Mind control groups systematically indoctrinate members to distrust critics, former members, and all and any negative media reports. Some groups tell members to avoid newspapers, books, articles, TV, radio and any academic, science-based information. In addition, some leaders keep believers so busy they have no time to think or check anything, let alone make outside relationships through which they might gather information about the world.
How Attitude Change Takes Place
When someone is forced to do (publicly) something they (privately) really don’t want to do, dissonance is created between their cognition (I didn’t want to do this) and their behavior (I did it). Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
How Cognitive Dissonance Feels
They were asked to rate how interesting they had found the discussion and how interesting they had found the people involved in it. 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-pointscale.
1 Dissociation as a mean to prevent and reduce cognitive dissonance
The chapter offers an overview of the empirical literature on dissonance theory, beginning with Festinger’s (1957) classic definition. The authors cover the most important paradigms used in empirical dissonance research and summarize the most prominent empirical results. They explain the main features of the self-based revision of dissonance theory and introduce their own self-based modification of dissonance theory, including related data on ego-depletion and selective exposure. They conclude by outlining directions for future dissonance research, particularly on self-regulation and information-processing, and discuss the application of dissonance theory to societal problems.
Indeed, the influence of dissonance theory went far beyond the field of social psychology. Psychologist Leon Festinger first described the theory of cognitive dissonance in 1957. According to Festinger, cognitive dissonance occurs when people’s thoughts and feelings are inconsistent with their behavior, which results in an uncomfortable, disharmonious feeling. When there are conflicts between cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, and opinions), people will take steps to reduce the dissonance and feelings of discomfort. Because people want to avoid discomfort, cognitive dissonance can have a wide range of effects. We may engage in behaviors or adopt attitudes cognitive dissonance and addiction to help relieve the discomfort caused by the conflict.
Cognitive Dissonances and Musical Emotions
- As studies on dissonance reduction have grown, specific reduction strategies have been explored.
- Yet what happens to discoveries that go against one’s theory, or even simpler, against accepted theories.
- Study participants who complete an uninteresting task have been found to rate the task as more enjoyable if they were first asked to tell someone else it was enjoyable—an effect attributed to cognitive dissonance.
- The language commonly used to refer to meat products often renders animals absent from the consumer’s consciousness and conceals its animal origins (Adams, 1990; Singer, 1995).
- An individual may fail to restore a consonance, if there is a lack of social support and new harmonious elements, or the existing problematic element is too satisfying (Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2007).
A review has summarised and classified those strategies into seven categories (McGrath, 2017). In groups, the familiar prior knowledge about own group and other groups is captured by social identity theory and self-categorization theory (Sect. 2.3). In addition, group-level schemas and categories at the societal level take the form of Moscovici’s social representations; shared social understandings make the unfamiliar into the familiar by reference to old socially shared concepts. In other words, it seems that everyone does experience dissonance from time to time—but what causes dissonance for one person might not for someone else.
Modeling in neural networks
- Participants in the “severe embarrassment” condition gave the most positive rating.
- Cognitive dissonance can be caused by feeling forced to do something, learning new information, or when faced with a decision between two similar choices.
- Stice and colleagues found that reductions in thin-ideal internalization often preceded reductions in the negative outcome variables (i.e., body dissatisfaction, eating pathology) but only in the DBI group.
- However, the theory proposed that higher levels of dissonance can forcefully motivate a person to promptly address the psychological discomforts, while small levels of dissonance may not be as effective in encouraging the person to take an immediate action.
- Firstly, Festinger integrated various concepts, including attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, value and behaviours, which had been considered separately as a single construct of cognition.
We, scientists love to praise ourselves that we do not discard contradictions, that we enjoy contradictions because they give us food for thoughts, for creating theories overcoming contradictions. Yet what happens to discoveries that go against one’s theory, or even simpler, against accepted theories. Well-known studies of the growth of knowledge established that new ideas are ignored, usually until the next generation of scientists. Great scientific discoveries may provoke not only fascination but also envy and rivalry. But worse, as established in the 20th century, the first reaction could be a cognitive dissonance, and as a result the novel is ignored.
- Most prominently, Festinger’scognitive dissonance theory holds that people seek consistency among the cognitions relevant to their attitudes, including their cognitions about their own behavior.
- In contrast to our SD orientation, which acts to reduce the perceived cognitive abilities of animals, mechanisms of TM aid dissonance reduction by elevating humans compared with other animals.
- In fact, the term “meat” itself can be argued to be part of the concealing of these animal origins.
Psychology
Steele’s self-affirmation theory (1988) proposed that dissonance emerged from threats to the overarching self-system, and that dissonance reduction relied on re-establishing the integrity of the global self-concept. Cooper and Fazio’s ‘New Look’ model (1984) proposed that dissonance resulted from creating unwanted aversive consequences and did not require cognitive inconsistency. A recent synthesis discussed by Cooper (1999) and Stone (1999) suggests that dissonance is caused by a discrepancy between the outcome of a behavioral act and the standard to which it is compared.
Effects of cognitive dissonance
A person who feels defensive or unhappy might consider the role cognitive dissonance might play in these feelings. If they are part of a wider problem that is causing distress, people may benefit from speaking with a therapist. The theory behind this approach is that in order to resolve the dissonance, a person’s implicit beliefs about their body and thinness will change, reducing their desire to limit their food intake. The internal discomfort and tension of cognitive dissonance could contribute to stress or unhappiness. People who experience dissonance but have no way to resolve it may also feel powerless or guilty. There are a variety of ways people are thought to resolve the sense of dissonance when cognitions don’t seem to fit together.