Dissonance

First Known Use of dissonance 15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a. History and Etymology for dissonance see dissonant. Learn More about dissonance. Resources for dissonance Time Traveler! Explore the year a word first appeared. Dictionary Entries near dissonance dissolved bone dissolvingly dissolving shutter dissonance dissonance treatment dissonant disspirit. Time Traveler for dissonance The first known use of dissonance was in the 15th century See more words from the same century. Kids Definition of dissonance. More from Merriam-Webster on dissonance Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for dissonance Spanish Central: Translation of dissonance Nglish: Translation of dissonance for Spanish Speakers Britannica English: Translation of dissonance for Arabic Speakers Britannica.

Participants in the control group were simply given one of the products. Because these participants did not make a decision, they did not have any dissonance to reduce. Individuals in the low-dissonance group chose between a desirable product and one rated 3 points lower on an 8-point scale.

Dissonance - Wikipedia

Participants in the high-dissonance condition chose between a highly desirable product and one rated just 1 point lower on the 8-point scale. After reading the reports about the various products, individuals rated the products again. Findings Participants in the high-dissonance condition spread apart the alternatives significantly more than did the participants in the other two conditions.

In other words, they were more likely than participants in the other two conditions to increase the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and to decrease the attractiveness of the unchosen alternative. It also seems to be the case that we value most highly those goals or items which have required considerable effort to achieve.

Dissonance

This is probably because dissonance would be caused if we spent a great effort to achieve something and then evaluated it negatively. We could, of course, spend years of effort into achieving something which turns out to be a load of rubbish and then, in order to avoid the dissonance that produces, try to convince ourselves that we didn't really spend years of effort, or that the effort was really quite enjoyable, or that it wasn't really a lot of effort.

In fact, though, it seems we find it easier to persuade ourselves that what we have achieved is worthwhile and that's what most of us do, evaluating highly something whose achievement has cost us dear - whether other people think it's much cop or not! This method of reducing dissonance is known as 'effort justification. If we put effort into a task which we have chosen to carry out, and the task turns out badly, we experience dissonance. To reduce this dissonance, we are motivated to try to think that the task turned out well.

A classic dissonance experiment by Aronson and Mills demonstrates the basic idea. Method Female students volunteered to take part in a discussion on the psychology of sex.

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In the 'mild embarrassment' condition, participants read aloud to a male experimenter a list of sex-related words like 'virgin' and 'prostitute. In the 'severe embarrassment' condition, they had to read aloud obscene words and a very explicit sexual passage. In the control condition, they went straight into the main study.

In all conditions, they then heard a very boring discussion about sex in lower animals. They were asked to rate how interesting they had found the discussion, and how interesting they had found the people involved in it. Results Participants in the 'severe embarrassment' condition gave the most positive rating. Conclusion If a voluntary experience which has cost a lot of effort turns out badly, dissonance is reduced by redefining the experience as interesting.

This justifies the effort made. There has been a great deal of research into cognitive dissonance, providing some interesting and sometimes unexpected findings. It is a theory with very broad applications, showing that we aim for consistency between attitudes and behaviors, and may not use very rational methods to achieve it. It has the advantage of being testable by scientific means i. However, there is a problem from a scientific point of view, because we cannot physically observe cognitive dissonance , and therefore we cannot objectively measure it re: Consequently, the term cognitive dissonance is somewhat subjective.

There is also some ambiguity i. The researchers, Festinger and Carlsmith, proposed that the subjects experienced dissonance, between the conflicting cognitions: The subjects paid twenty dollars were induced to comply by way of an obvious, external justification for internalizing the "interesting task" mental attitude and, thus, experienced a lesser degree of cognitive dissonance. In the Effect of the Severity of Threat on the Devaluation of Forbidden Behavior , a variant of the induced-compliance paradigm, by Elliot Aronson and Carlsmith, examined self-justification in children.

Upon leaving the room, the experimenter told one-half of the group of children that there would be severe punishment if they played with the steam-shovel toy; and told the second half of the group that there would be a mild punishment for playing with the forbidden toy.

All of the children refrained from playing with the forbidden toy the steam shovel. Later, when the children were told that they could freely play with any toy they wanted, the children in the mild-punishment group were less likely to play with the steam shovel the forbidden toy , despite removal of the threat of mild punishment.

The children threatened with mild punishment had to justify, to themselves, why they did not play with the forbidden toy.

Cognitive dissonance

The degree of punishment, in itself, was insufficiently strong to resolve their cognitive dissonance; the children had to convince themselves that playing with the forbidden toy was not worth the effort. In The Efficacy of Musical Emotions Provoked by Mozart's Music for the Reconciliation of Cognitive Dissonance , a variant of the forbidden-toy paradigm, indicated that listening to music reduces the development of cognitive dissonance.

After playing alone, the control-group children later devalued the importance of the forbidden toy; however, in the variable group, classical music played in the background, while the children played alone. In that group, the children did not later devalue the forbidden toy. The researchers, Nobuo Masataka and Leonid Perlovsky, concluded that music might inhibit cognitions that reduce cognitive dissonance.

Moreover, music is a stimulus that can diminish post-decisional dissonance; in an earlier experiment, Washing Away Postdecisional Dissonance , the researchers indicated that the actions of hand-washing might inhibit the cognitions that reduce cognitive dissonance. In the study Post-decision Changes in Desirability of Alternatives female students rated a series of domestic appliances and then were asked to choose one of two appliances as a gift.

The results of a second round of ratings indicated that the women students increased their ratings of the domestic appliance they had selected as a gift and decreased their ratings of the appliances they rejected. This type of cognitive dissonance occurs to a person faced with making a difficult decision, wherein there always exist aspects of the rejected-object not chosen, which appeal to the person making the choice.

The action of deciding provokes the psychological dissonance consequent to choosing X instead of Y, despite little difference between X and Y; thus, the decision "I chose X" is dissonant with the cognition that "There are some aspects of Y that I like. Evidence from a Blind Two-choice Paradigm with Young Children and Capuchin Monkeys reports similar results in the occurrence of cognitive dissonance in human beings and in animals. Peer Effects in Pro-Social Behavior: Social Norms or Social Preferences? That social preferences and social norms are related, and function in line with wage-giving among three persons.

The actions of the first person influenced [ clarification needed ] the wage-giving actions of the second person. That inequity aversion is the paramount concern of the participants. Cognitive dissonance occurs to a person when he or she voluntarily engages in physically or ethically unpleasant activities in effort to achieve a desired goal. The mental stress caused by the dissonance can be reduced by the person's exaggerating the desirability of the goal.

In The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group , to qualify for admission to a discussion group, two groups of people underwent an embarrassing initiation, of varied psychologic severity. The first group of subjects were to read aloud twelve sexual words considered obscene; the second group of subjects were to read aloud twelve sexual words not considered obscene.

Both groups then were given headphones to unknowingly listen to a recorded discussion about animal sexual behaviour, which the researchers designed to be dull and banal. As the subjects of the experiment, the groups of people were told that the animal-sexuality discussion actually was occurring in the next room. The subjects whose strong initiation required reading aloud obscene words evaluated the people of their group as more-interesting persons than the people of the group who underwent the mild initiation to the discussion group.

Moreover, in Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing , the results indicated that a person washing his or her hands is an action that helps resolve post-decisional cognitive dissonance because the mental stress usually was caused by the person's ethical—moral self-disgust, which is an emotion related to the physical disgust caused by a dirty environment. Likewise, the study The Neural Basis of Rationalization: Cognitive Dissonance Reduction During Decision-making indicated that participants rated 80 names and 80 paintings based on how much they liked the names and paintings.

To give meaning to the decisions, the participants were asked to select names that they might give to their children. For rating the paintings, the participants were asked to base their ratings on whether or not they would display such art at home. The results indicated that when the decision is meaningful to the person deciding value, the likely rating is based on his or her attitudes positive, neutral, or negative towards the name and towards the painting in question.

The participants also were asked to rate some of the objects twice and believed that, at session's end, they would receive two of the paintings they had positively rated. The results indicated a great increase in the positive attitude of the participant towards the liked pair of things, whilst also increasing the negative attitude towards the disliked pair of things. The double-ratings of pairs of things, towards which the rating participant had a neutral attitude, showed no changes during the rating period.

Therefore, the existing attitudes of the participant were reinforced during the rating period, and the participants suffered cognitive dissonance when confronted by a liked-name paired with a disliked-painting. Ent and Mary A Gerend informed the study participants about a discomforting test for a specific fictitious virus called the "human respiratory virus".

The study used a fake virus to prevent participants from having thoughts, opinions, and feeling about the virus that would interfere with the experiment. The study participants were in two groups; one group was told that they were actual candidates for the virus test, and the second group were told they were not candidates for the test.

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The researchers reported, "We predicted that [study] participants who thought that they were candidates for the unpleasant test would experience dissonance associated with knowing that the test was both unpleasant and in their best interest—this dissonance was predicted to result in unfavorable attitudes toward the test. The management of cognitive dissonance readily influences the motivation of a student to pursue education. Afterwards, the students are trained to objectively perceive new facts and information to resolve the psychological stress of the conflict between reality and the student's value system.

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The general effectiveness of psychotherapy and psychological intervention is partly explained by the theory of cognitive dissonance. In the study Reducing Fears and Increasing Attentiveness: The Role of Dissonance Reduction , people afflicted with ophidiophobia fear of snakes who invested much effort in activities of little therapeutic value for them experimentally represented as legitimate and relevant showed improved alleviation of the symptoms of their phobia.

The Role of Effort Justification in Inducing Weight Loss indicated that the patient felt better in justifying his or her efforts and therapeutic choices towards effectively losing weight. That the therapy of effort expenditure can predict long-term change in the patient's perceptions. Cognitive dissonance is used to promote positive social behaviours, such as increased condom use; [36] other studies indicate that cognitive dissonance can be used to encourage people to act pro-socially, such as campaigns against public littering, [37] campaigns against racial prejudice , [38] and compliance with anti-speeding campaigns.

Acharya of Stanford, Blackwell and Sen of Harvard state CD increases when an individual commits an act of violence toward someone from a different ethnic or racial group and decreases when the individual does not commit any such act of violence. Research from Acharya, Blackwell and Sen shows that individuals committing violence against members of another group will develop hostile attitudes towards their victims as a way of minimizing CD. Importantly, the hostile attitudes may persist even after the violence itself declines Acharya, Blackwell, Sen The application provides a social psychological basis for the constructivist viewpoint that ethnic and racial divisions can be socially or individually constructed, possibly from acts of violence Fearon and Laitin, Their framework speaks to this possibility by showing how violent actions by individuals can affect individual attitudes, either ethnic or racial animosity Acharya, Blackwell, Sen Three main conditions exist for provoking cognitive dissonance when buying: The consumer is free to select from the alternatives, and the decision to buy is irreversible.

The study Beyond Reference Pricing: Understanding Consumers' Encounters with Unexpected Prices , indicated that when consumers experience an unexpected price encounter, they adopt three methods to reduce cognitive dissonance: Consumers employ the strategy of continual information by engaging in bias and searching for information that supports prior beliefs.

Consumers might search for information about other retailers and substitute products consistent with their beliefs. Alternatively, consumers might change attitude, such as re-evaluating price in relation to external reference-prices or associating high prices and low prices with quality. Minimisation reduces the importance of the elements of the dissonance; consumers tend to minimise the importance of money, and thus of shopping around, saving, and finding a better deal. Cognitive dissonance theory might suggest that since votes are an expression of preference or beliefs, even the act of voting might cause someone to defend the actions of the candidate for whom they voted, [44] and if the decision was close then the effects of cognitive dissonance should be greater.

This effect was studied over the 6 presidential elections of the United States between and , [45] and it was found that the opinion differential between the candidates changed more before and after the election than the opinion differential of non-voters. In addition, elections where the voter had a favorable attitude toward both candidates, making the choice more difficult, had the opinion differential of the candidates change more dramatically than those who only had a favorable opinion of one candidate.

What wasn't studied were the cognitive dissonance effects in cases where the person had unfavorable attitudes toward both candidates. In The Gestalt Theory of Motivation , the social psychologist Daryl Bem proposed the self-perception theory whereby people do not think much about their attitudes, even when engaged in a conflict with another person. The Theory of Self-perception proposes that people develop attitudes by observing their own behaviour, and concludes that their attitudes caused the behaviour observed by self-perception; especially true when internal cues either are ambiguous or weak.

Therefore, the person is in the same position as an observer who must rely upon external cues to infer his or her inner state of mind. Self-perception theory proposes that people adopt attitudes without access to their states of mood and cognition. As such, the experimental subjects of the Festinger and Carlsmith study Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance , inferred their mental attitudes from their own behaviour. When the subject-participants were asked: Their replies suggested that the participants who were paid twenty dollars had an external incentive to adopt that positive attitude, and likely perceived the twenty dollars as the reason for saying the task was interesting, rather than saying the task actually was interesting.