Dissonance Dissonance Lecture 13 Notes is a theory that attempts to explain attitude change why people change their attitudes it happens when two related cognitions are inconsistent Dissonance is aversive so people seek to eliminate it by changing their attitude Dissonance does not predict which attitude will change Political campaigns utilize dissonance when one politician attacks another Festinger and Carlsmith study they got people to behave in counter attitudinal behavior in order to arouse dissonance They did this by having subjects do an extremely tedious task for an hour Then they had the subject take a questionnaire that asks how interesting the task is People rated the task as terrible After this the experimenters ask the subjects if they would be willing to talk to the next group of subjects and to motivate the next group by telling them that the task was really valuable subjects felt the task was valuable By doing this the subjects will be lying members of their peer group Thus dissonance will be aroused if the subjects agree to lie because it was assumed that most people assume that they are honest Hypothesized that when people behave in a way inconsistent with the ideas about what kind of people they think they are dissonance will be aroused and people must have a way of dealing with this dissonance other than changing their attitudes Festinger and Carlsmith hypothesized that if the person could justify their behavior with another factor dissonance would not be aroused Festinger and Carlsmith offered to pay the students to lie to the other students The independent variable was the amount of money the students were paid 1 5 not enough to give justification or 20 122 enough to give justification For a 1 dissonance would be aroused because the money was not enough of an excuse while the people who were paid 20 didn t have a great deal of dissonance and had a good excuse for lying People who experience more dissonance should experience more attitude change Prediction attitude change should be in the attitude about the task the attitude about the task should shift to become more positive this shift should be more pronounced in 1 people than in the 20 people The results were exactly as Festinger and Carlsmith predicated Dissonance Reduction 1 Effort justification you focus on the positive aspects of something that was not worth what you paid for it For example you pay a personal price to get a guy your parents don t like you get the guy and he is a jerk so you look at his positive aspects you change your attitude 2 Post decisional dissonance you focus on the negative aspects of something that you reject in trade for something that you like equally as well Attitude change 2 routes Central based on message factors involves a reasoned argument careful consideration of the logic and content of a persuasive message 1 must develop a good argument 2 get audience to understand your argument Peripheral based on non message factors physical attractiveness of person giving argument fear tactics etc Ex political campaign Central more durable attitude change but harder to do because you need a good argument and your audience needs to work to understand your argument Peripheral very short opinion change and easy to do TV adds o Fundamental attribution error o Actors the people whose behavior is being explained and observers person making the attribution Attributions are inferences that people draw about the causes of behavior or events Attributions Social Attribution Outline Definition Bias Internal vs external o Defensive attributions o Self serving bias o Above average effect Definition of an Attribution When do we make attributions When an event is 1 Unusual 2 Has personal consequences 3 Unexpected When you are asked to do so Internal vs External Attributions When we make an attribution about the actor do we make an attribution about an internal or an external factor o External the cause of the actors behavior is something external to the actor something in the situation o Internal the cause of the actors behavior is something internal to the actor personality traits SEVERITY OF BAD SEVERITY OF BAD Fundamental Attribution Error where error is a tendency to do one thing rather than the other External attribution We tend to make external attributions about our behavior We tend to make internal attributions about others behavior We don t realize this until it is pointed out to us Everyone does this so there is a conflict of attributions Internal attribution Self serving bias reverses the tendencies of Fundamental Attribution Error when something good happens to you you explain it in terms of internal factors when something good happens to someone else especially if it didn t happen to you you explain it in terms of external factors Self serving because it enhances ones opinion of ones self Defensive Attributions accentuates the tendencies of Fundamental Attribution Error When something bad happens to you you are even more likely to blame the event on external factors When something very bad happens to someone else you are even more likely to blame the event on internal factors blame the victim You do this with others to defend yourself by saying that you are not like that person so it won t happen to you This defends you from fear You Others Couples Happy couples tend to make internal attributions about good things and external attributions about bad things Unhappy ouples are the opposite they tend to make external attributions about good things and internal attributions about bad things
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