Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort that people experience when they hold conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors, or when their actions contradict their values, motivating them to reduce the tension by changing beliefs, altering behavior, or rationalizing the inconsistency. The theory was formulated by the social psychologist Leon Festinger in 1957, and it was illustrated in When Prophecy Fails, his study with Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter of a doomsday group whose members strengthened their faith after the predicted end of the world did not occur. Festinger and James Carlsmith’s experiment showed that people paid very little to tell a lie were more likely to change their private attitudes than those paid generously. Elliot Aronson emphasized the role of threats to self-concept, and Claude Steele proposed self-affirmation as a way of reducing dissonance. Sociologists apply the idea to political polarization, religious commitment, consumer behavior, and the rationalization of deviance, as in Gresham Sykes and David Matza’s techniques of neutralization. Erving Goffman’s work on stigma and impression management addresses related tensions. Critics note that responses vary across cultures and contexts. Cognitive dissonance remains central to research on attitudes, belief change, ideology, and group behavior.