Half of the participants were given a ready excuse for telling this lie—they were paid $20 to do so—while the other half, paid only $1, had no such excuse. Those with a clear justification for their odd behavior experienced no dissonance and, as one would expect, later reported that the task was rather boring. The other half, however, given insufficient justification for their behavior, experienced dissonance between the knowledge that the task was boring and the reality that they were misleading a fellow participant into believing the opposite. Rather than endure the aversive experience of believing one thing but saying another, these individuals changed their opinion and convinced themselves that the task was actually interesting.
However, the parsimonious nature of its formulation and application made the theory subject to the paradox of simplicity and raised concerns about overlooking confounding variables (Festinger, 1957; Osgood, 1960; Zajonc, 1960). In response to the limitations of the theory, three revisions of cognitive dissonance theory have been proposed. Firstly, the self-consistency model (Abelson, Aronson & McGuire, 1968; Aronson, 1999) addressed the paradox of the simplicity of the original theory by adding self-concept as a further explanation of dissonance. Secondly, the self-affirmation model (Berkowitz, 1988) focused on the overall self-image of moral and adaptive adequacy as an alternative explanation for attitude change. Lastly, the aversive consequences model (also commonly known as ”a new look at dissonance”) (Cooper & Fazio, 1984) also presented an alternative view on mental discomfort.
Counter-norm attitudes induced by consonant versus dissonant conditions of rote-playing
Notably, this proselytizing solution reflects not only effort justification but also the motivation to create a shared reality with others that their beliefs are true. One solution to this truth problem would be to try to make sense of what happened by establishing some new reality. This solution would involve creating new truths that are consistent with their previous beliefs and actions. New judgments about the present and predictions about the future were made that were consistent with the original belief, with the disconfirming event being treated like a bump in the road. After disconfirmation, for example, there was a sharp increase in the frequency with which group members decided that other people who telephoned them or visited their group were actually spacemen.
In others words, people sometimes cope with feelings of dissonance by surrounding themselves in “echo chambers” where their opinions are supported and validated by others. A variety of social psychological theories evolved from CDT to focus on uncertainty-related threats. Like CDT, these certainty theories emphasize the need to supplant aversive, “nonfitting cognitions” with consonant ones, and focus on need for cognitive clarity and consistency.
What Influences Cognitive Dissonance?
Lastly, the discrepancy reduction phase related to dissonance reduction mechanisms. The concept of dissonance is predominantly related to the post-decision or post-purchase situation (Oliver, 2009). The research on this phase commonly focused on the impacts of post-purchase touchpoints on product or service evaluation (Cohen & Goldberg, 1970), satisfaction https://ecosoberhouse.com/ (Engel, 1963) intention to repurchase (Hunt, 1970) and the back-out rate (Donnelly & Ivancevich, 1970) of customers. Negative emotion was another concept that has been closely invested with cognitive dissonance. Some studies also investigated moderators, such as income and product involvement (Gbadamosi, 2009), on consumer decision making.