Cognitive Dissonance Classic in Psychology

cognitive Dissonance immaculate in psychological science Areej Alemer Instructors Name Class Title cognitive Dissonance Classic in Psychology Introduction There were famous experimentations conducted in psychological science and numerous of these experiments gave scientists a new perspective on understanding populate. In the 1950s, scientists began conducting taste rough the effect of societal pressures and influence to the air of people. Among these scientists is Leon Festinger. He became a well known scientist about the topic neighborly influence by means of his famous theory of cognitive variance1.cognitive Dissonance Festinger came about this theory in the 1950s at a time when a crack of doom madness attracted media attention. The craze worshipped a certain god detectd Sananda. Cult members be harpved that Sananda gave them these warnings The insurrection of the Atlantic bottom pull up s affects submerge the land of the Atlantic oceanside France depart sink. R ussia will become i great sea a great wave rushes to the Rocky Mountains for the purpose of purifying it of the tellurian and creating a new fix. 2 Believers claimed that these warnings would happen in midnight of December 21.Festinger got interested with the cult and in his head teacher he had these questions What would happen when on the midnight of December 21, zilch happens? Would the group lose faith? How do gentle beings react when prognostication fails? 3 Festinger found out that when the forecasting failed the believers did non lose their faith. They found airs to on the dotify the failed prophecy. One of famous exposition was earth was sp atomic number 18d because the cult members went into performance and believed in the prophecy. Christians and Jews will go up this justification non hard to believe.In the leger of Jonah in the bible, Jonah prophesied that Nineveh would be destroyed by clap (Jo. 31-10). The people of Nineveh believed and decided to fast an d put on sackcloth to channelize that they had repented. Even their king fasted, sat on ashes and put on sackcloth. in the end Nineveh was sp bed and destruction did non happen. So when cult leaders told their members that the earth was sp bed because of believe Sanandas message, the members bought it, provided non Festinger. To him the explanations are a bunch of lies, which he politely call(a)ed cognitive interference. Festinger saw the effort of cult leaders in lyng to the media in making excuses to their failed prophecy. They contacted TV stations ABC and CBS, they welcome New York eons, the ph matchlessd the writers of Life, Time and Newsweek and gave dozens of interviews to reporters. 4 These actions according to woodlouse were attempts to convince the public that their actions and beliefs were not in vain. The attempts of cult leaders to justify their actions and beliefs became the basis of Festingers theory and experiments on cognitive illegitimate enterprise5.Thro ugh his teachings about history, people tend to proselytize (a sort of dreadful defense mechanism) when their belief is disconfirmed. He alike found out that the disconnection between what one believes and the circumstanceual evidence is highly uncomfortable. 6 When prophecy of a cult fails members would attempt to convince everyone to join the cult with monstrous justification. The more people join the group, the more the members feel that they were not mistaken. Is it practical for people to engage in extreme lying just to subside their seemingly irreconcilable ideas?Festinger found out that people indeed lie in order to rid of discord. In fact, he discovered some(prenominal) forms of racquet. According to Cooper , what Festinger observed in the cult, he called it the belief disconfirmation paradigm7. When he conducted experiment regarding interference and money, he called it the insufficient reenforce paradigm. In his withstand research he withal identified other interference- induce contour paradigm8. To understand cognitive divergence theory it is important to review Festingers experiment. The ExperimentBut to be able to explain Festingers experiment and his theory of cognitive dissonance, discussion of the actual experiment is necessary. Festingers experiment is considered a chaste in psychology and prevail the bounce easily be retrieved in the net. It was counterbalance published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology and was entitled Cognitive Consequence of Forced Compliance. The experiment objective is to investigate how cognitive dissonance takes place when people are force to comply. Slater simply called cognitive dissonance as irreconcilable ideas9. amicable Psychology authors much(prenominal) as cook simply defined cognitive dissonance as a cite of opposition between cognition much(prenominal) as beliefs, views and opinion10. It is a comprehend inconsistency within a persons mental processes, in which he believes in s omething then acts in a different way from what he believes. Festinger exp11eriment aimed to measure the cognitive dissonance effect during force accord and to test the validity of the following deuce statements If a person is bring on to do or say something, which is contrary to his private opinion, he tends to mixed bag his opinion to bring congruence to what he has done or said. and The big the pressure use to elicit the overt behavior (beyond the minimum needed to elicit it) the weaker will be the above-mentioned trend) Festinger and his colleagues hypothesized that the larger the honour the lesser would be the subsequent opinion transmit. Therefore, if one puts their words in research method statements, the main hypothesis would be thither is a significant relationship between the amount of rewards and the magnitude of cognitive dissonance12 To test the validity of the hypothesis, Festinger divided his subjects into three groups, one take holdled group and two experime ntal groups.The two experimental groups are named- one-dollar group and cardinal-dollar group respectively, the name correspond to the amount of money that the two groups will posed in order to comply. The subjects for the experiment were college students and the primary technique utilized by the research worker was deception. The subjects were told that the experiment is about their behavior on a monotonous activity. However, the realistic experiment would whole begin when the research worker tries to deceive them, by relation another group will be exposed to a covariant in which a confederate will tell them that the activity is enjoyable.However, the pilot confederate will not come and that the experimenter needs the respondents to act as proxy and be the one to tell lies to the other subject (who herself is also a confederate) on the other room. The persuasion involves a monetary reward a one-dollar for the first group and a twenty-dollar for the other. The rewards arein tended to touch on the subjects behavior or the dissonance effect. Deception was not included in the control group to be able to control its effect. The first experimental group receives a one-dollar amount in order to tell lies. The other experimental group receives 20 dollars.The authors theorized that the one-dollar group would shake up a great magnitude of dissonance compared to the 20 dollars group13. By applying statistical treatment and comparing the responses of the experimental group with the control group the researcher found out that the one dollar group came to believe that the experiment as enjoyable where in fact, the control group finds it extremely boring, the twenty dollar group find the experiment slightly boring not far from the control groups answer. These results support the theory that the smaller the award the greater is the magnitude of the dissonance.Hence the authors accepted the hypothesis. Festingers experiment also has limitations. It is unless conf ine to the response of the subjects who were mostly college students. The results might be different if conducted on professionals and heart age adults. Impact of the Experiment to Psychology Festingers purposes were considered a milepost in psychology. It gave convincing explanations to mysterious benignant being behaviors. Gawronski14 provided an example. During the Korean War she wrote, the Chinese were able to convince American prisoners to become communists.They did this not by hurt but by offering a splintering of rice or candies. In step in of these goodies, Americans were asked to write an anti-American essay. After the essay indite many American soldiers hook up withd communism. Ordinary people might find such behavior baffling and stupid. Why throw democratic principles in exchange of a bit of rice? It would be easy to accept that these Americans were tormented and went finished a near death experience that is why they converted to communism. It is a rational ex planation and very acceptable. The fact that Americans embraced communism for a candy is something people could not accept.Cognitive dissonance theory provided an answer- the simpler the reward for spicy in behavior that is contrary with ones beliefs, the higher the tendency of the person to change his or her beliefs15. Even though this answer seems to spring no sense, it authentically happens. The one and twenty dollar experiment support it. According to Petty, there is a rational explanation for changing ones belief. It was such a horrible thing to sell ones self for a piece of candy16. The emotional pain would be so great. The person may lose his feeling of self-worth and may face up at himself an undignified individual.Slater coined this feeling a schmuck. To avoid such a feeling, the person should come up with a better explanation for sell his principles for a very cheap price. Festingers theory provided an alternative explanation for behaviorism. Formerly muleteer had sai d rewards reinforce and punishments extinguish. Skinner explained sympathetic behavior through his reward theory. Humans operate in their environment and through this operation they learn certain behaviors. Humans acquire behavior through operant teach. Skinner took away the mental element of humans. He make humans simple machines that behave through the means of conditioning.After cognitive dissonance theory, humans were seen as punishment driven beings that act not because of conditioning but because of mental processes. Festinger added the element of thoughts in explaining human behavior. His theory challenges the behaviorism. behaviorism claimed that mind and thoughts are not worthy of psychological investigations because they belong to the realms of doctrine and not empirical science. Festinger discovered that behavior is influenced by the way people think. Psychologists cannot set aside the mind and thought processes in explaining human behavior.Without considering the mind and thought processes, psychologists would never understand why American soldiers embraced communism in exchange for a piece of candy or a bit of rice. Human beings are not only motivated by rewards and punishment. For, if this were so, the Chinese will have a hard time convincing Americans to espouse communism because their offer of rewards were not actually rewarding. Festinger has drawn a concrete conclusion from his cognitive dissonance theory. Human are hypocrite beings. They are beings motivated by minds that must be made comfortable.Reward theory whole can never explain human behavior. Human beings think. They engage in the most amazing mental gymnastics, all just to justify their hypocrisy17. Explaining hugger-mugger Human Behavior Cognitive dissonance theory is not only an elegant explanation for mysterious human behavior. It is also became a fauna to discredit religion especially Christianity. Using the belief disconfirmation paradigm, one can conclude that the spread of Christianity was due to cognitive dissonance and lack of heavy knowledge of human behavior during the previous(predicate) long time of Christianity.Everybody knows for a fact that Christianity spread through the effort of delivery boy disciples. Ancient critics of Christianity suspected that early Christians had engaged in mass hysteria18. They collectively had seen unreal things. Before, cognitive dissonance theory, such accusation of mass hysteria was dismissed because of the martyrdoms of virtually every apostle of Christ. The apostle would not sacrifice their lives for something that is founded by fallacy. They were burned at the stake, cut into two, crucified crest down and immersed in boiling oil all because they refused to decant their faith.To avoid such horrible tortures, all they had to do was to tell the emperor that they there were no righteousnesss in their claims about Jesus and presto they will be released. But they chose death, indicating that they were not under mass hysteria but had genuinely seen Christ resurrects from the death. This is a simple Christian defense it stood unchallenged for thousands of long time until Festinger discovered cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance explained that when prophecy fails, people will not leave their beliefs instead, they would create lies in order to justify the failed prophecy perhaps even to the point of death 19. The apostles of Christ were expecting him to free Israel from bondage. This is the certificate of indebtedness of the messiah. They expect Jesus to liberate Israel and establish a new Judaic kingdom. The apostles believed that Jesus was the messiah. They gave up everything in order to become Jesus disciples. They were promised to receive an important position in Jesus kingdom. They expect that the earth will be destroyed by fire and a new promised land and earth will be created. The kingdom of Jesus will be established in this new heaven and earth. The apostles will co co nventionality with Jesus. But Jesus was killed and everything that they have believed turned to ashes.Some left Jerusalem and started a new life. Others were left and continue to meet secretly. This gathering can be likened to the case of the doomsday cult, in which members did not go home and confessed their mistakes instead, they change their behaviors, speeches and way of thinking to explain sustainmentfully their failed prophecy. They began attracting more followers in spite of of the fact that their prophecy failed. They engaged in pathological lying just to convince people that they were not wrong. If ordinary people in the doomsday cult had engaged in lying when prophecy failed, then it was also possible that the apostles had also lied.Cognitive dissonance theory states that it was possible for the apostles not to repudiate their faith even until death. Hence, Christianity martyrdom defense is weak. After his death, his apostles claim that Jesus is coming very soon and jud gment day is at hand. the likes of in the case of the doomsday cult, believers also had sold their belongings and give the money to the apostles. The apostles have all died but judgment day did not come. Despite of these, believers became more aggressive in recruiting new members and Christianity grew in numbers. deuce thousand years have passed but Christ did not buy the farm and judgment day was nowhere to be found20.Yet, Pastors and priest were able to find plausible explanation for the delayed second coming and people really buy it. No offense to Christian readers, but after reading chapter five and Festingers original study, it was very hard for this writer not think that cognitive dissonance was really involved in Christianity. Cognitive dissonance is not just a simple social psychology experiment. It is a mind opener, a myth buster and a truth engine. If religious fanatics explore its basic concepts, they might leave their faith. Cognitive dissonance theory explained that h umans would lie in order to avoid dissonance.It is the better explanation why religious cults and organizations do not cease to exist even though their prophecy and beliefs fails or contradicts reasoning. Festingers theory is all about the tendency of humans to lie to avoid discomfort. It is about the selfishness of human nature. This is the only conclusion one can derive from his experiments. Humans are hypocrites and engage in all sort of mental gymnastic in order to justify their hypocrisy. Conclusion Slater believed in cognitive dissonance theory but disagree with Festingers revelation on the selfishness of human nature.Do humans lie because of selfish motive, i. e. to avoid the pain of being a schmuck or was there something else. Festinger forgot to mention the good side of human nature. All he saw was its tendency to deceive and lie21. To show that dissonance is caused by other elements aside from selfishness, Slater told a story about Linda Santo. Linda Santo has a bed-ridd en female child named Audrey whom she takes care of for the past couple of decades. Her daughter got an virgule when she was three and became bed ridden from that time on. Linda patiently took care of his daughter since then.Her maintain left her a few months of the accident. Linda took care of Audrey. Audrey though invalid is a miracle worker, Statues of Mary and Jesus were put near her and these statues produce miracle oil. The oil was used to heal sickness of any kind. Linda finds an explanation and was not mystified with the miracles. She knew that her daughter was a saint, that God had chosen Audrey to be a victim soul, to take on the pains of other people so that they could be meliorate (121) Its a classic example of cognitive dissonance, the mother finding an explanation for her daughters dreadful fate.It was not clear whether Linda master the miracles and told people that her daughter takes away people pains. But according to Slater , if ever she lied, there was no self ishness in her heart, but love, which makes Festinger view of human nature somewhat wrong. People do not lie only because they avoid of being a schmuck but also because they are loving creatures. Linda was found to have breast cancer. She regularly underwent therapy. She now takes care of herself alone aside from taking care of her daughter. Slater wondered why Linda would not ask her daughter to heal her.Perhaps she knew that the miracles were a fake. She simply told Slater that mothers do ask something from their child it is they who give something to their child. Slater concluded that dissonance is not always about selfishness its also about love. Slater was a mother and understands very well why Linda was doing all this22. Perhaps, there is another form of cognitive dissonance paradigm that Festinger failed to identity. To conclude, Festinger experiments were indeed convincing but he failed to consider the other aspect of human nature such as love and caress.Some people engage i n dissonance not because of cognitive pain but because out of love just in the case of Linda Santo. Bibliographies Brown, Richard, brotherly Psychology 5th Edition New York McGraw Hill. 2006. Cooper, John. Cognitive dissonance 50 years of a classic theory. London acute publications. 2007. Gawronski, Brand. Cognitive consistency A fundamental principle in social cognition. New York Guilford Press. 2011. Myers, Steven. brotherly psychology. Toronto Graw-Hill Ryerson. 2006. Petty, Ronald . The Meta-Cognitive Model (MCM) of attitudes Implications for attitude measurement, change, and strength.Social Cognition. 2007. 25(5), 657686. Chen observe Revisiting the trio Choice Paradigm Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2010. 99(4), 573. Slater, Laura enterprise Skinners misfortune New York, Penguin Books. 2005. 1 Myers, Steven. Social psychology. (Toronto Graw-Hill Ryerson, 2006) 90-120 2 Slater, Laura theory Skinners Box (New York, Penguin Books, 2006) 110 3 Ibid 111 4 Coo per, John. Cognitive dissonance 50 years of a classic theory. (London able publications, 2007). 90 5 Slater, Laura Opening Skinners Box (New York, Penguin Books, 2006) 111 6 Cooper, John.Cognitive dissonance 50 years of a classic theory. (London Sage publications, 2007). 91 7 Cooper, John. Cognitive dissonance 50 years of a classic theory. (London Sage publications, 2007). 90 8 Petty, Ronald . The Meta-Cognitive Model (MCM) of attitudes Implications for attitude measurement, change, and strength. Social Cognition, 2007. 25(5), 657686. 9 Cooper, John. Cognitive dissonance 50 years of a classic theory. (London Sage publications, 2007). 92 10 Brown, Richard Social Psychology 5th Edition (New York McGraw Hill, 2006) 91 11 Slater, Laura Opening Skinners Box (New York, Penguin Books, 2006) 115 12 Cooper, John.Cognitive dissonance 50 years of a classic theory. (London Sage publications, 2007). 99 13 Myers, Steven. Social psychology. ( TorontoGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2006) 95 14 Gawronski,Brand. .Cognitive consistency A fundamental principle in social cognition. (New York Guilford Press, 2011) 106 15 Slater, Laura Opening Skinners Box (New York, Penguin Books, 2006) 114 16 Petty, Ronald . The Meta-Cognitive Model (MCM) of attitudes Implications for attitude measurement, change, and strength. Social Cognition, 2007, 25(5), 658. 17 Petty, Ronald .The Meta-Cognitive Model (MCM) of attitudes Implications for attitude measurement, change, and strength. Social Cognition, 2007. 25(5). 18 Myers, Steven. Social psychology. (Toronto Graw-Hill Ryerson, 2006) 99 19 Brown, Richard Social Psychology 5th Edition (New York McGraw Hill, 2006) 91 20 Chen Mark Revisiting the Three Choice Paradigm Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2010. 99(4), 573. 21 Slater, Laura Opening Skinners Box (New York, Penguin Books, 2006) 125 22 Slater, Laura Opening Skinners Box (New York, Penguin Books, 2006) 150