How Does An Individual's Perception Change Through Forced Attitudes

After some research the experimenter obtained opinions about the outcome of the experiment from psychiatrists, college sophomores,

Cognitive dissonance theory has been around since the late fifties. It has inspired many psychologists to figure out the murky depths of people’s minds. The theory relates strongly to decision making, social phenomenons and mental angst. Many paradigms exist within cognitive dissonance. Two important paradigms are the Belief Disconfirmation paradigm and the Free Choice paradigm. There are several experiments that have been studied that relate to cognitive dissonance, including the boring tasks experiment. The person who coined the phrase cognitive dissonance is the famous Leon Festinger, and he studied it inside and out. Cognitive dissonance is one of the most important topics

Imagine yourself in the following situation: You sign up for a psychology experiment, on a specific date at a given time. You believe you are partaking in the experiment with fifteen other participants, however they have been given specified scripts that have been written out for them prior to the experiment. You are the only real participant. The experimenter arrives and begins to ask a series of true or false questions that aren't particularly hard. People begin to raise their hand for the inaccurate answers.

The study consisted of fifty, female, undergraduate college students. The ethnicities that were use for this study were African American, European, Asian, Hispanic, biracial, and a very slight percentage was categorized as other. The experiment would begin at 5:00pm everyday, for four weeks. One of the three groups was administered each day. The three groups were either peppermint, expectation, or control. Each participant was seated down, given an instruction sheet, a laptop, and was not able to see the other participants from their view.

In a classic experiment in 1946, Kenneth and Mami Phipps Clark conducted a research called the “Clark Doll Test”. The psychological study

Cognitive dissonance is defined as “when people encounter an inconsistency between any two cognitions” (Haas, Lecture, October 11, 2016). These conflicting attitudes, beliefs, and values produce discomfort. The rules of cognitive dissonance theory by Leon Festinger state that the two cognitions must be relevant. If relevant, they can either be dissonant or consonant. Dissonance causes negative control and people will be motivated to reduce this (Haas, Lecture, October 11, 2016). One study by Brock and Balloun (1962) found that cognitive dissonance does indeed occur. In the experiment, students were given the option of listening to a message the whole way through or to push a button that muted the message for any length of time. The study found that people who smoked pushed the button to mute the message during messages that discussed the link between cancer and smoking. Additionally, those who identified as strongly Christian muted a message that attempted to debunk Christianity for a longer period of time than

The subjects performed a series of tedious task involving using one hand to put spools onto and then off of a tray for half an hour and then told to use one hand to turn pegs a quarter turn clockwise for another half an hour. Cycle was repeated until time ran out. The independent variable was the amount of money the participants were paid, either one dollar or twenty dollars, to tell the next participant that the task was enjoyable. In the control condition, the subjects did not have any expectations for the task as the subjects were never told or asked to tell the female confederate waiting in the secretary’s office about the experimental tasks. In the experimental conditions, the subjects were paid to tell a female confederate that the experimental task was interesting and fun. Subjects were paid one dollar in one condition and twenty dollars in another condition. The conversation was recorded and coded. The dependent variable was the participants’ actual rating of their enjoyment of the task, assessed in an interview following the task. The interview looked at the how the person liked the task on a negative 5 to positive 5 scale. Second area did the experiment gave them an opportunity to learn about one’s own skills, assessed with a zero to ten scale. The third area used the zero to ten scale again to rate whether they felt the activities were important. Lastly, subjects used a negative 5 to positive 5 scale to measure one’s likelihood to participant in a similar studies in the

As people, we often presume that the actions displayed by a person are piloted through their individual thoughts and opinions, however, the cognitive dissonance theory (CDT) shows that this is not always the case. Labeled by some as an action-opinion theory, the theory of cognitive dissonance explains how people are compelled to commit actions contrary to their beliefs. The basic principle behind action-opinion theories is that these

In such a vast world of creation choices and opposites the topic of cognitive dissonance is all but inevitable. From its pure form and early research too its expanded and evolved form in present day it has always been prevalent. In this paper i plan on evaluating this mindset and finding not only ways to solve this problem but its importance in society since its discovery.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory, or CDT for short, is an objective communication theory that was developed by Leon Festinger. Cognitive Dissonance is defined as “The distressing mental state caused by inconsistency between a person’s two beliefs or a belief and an action.” (Griffin, Ledbetter, et al). An example of cognitive dissonance would be a health conscious smoker, this person knows that smoking is bad for them, but they still smoke because they enjoy it. Their desire to be healthy conflicts with their smoking, this conflict places them in a distressing mental state, a state of cognitive dissonance. Festinger provides three hypotheses for CDT: 1.) Selective exposure prevents dissonance. 2.) Post decision dissonance creates need for reassurance. and 3.) Minimal justification for action induces attitude change.

The cognitive dissonance theory specifies that inconsistencies in an individual’s thoughts and actions lead to mental tension, dissonance, and cause us to take actions to reduce this dissonance. Actions include either changing the way you think about something or the way you action. The amount of dissonance can vary depending on justification; an unjustifiable causes more dissonance in comparison to acting with a good enough reason, depends how the individual’s morals. In Festinger and Carlsmith’s study, individuals were either given $1 or $20 to state opinions that weren’t consistent with there own. Individuals who were paid $1 had less justification for the inconsistency which lead to higher levels of dissonance. As a result, they were more

The participants were chosen at random by the researchers who are Massey university psychology students. The researchers were asked to conduct the experiment on two participants who are over the age of 11 and not diabetic. The total of participants was 595, including 326 females and 269 males. The mean age of the participants was 35.63 with female mean age of 36.71 and male mean age of 34.31. The conductors were advised to find smokers for half the participants if possible; so 202 of the participants were smokers and 393 were non smokers. Participants fully understood what was expected of them before they took a part of the experiment.

The principal assumption of the theory regarding to Hogg and Vaughan (2011, p.214) “is that cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions (bits of information) that are inconsistent or do not fit together. So if people at the same time hold those two cognitions (thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, states of awareness of behaviour), which are psychologically inconsistent, then we experience dissonance. The theory also accounts for discrepancies between behaviour and attitudes. For instance, when people act in a manner that is inconsistent with their attitudes, then they experience tension. And how people can reduce this tension? Festinger (1957) suggested people have to do it by changing their attitudes so that they are in line with their behavior. The main way of reducing dissonance is attitude change. The theory propose that when we are dealing with two conflicting beliefs then we experience tension or an aversive state and a good example is military training. The military teaches and telling soldiers that when they kill the enemy its nothing wrong and killing them is a good thing but those same soldiers have a deeply natural and inborn belief that “thou shalt not kill”(Sturman, 2012) . Another example is about person who smokes cigarettes. Regarding to Stone and Cooper (2001) most people

The cognitive dissonance was a theory proposed by Leon Festinger in 1957. In his theory, Festinger suggests that every person has innate drives to keep an equilibrium within their cognitions ( behaviour and attitudes) and avoid stressful choices. When there is a stressful situation, it creates a feeling of discomfort, leading to a state of tension known as cognitive dissonance. This unpleasant feeling makes the person become motivated to reduce it and achieve consistency between behaviour and attitudes.

People experience many attitudes. These attitudes are reflected in behaviors. Cognitive dissonance occurs when there is a situation that results in conflicting behaviors. People hold many perceptions about everything in the world, including themselves. When there is an imbalance of consistency, they are motivated to reduce or eliminate it to achieve consonance (McLeod, 2014). People reduce dissonance in three ways. The first is to reduce the importance. By reducing the importance of the cognition, it appears not as big of a concern. The second factor involves the influence over the dissonance. When a person feels they have control over the cognition, the amount of dissonance will reduce. The final way is through rewards. If the individual experiences high dissonance is accompanied or followed by a positive result, the dissonance is later less stressful (Robbins, 2017).