PSYO 252 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Robert Zajonc, Jonestown, Cuban Missile Crisis
6 Jun 2018
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March 5th, 2018 – Conformity & Group Processes
• Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger)
o Intrapersonal conflict
o Inconsistent cognitions arouse psychological tension that people become motivated to
reduce
o Dissoae is a aersie feelig
▪ When your ehaiour doest jie ith your thoughts, ehaiour that is out of
character
o 3 options for Dissonance Reduction
▪ Change attitude
▪ Change behavior
▪ Justify/Minimize conflict
• Cognitive Dissonance example – Smoking Cigarettes
o Most people are interested in living relatively long, disease-free lives
o Smoking is well known to have negative health impacts (ie. Cancer, etc.)
o The desire to live a long healthy life is not compatible with adopting a behaviour that is
likely to result in a shorter, less healthy life – those arouses psychological tension that
people become motivated to reduce
• “okers Optios for Dissoae ‘edutio
o Individuals can deny evidence that smoking is linked to health problems (change
attitudes)
o Individuals can stop smoking (change behaviour)
o Minimize the conflict, sure smoking will kill me, but who wants to get old anyways? Die
young, leave a good-looking corpse
• Cognitive Dissonance Theory
o Classic Festinger & Carlsmith 1959
▪ Students first performed a boring task (turning pegs in holes)
▪ Then were asking to tell another student it was interesting – and for this, they
were paid either $1 or $20
• Figure 6.9
o No lie – control condition, says the study sucks
o $20 lie – still says the study sucks
o $1 lie – says the study ist ad
o THIS IS CALLED INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION
▪ This is eause $ is ot eough to justify lyig…therefore you hage your
attitude
• Affective Misforecasting
o Affective – emotional
o Misforecasting – humans are terrible at estimating how the future will affect us
▪ Underestimate our reaction to negative; overestimate our reaction to positive
• Why do we affectively misforecast?
o Immune neglect
o Focus problem
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