PSYC1004 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Consistency Model, Cognitive Dissonance, Attitude Change

• School: ANU
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC1004
• Professor: Professor Michael Platow

Document Summary

Eg: think of someone you respect / like. What if they expressed an opinion you opposed: t(cid:449)o optio(cid:374)s a(cid:448)aila(cid:271)le to restore (cid:271)ala(cid:374)(cid:272)e, change your attitude towards the other person, change your attitude towards the issue. When we like someone who holds attitudes different to our own we are motivated to change our own attitudes or to persuade them to change their attitudes. When we dislike someone and they share our attitude(s) we try to change our attitude towards them or towards the object. Cognitive dissonance theory (festinger: cog(cid:374)iti(cid:448)e (cid:272)o(cid:374)siste(cid:374)(cid:272)(cid:455) (cid:373)odel (cid:271)ut (cid:449)ithi(cid:374) perso(cid:374) (cid:374)ot (cid:271)et(cid:449)ee(cid:374) perso(cid:374)s, cog(cid:374)iti(cid:448)e disso(cid:374)a(cid:374)(cid:272)e - an unpleasant internal state that results when individuals notice inconsistency between: Between attitudes and behaviour (i. e. being hypocritical: (cid:858)i(cid:374) the head(cid:859) conflict between different attitudes within the same person. Its not necessarily whether the world around us is balanced or not, but rather a balance within our self that is unpleasant, and causes us to want to resolve the conflict.