tough" policy with young drivers) before hand; the other group was directed to evaluate the speaker's personality. Ss who were forewarned about the topic changed their opinions less than the "naive" Ss. From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:3GD35A. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Casual attributions for success and failure for psychiatric rehabilitees and college students

College students and psychiatric rehabilitees performed a manual dexterity task in which consistent success or failure was maipulated over four consecutive task trials. Contrasting predictions for the use of casual attributions (luck, task difficulty, effort, and ability) following Trial 1 and Trial 4 for the two populations were derived from Heider's balance theory and "naive theory of action". Consistent with native theory, students who succeeded and rehabilitees who succeeded used unstable attributions only college students who failed used stable attributions to account for these trial outcomes, whereas students who failed and rehabilitees who failed made significant changes in their attributional patterns from Trial 1 to Trial 4. Results are discussed regarding intervention with psychiatric rehabilitees and other groups with severe achievement difficulties.     

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)     

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)     

Cognitive dissonance and energy conservation.

Examined whether high consumers of electricity placed in a cognitively dissonant situation would conserve electricity over a 4-wk period. 272 households in Perth, Western Australia, owning ducted air conditioning and consuming above-average amounts of electricity were included in the study. Four experimental groups were compared. The 4 groups were as follows: (a) the dissonance plus tips plus feedback group, who were informed of an inconsistency between their previously measured attitudes toward conservation and actual high consumption of electricity; (b) the feedback plus tips group, who were notified that they were high consumers of electricity; (c) the tips-only group, who were sent information on ways to conserve electricity (also sent to Groups 1 and 2); and (d) the control group, who were sent a thank-you letter for participating in the study. It was found, in keeping with bolstering behavior predictions of cognitive dissonance theory, that the dissonance group conserved more electricity than all other groups in the 1st 2-wk measurement period. For the 2nd 2-wk measurement period, the dissonance group differed only from the control group. Self-reported behavior change and number of requests for additional conservation materials were not reliable indicators of actual conservation behavior. (14 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)     

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)     

I'm a hypocrite, but so is everyone else: Group support and the reduction of cognitive dissonance.

The impact of social support on dissonance arousal was investigated from a social identity view of dissonance theory. This perspective is seen as augmenting current conceptualizations of dissonance theory by predicting when normative information will impact on dissonance arousal and by indicating the availability of identity-related strategies of dissonance reduction. An experiment was conducted to induce feelings of hypocrisy under conditions of behavioral support or nonsupport. Group salience was either high or low, or individual identity was emphasized. As predicted, participants with no support from the salient in-group exhibited the greatest need to reduce dissonance through attitude change and reduced levels of group identification. Results were interpreted in terms of self being central to the arousal and reduction of dissonance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributional style, task selection, and achievement.

In a study of causal attributions for achievement and their effects on task selection, it was found that 743 5th–12th graders who attributed their own success on achievement tasks to ability, effort, or luck preferred tasks that were compatible with such beliefs. Thus, students who generally attributed their achievement to ability were likely to prefer tasks in which competence was a requisite to outcome. Conversely, students who believed that success was largely a function of luck were likely to avoid ability tasks and prefer games of chance. This tendency was relatively unaffected by an immediate experience of success or failure at a task and generalized across age, sex, and urban–rural groups. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"I didn't do it:" Responsibility biases in open and closed groups.

Group members often take more responsibility for the group's outcomes than others give to them. Extending evidence that egocentrism can be muted when group members are individuated (the "unpacking effect"), the authors predicted that members of open groups would be less egocentric than members of closed groups. In open groups, the possibility of membership fluctuation reduces collectiveness, breaking the group into individuals, which in turn lessens egocentrism. The authors tested these predictions in a study of groups of students working on a task relevant to their academic success. Members claimed more personal responsibility when they worked in closed groups relative to open groups (egocentrism), and lack of cohesion mediated the open- versus closed-group link to responsibility allocations. Moreover, members of open groups did not take more responsibility after a success than a failure, whereas those in closed, successful groups claimed more credit than members of failure groups (self-serving bias). The discussion suggests that open groups, although often thought to create conflict as members compete, may contribute to a reduction in both egocentrism and self-serving responsibility allocations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attitude change and justification for compliance.

"This experiment has tentatively illustrated some of the processes involved in creating and reducing psychological dissonance and the implications of such dissonance for attitude change in compliance situations. It was hypothesized that increased justification for taking an opinion position discrepant from one's private opinion would lead to decreased dissonance and therefore decreased attitude change toward the discrepant position. Ss were asked to write an essay taking a stand opposite to their initial opinion on a given issue. One group of Ss was then given a number of reasons for compliance with the request (high justification condition). For another group (low justification condition) Ss were given no detailed justification for writing the essay. Attitude change was determined from a postexperimental questionnaire… . Attitude change tended to be greater where manipulated (and perceived) justification was least." From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:1GD76C. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alternative responses to dissonance.

50 male and 50 female Ss were placed in an experimental situation in which they found their judgments contradicted by a respected associate of the same sex. Ss were free to resolve the dissonance by conforming to the contrary judgments of the associate, rejecting the associate as one who was less competent than he had been thought to be, underrecalling the disagreements, or, devaluating the importance of the topics about which disagreements had occurred. Female Ss made less use of rejection than did male Ss and were more inclined to tolerate the conflict. Other findings suggest that individuals are inclined to employ the 4 responses as alternative means of reducing dissonance rather than as supplementary means. Finally, correlations relating the MA scale to conformity, underrecall, and tolerance were significantly different for the 2 sexes, suggesting that the effect of anxiety upon Ss' choice of dissonance reducing response depends upon the sex of the Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coworker ability and effort as determinants of individual effort on a collective task.

Research on social compensation has documented that individuals may actually work harder collectively than individually under some conditions in order to compensate for the expected poor performance of other group members. The present study examined the joint effects of both coworker ability and coworker effort expectations on collective task performance. Participants (N?=?112) worked either coactively or collectively on an idea-generation task with a coworker who was believed to be either high or low on both effort and ability at the task. When group members were paired with a partner who they believed would exert low effort, they (a) compensated when the partner had low ability and (b) loafed when the partner had high ability. Implications of these findings for group research and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Performance implications of corrective testing.

Compared testing with immediate feedback and partial credit to a traditional multiple-choice exam format in 2 experiments. In Exp I, Ss were 286 students in 3 large introductory courses. Feedback to Ss about their performance dramatically increased the impact of doing well or doing poorly on the test: Among Ss doing well, those who were aware of that fact performed far better overall than counterparts who were unaware of their performance. Among Ss doing poorly, those who were aware of their poor performance did much less well than Ss who were unaware of it. Interestingly, this polarizing effect was particularly dramatic among low-test-anxious Ss. Subjective reactions of 35 high- and 34 low-test-anxiety Ss to immediate feedback and partial credit were assessed in Exp II. Immediate feedback and partial-credit testing was rated as indicating more about one's ability and effort than traditional testing, a finding that fits well with the performance effects uncovered in Exp I. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)