Summary: The Fox and the Grapes by Aesop. When the fox fails to reach the grapes, he decides he doesn’t want them after all, an example of adaptive preference formation designed to reduce cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding contradictory ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. It is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.

Hindsight can clash with prior expectations, as, for example, with buyer’s remorse after the purchase of a new car. In a state of dissonance, people may feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment. Despite contrary evidence, people are biased to think of their choices as correct. This bias gives dissonance theory its predictive power, shedding light on otherwise puzzling irrational and destructive behavior.

Read The Full Article Here

-

Classics in the History of Psychology

What happens to a person’s private opinion if he is forced to do or say something contrary to that opinion? Only recently has there been any experimental work related to this question. Two studies reported by Janis and King (1954; 1956) clearly showed that, at least under some conditions, the private opinion changes so as to bring it into closer correspondence with the overt behavior the person was forced to perform. Specifically, they showed that if a person is forced to improvise a speech supporting a point of view with which he disagrees, his private opinion moves toward the position advocated in the speech. The observed opinion change is greater than for persons who only hear the speech or for persons who read a prepared speech with emphasis solely on execution and manner of delivery The authors of these two studies explain their results mainly in terms of mental rehearsal and thinking up new arguments. In this way, they propose, the person who is forced to improvise a speech convinces himself. They present some evidence, which is not altogether conclusive, in support of this explanation. We will have more to say concerning this explanation in discussing the results of our experiment.

Kelman (1953) tried to pursue the matter further. He reasoned that if the person is induced to make an overt statement contrary to his private opinion by the offer of some reward, then the greater the reward offered, the greater should be the subsequent opinion change. His data, however did not support this idea. He found, rather, that a large reward produced less subsequent opinion change than did a smaller reward. Actually this finding by Kelman is consistent with the theory we will outline below but, for a number of reasons is not conclusive. One of the major weaknesses of the data is that not all subjects in the experiment made an overt statement contrary to their private opinion in order to obtain the offered reward. What is more, as one might expect, the percentage of subjects who complied increased as the size of the offered reward increased. Thus, with self-selection of who did and who did not make the required overt statement and with varying percentages of subjects in the different conditions who did make the requsted statement, no interpretation of the data can be unequivocal.

Read The Full Article Here

-

Neural activity predicts attitude change in cognitive dissonance

When our actions conflict with our prior attitudes, we often change our attitudes to be more consistent with our actions. This phenomenon, known as cognitive dissonance, is considered to be one of the most influential theories in psychology. However, the neural basis of this phenomenon is unknown. Using a Solomon four-group design, we scanned participants with functional MRI while they argued that the uncomfortable scanner environment was nevertheless a pleasant experience. We found that cognitive dissonance engaged the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula; furthermore, we found that the activation of these regions tightly predicted participants’ subsequent attitude change. These effects were not observed in a control group. Our findings elucidate the neural representation of cognitive dissonance, and support the role of the anterior cingulate cortex in detecting cognitive conflict and the neural prediction of attitude change.

Read The Full Article Here

If you enjoyed that why not find a job or read our guide to working in the 21st century. You can also join our Kiva team or hire me for your project.