PSY 005 Lecture Notes - Lecture 27: Fritz Heider, Cognitive Dissonance, Leon Festinger

• School: College of The Sequoias
• Department: Psychology (PSY)
• Course: PSY 005
• Professor: Lewis

Document Summary

Attitudes may conflict with one a other. To mentally activate a concept and hence make it accessible. People try to maintain balance among their beliefs, cognitions, and sentiments. Inconsistences between a person"s thoughts, sentiments, and actions create an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency. Unpleasant state of arousal when we are unbalanced. Aronson: performing an action that is discrepant from one"s customary, Primarily a theory of attitude change typically positive self-conception. Rationalize decisions in order to reduce dissonance. The tendency to reduce dissonance by finding reasons for why we have devoted time, effort, or money to something that has turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing. Subtly compelling individuals to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes, or values, which typically leads to dissonance and to a change in their original attitudes or values in order to reduce dissonance.