Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance: sense of discomfort/distress that occurs when a person’s behavior doesn’t correspond to that person’s attitudes. Lack of agreement ●​ Ex. Cognition that says “I’m smart” but also “That’s dumb thing to do” ●​ Ways to eliminate cognitive dissonance ○​ Change conflicting behavior to match the attitude ○​ Change current conflicting cognition to justify behavior ○​ Form new cognitions to justify behavior ●​ Study Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith: male student volunteer given long and boring task of sorting wooden tools but tell the females that it was enjoyable. Half males were paid $1 to do this and other half was $20. Thought that $20 was reinforcement to like the task more. BUT $1 participants used cognitive dissonance as they didn’t want to lie for one dollar so the task must be fun. $20 participants didn’t have cognitive dissonance because they were lying for lots of money ●​ Study Benozio and Diesendruck: compared behavior of 4 and 6-year-old children to complete tasks to earn stickers. 1 group of both ages had to work hard while the other had easy tasks with desirable and unattractive stickers. Then saw a video and decide how many stickers to give to that child in the video. Gave fewer attractive stickers but 6-year-olds gave way fewer attractive stickers if it was hard to get. Older children changed their cognition with effort changing the desirability of the stickers. Younger children gave away more unattractive stickers that were hard to earn compared to easily earned – chose to change their conflicting behavior rather than cognition due to required more brain ○​ 6-year-olds: task effort changed the desirability of the stickers ○​ 4-year-olds: changed conflicting behavior rather than cognition ●​ College students don’t report cheating unless there’s punishment for being silent by rationalizing a honest classmate behavior as downplaying seriousness of matter and blaming someone else for thinking “it just happened” ●​ Daryl Bem’s Self-Perception Theory: instead of experiencing negative tension, people look at their own actions and then infer their attitudes from those actions ○​ individuals develop attitudes and beliefs by observing their own behavior and the context in which it occurs, rather than through internal introspection ○​ Ex. If someone notices they frequently eat salads, they might conclude, "I must like salads," even if weren't consciously aware of preference before. ○​ Left frontal cortex (language and decision-making) is active when make a decision that reduces dissonance and acts upon that decision Impression Formation: forming of the first knowledge that a person has concerning another person during a first impression. Assigning to categories and drawing conclusions ●​ Primacy Effect: when first meet, draw an impression on physical appearance only but persists if have contradictory info about that person later on Social Categorization: assignment of a person one just met to a category based on characteristics the new person has in common with other people with whom one has had experience in the past ●​ Automatic and occurs without conscious awareness ●​ Natural process but can categorize the person as superficial ones that have improperly attached ideas = Stereotype which misjudges people and treat them differently as a result ○​ Ex. Red hair equals a bad temper Implicit Personality Theories: set of implied assumptions about how different types of people, personality, traits, and actions are related to each other formed in childhood ●​ Ex. Happy people are also friendly people, quiet people are shy people ●​ Not necessarily true, but serve the function of helping organize schemas about what a person believes about certain types of people ●​ Implicit Association Test (IAT): computer test that measures degree of association between certain pairs of concepts ○​ Ex. See pleasant and unpleasant and middle is another word you must sort it into one of the 2 sides as quickly as can. This test differs from cultures and individuals ((Native Chinese) changing vs (Americans) fixed) Attribution: process of explaining one’s own behavior and the behavior of others Attribution Theory: theory of how people make attributions ●​ Situational Cause: cause of behavior attributed to external factors such as delays, actions of others, or other aspect of the situation ○​ Ex. Late due to traffic or car problems ●​ Dispositional Cause: cause of behavior attributed to internal factors such as personality or character ○​ Ex. Late because his personality is careless of his and other people’s time ○​ Ex. Attribute spouse’s behavior that has a positive effect to internal cause or if negative effect then to external cause. Opposite if unhappy marriage Fundamental Attribution Error: overestimate the influence of internal factors in determining behavior while underestimating situational factors (bias). Think its from their personality rather than traffic that makes them late ●​ Actor-Observer Bias: we are the actor not the observer, so people explain actions of others based on what kind of people they are rather than looking at outside causes ○​ Ex. Milgram’s shock: what was wrong with the teachers to explain their behavior rather than the circumstances of the situation ○​ Could have the same issue but attribute it to external but if it happens to others, attribute it to internal ●​ Study Masuda and Kitayama: asks to read a statement and give their opinion on the target’s real attitude. American participants made error by assuming the target’s attitude matched the reading. Japanese participants assumed that the person's attitude is different from the statement due to social obligation to write it. Cross-cultural differences showed htat collectivistic cultures (China, Korea, Japan) assume external situational factors are more responsible but the reverse in individualist western cultures (U.S.) ○​ Older adults show stronge bias toward internal than younger ○​ Motive Attribution Asymmetry: at least one reason compromise and negotiation are difficult to obtain where one side was motivated by love and the other by hate. If other side hates, you then you believe them to be unreasonable and negotiations impossible. Misunderstanding and mistrust of own actions from good motives and hostile motives to other side “we are driven by virtue and they are driven by vice” (political, workplace)