COGNITIVE CONSISTENCY THEORIESit consonant with the opposing behavior or thought.
Because it is often much easier to change one’s
thoughts rather than one’s behaviors, these are
typically the elements that get modified by the
person in dissonance reduction.
As an example, Festinger (1957) talked about
the dissonance experienced by most smokers at
some point in their lives. Smokers engage in be-
havior (smoking) that is harmful to their health.
This is at odds with our desire to avoid harming
ourselves. This arouses tension in the individual.
The smoker could reduce it by changing his or her
behavior (quit smoking) or changing the way he or
she thinks about the smoking behavior. As men-
tioned above, changing behavior is often more
difficult than changing cognitions, and, as most
smokers will affirm, quitting smoking is certainly
no exception to this axiom. In this instance,
Festinger suggests, smokers eliminate their disso-
nance by changing their thoughts about smoking.
They may: 1) disbelieve the validity of the health
consequences of smoking, or distort the informa-
tion about smoking by thinking that smoking is
only harmful if you smoke so many packs a day, or
if you inhale cigar smoke, etc., or more fatalistical-
ly, 2) convince themselves that ‘‘we all die of
something, and I might as well die doing some-
thing I enjoy.’’ All of these changes in thoughts
eliminate the dissonance for the smoker.
It should be noted that Festinger was not
talking about logical inconsistencies. There are
certainly conditions under which people think and
do logically inconsistent things, yet feel no disso-
nance, or they feel dissonance, yet are not in a
situation where a logical inconsistency is present.
Festinger recognized what has become a truism in
psychology, that a person’s reaction to a stimulus
is not a function of the objective properties of the
stimulus itself, but rather the individual’s construal,
or perception of, that stimulus. This explains why the
presence or absence of logical inconsistencies may
or may not be accompanied by dissonance in an
individual. The most important and reliable way to
predict a person’s behavior in a dissonance situa-
tion is to understand how he or she construes the
potential dissonance arousing thoughts or behav-
iors, or both.
History. Cognitive dissonance theory came
onto the scene in the 1950s when reinforcement
theories of behavior were very dominant in virtual-
ly all areas of inquiry in psychology. According to
reinforcement principles, behavior that is followed
by a reward is more likely to be repeated. Behavior
that is followed by a strong reward should be more
likely to be learned and repeated than behavior
followed by a weak (or no) reward. Reinforcement
theory was such a simple yet very powerful princi-
ple that it seemed to explain virtually all behavior
in any context. For that reason, it was extremely
popular among behavioral scientists. An experi-
ment by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) showed
that reinforcement theory was not the all-purpose
theory it appeared to be. In their experiment,
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) had participants
do boring tasks (i.e., turning pegs one-quarter turn
on a cribbage board) for an hour. Participants
randomly assigned to a control group were then
given a short questionnaire in which they were
asked to rate how much they enjoyed the task. In
other conditions, the experimenter then told par-
ticipants that his research assistant had not yet
arrived for a different version of the experiment,
and he asked the participant if he would do the
research assistant’s job of telling the next partici-
pant (in the hall, who was in reality a confederate)
that he enjoyed the experiment tasks. This was, of
course, a lie, because the tasks were boring. These
participants were assigned to one of two condi-
tions. Some were given $1 to tell the lie, and others
were given $20 to tell the lie. After participants
had told the lie and were leaving, the experiment-
er ran up to the participant, explaining that he
forgot to have the participant complete the ratings
of the attitudes toward the experiment tasks.The experiment pitted reinforcement theory
against the predictions made from dissonance
theory. Reinforcement theory suggests that the
participants who were given $20 should find the
tasks more rewarding (pleasant), and should have
a more positive attitude toward the tasks (and the
experiment) than those only given a weak (or no)
reward. Dissonance theory suggests that those in
the control condition would feel no dissonance
because they did a boring task, and would rate the
tasks as such on the questionnaire. However, coun-
ter to intuition (and reinforcement theory) those
in the $20 condition should feel little (or no)
dissonance, because although they did boring tasks,
and disliked the tasks, saying that the tasks were
fun is not an inconsistent behavior if one has