Category: Cognitive Dissonance

The various revisions and amendments to the original cognitive dissonance theory have less to offer than the original theory itself. Critically evaluate this claim using one or two examples of such alternative theories.

The theory of cognitive dissonance was first introduced by Leon Festinger in 1957, establishing dissonance and consonance as a replacement for the more general terms, inconsistency and consistency (Festinger, 1957). Festinger proposed that humans store expectations of phenomena we believe match; when these expectations are challenged, we experience dissonance (Festinger, 1962). This will motivate an individual to strive for consonance, as well as actively avoiding situations that may impart dissonance. The cognitive dissonance theory is comprised of a multitude of studies and replications as well as applications in various topics. However, the methodology of the cognitive dissonance theory has been brought to question (Vaidis and Bran, 2019; Vaidis, 2014), throwing doubt on the validity of the theory. The cognitive dissonance theory has influenced the creation of multiple revisions and amendments, one of which is the self-consistency theory by Elliot Aronson, developed in the 1960s. This theory suggests that dissonance occurs depending on how the cognitions reflect an individual’s self-concept (Nial, Misak and Davis, 2004). The theory has failed to draw as much attention as the cognitive dissonance theory and has been criticised as being overly lax when making predictions about behaviour (Stone, 1998). At the same time, the theory has offered further explanation of behaviours relating to the self (Aronson, Fried and Stone, 1991). This essay will examine the advantages and disadvantages of both the cognitive dissonance theory and the self-consistency theory, establishing that the cognitive dissonance theory has more to offer due to its applications and broader explanations.

The cognitive dissonance paradigms are methodologies used to arouse cognitive dissonance (Vaidis, 2014). The original theory consisted of three paradigms; the free-choice paradigm, which suggests choosing between alternatives causes dissonance because every option has positive and negative aspects (Shultz, Léveillé, & Lepper, 1999). Secondly, the forced compliance paradigm asserting that dissonance occurs when an individual performs counter-attitudinal behaviours (Paulhus, 1982). Finally, the effort justification paradigm elicits dissonance when the process to a desirable outcome is disagreeable, typically one would not wish to engage in an unpleasant activity (Harmon-Jones and Harmon-Jones, 2007).

A criticism of the cognitive dissonance paradigms is that moderator variables influence the dissonance resolution rather than the inconsistency (Vaidis and Bran, 2019). A study by Aronson and Mills (1959) investigating the effort justification paradigm, found that women in college participating in a group discussion as an initiation to a group, would find the group more attractive if their initiation was more embarrassing, or in other words more effort. Following this criticism, it would imply that the group was found more attractive after a worse initiation because of the moderator variable, in this case, the amount of effort applied for the initiation, rather than the inconsistency of a positive outcome and a negative situation. Considering this criticism true would mean many studies linking to cognitive dissonance are undermined because potentially none of them test what is said to be the cause of dissonance.

Additionally, paradigms are designed specifically to elicit dissonance (vaidis, 2014), therefore it is reasonable to assume the dissonance reduction techniques may be included within this design (Vaidis and Bran, 2018). A free-choice paradigm study by Brehm (1956) found that in comparison to their initial rating, the evaluation of a chosen item increased whereas that of the rejected decreased. This criticism implies that the dissonance reduction (the change in the evaluation), is part of the paradigm design. Therefore, suggesting the ecological validity of the paradigms is low as the same results may not be produced in a real-life situation. This provides the potential for revisions to offer more than the original study as the original theory has such a seemingly large methodological issue.

Moreover, the original paradigm studies primarily focus on western cultures for example (Brehm, 1956; Aronson and Mills, 1959). Consequently, the conclusions drawn from these studies are ethnocentric and do not reflect the whole population. This is a limitation because the results can only be generalised to individuals in western societies, an issue as it has been shown that culture influences people’s choices (Wong, 2009). However, since the original studies cognitive dissonance has been applied across different variables and cultures (Kenworthy, Miller, Collins, Read and Earleywine, 2011). A comparison study by Kim and Sherman (2007), found North Americans were shown to perform dissonance reduction techniques to justify their choices, whereas East Asian Americans’ choices rarely differed. Similarly, a comparison study by Hoshino-Browne, Zanna, Spencer, Kitayama and Lackenbauer (2005) found that Asian Canadians showed more post-decisional justification in response to choices they made for their friends, whereas European Canadians showed more post-decisional justification for choices made for themselves. Studies such as these highlights how replicable the theory is, this is an advantage because it means it can be studied globally, therefore creating a large generalisable sample. However, it also highlights the issue with only studying one culture. These studies show cultures behave and respond differently; without the many replications, one would assume that everyone behaves in the same way as the western subjects in the original studies.

The cognitive dissonance theory remains popular because the original theory was written in general terms, this makes it easier to apply to a variety of topics (Harmon-Jones & Mills,2019). An Example of such is consumer behaviour, having been used in the marketing industry. A purchase triggers the mind into assessing the positive and negatives of the item, resulting in dissonance from the conflicting thoughts (kassarjian and Cohen, 1965). Trust in a brand has been shown to reduce dissonance as brand loyalty causes individuals to feel less pressure to evaluate the alternatives (Sharifi and Esfidani, 2013). Particularly in modern society, there is a substantial amount of choice, this makes decisions more difficult and subsequently creates more dissonance (Sharma, 2014). Korgaonkar and Moschis (1982), (as cited in Telci, Maden and Kantur, 2011) found that high expectations of a high-involvement product would lead to more positive evaluations after purchase. This encouraged marketers of high-involvement products to produce advertisements that evoke high expectations. It could be concluded that the cognitive dissonance theory is superior because the practical application of a theory provides evidence that the theory is ecologically valid, as it has been applied to a real-life situation that supports the theory’s hypothesis.

Alternatively, one major advantage of the self-consistency theory is the way that it explains hypocrisy. A hypocrisy experiment that looked at condom use, found that when preaching about safe sex, subjects forced to describe their instances in which condoms were not used, significantly gained more intent for future condom use (Aronson, Fried and Stone, 1991). This would suggest that self-consistency has more to offer than the original theory. This is because the self-consistency theory can explain behaviours involving the self in a way the cognitive dissonance theory is unable to do.

[bookmark: _Hlk56983480]Conversely, criticism by the radical theory of dissonance is self-concept theories such as self-consistency are not relevant to dissonance. It has been argued that self-concept revisions are too lenient and may make predictions without referencing the dissonance ratio, defined as dissonant cognitions in comparison to the sum of dissonant and consonant cognitions, which is said to be an important aspect of dissonance (Stone, 1998). This would suggest that self-consistency has less to offer because it is too general. The conclusions gathered from the theory are do not adequately explain behaviours as they are unable to pinpoint what causes dissonance. The radical theory of cognitive dissonance also suggests that self-concept theories focus more on self-esteem maintenance than the preservation of consistency (Joule and Beauvois, 1996). This would also imply that self-consistency has less to offer because the main hypothesis of the theory appears do not apply to the behaviours that are elicited.

As discussed, both the original cognitive dissonance theory and the self-consistency theory have advantages and disadvantages. However, cognitive dissonance has been applied to alternative topics such as marketing (Sharifi and Esfidani, 2013). Thusly the theory has more ecological validity and can be used to explain a wider range of behaviours. Additionally, the main criticism of the theory, that the dissonance resolution is influenced by moderator variables (Vaidis and Bran, 2019), is not resolved by the self-consistency revision, suggesting it too has the same issue and alluding that the theory does not have more to offer. Having said that, the self-consistency theory does offer more explanation in terms of behaviours involving the self, such as hypocrisy. Nevertheless, the theory is ultimately weakened by the criticism that self-consistency focuses on self-esteem maintenance rather than inconsistency (Joule and Beauvois, 1996). On the grounds that the theory hypothesis, that dissonance is aroused when behaviour is inconsistent with a person’s sense of self (Harmon-Jones and Harmon-Jones, 2007), does not accurately explain the behaviours demonstrated, and in essence, undermines the explanation it provides for hypocrisy. On account of this, it can be concluded that the original theory of cognitive dissonance has more to offer than self-consistency revision.

References

1. Aronson, E., Fried, C., & Stone, J. (1991). Overcoming denial and increasing the intention to use condoms through the induction of hypocrisy. American Journal of public health, 81(12), 1636-1638. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.81.12.1636
2. Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2), 177-181. https://doi.org/10.1037 /h0047195
3. Beauvois, J. L., and Joule, R, V. (1996). A radical dissonance theory. London: Taylor & Francis.
4. Brehm, J. W. (1956). Postdecision Changes in the Desirability of Alternatives. Journal of Abnormal & Social Psychology, 52(3), 384–389. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0041006
5. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, California.: Stanford University Press.
6. Festinger, L. (1962). Cognitive dissonance. Scientific American, 207(4), 93-106. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1062-93
7. Harmon-Jones, E., & Harmon-Jones, C. (2007). Cognitive dissonance theory after 50 years of development. Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie, 38(1), 7-16. https://psycnet.apa.org /doi/10.1024/0044-3514.38.1.7
8. Harmon-Jones, E., & Mills, J. (2019). An introduction to cognitive dissonance theory and an overview of current perspectives on the theory. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000135-001
9. Hoshino-Browne, E., Zanna, A. S., Spencer, S. J., Zanna, M. P., Kitayama, S., & Lackenbauer, S. (2005). On the cultural guises of cognitive dissonance: The case of Easterners and Westerners. Journal of personality and social psychology, 89(3), 294. https://doi.org /10.1037/0022-3514.89.3.294
10. Kassarjian, H. H., & Cohen, J. B. (1965). Cognitive dissonance and consumer behavior. California Management Review, 8(1), 55-64. https://doi.org/10.2307% 2F41165660
11. Kenworthy, J. B., Miller, N., Collins, B. E., Read, S. J., & Earleywine, M. (2011). A trans-paradigm theoretical synthesis of cognitive dissonance theory: Illuminating the nature of discomfort. European Review of Social Psychology, 22(1), 36-113. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2011.580155
12. Kim, H. S., & Sherman, D. K. (2007). ‘ Express yourself’: culture and the effect of self-expression on choice. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(1), https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.1.1
13. Nail, P. R., Misak, J. E., & Davis, R. M. (2004). Self-affirmation versus self-consistency: A comparison of two competing self-theories of dissonance phenomena. Personality and individual differences, 36(8), 1893-1905. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2003.08.019
14. Paulhus, D. (1982). Individual differences, self-presentation, and cognitive dissonance: Their concurrent operation in forced compliance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43(4), 838. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.43.4.838
15. Sharifi, S. S., & Esfidani, M. R. (2014). The impacts of relationship marketing on cognitive dissonance, satisfaction, and loyalty. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJRDM-05-2013-0109
16. Sharma, M. K. (2014). The impact on consumer buying behaviour: Cognitive dissonance. Global Journal of Finance and Management, 6(9), 833-840.
17. Shultz, T, R., Léveillé, E., & Lepper, M, R. (1999). Free choice and cognitive dissonance revisited: Choosing “lesser evils” versus “greater goods”. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(1), 40-48. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167299025001004
18. Stone, J. (1998). Jean-Leon Beauvois and Robert-Vincent Joule, A Radical Dissonance Theory. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 2, 319-326. https://doi-org.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/10.2307/1423495
19. Telci, E. Eser, Ceyda Maden, and Deniz Kantur. ‘The theory of cognitive dissonance: A marketing and management perspective.’ Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 24 (2011): 378-386. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.09.120
20. Vaidis, D. C. (2014). Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Oxford University Press. https://doi-org.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/10.1093/obo/9780199828340-0156
21. Vaidis, D, C,. & Bran, A. (2019). Respectable Challenges to Respectable Theory: Cognitive Dissonance Theory Requires Conceptualization Clarification and Operational Tools. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01189
22. Vaidis, D. C., & Bran, A. (2018). Some prior considerations about dissonance to understand its reduction: Comment on McGrath (2017). Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 12(9). https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12411
23. Wong, A. H. (2009). Cognitive dissonance: A comprehensive review amongst interdependent and independent cultures. The Journal of Educational Thought (JET)/Revue De La Pensée Éducative, 245-257. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23765479

Cognitive Dissonance

According to Hinojosa, Gardner, Walker, Cogliser, and Gullifor (2017, p.173), Cognitive Dissonance Theory (CDT) exists when an individual experience conflicting or contradicting situation between two or more cognitions, in which results in dissonance that causes unpleasant feelings of one’s self. The core of this literature review revolves around Conceptualisation and Research Summary, which includes Antecedents and Outcomes, of Cognitive Dissonance. Lastly, Practical Application will be implemented on the basis of those vital findings and discussions.

Conceptualisation of Cognitive Dissonance

McLeod (2018) states that Cognitive Dissonance Theory happens when the circumstance involves inconsistent attitudes, beliefs and behaviours, resulting in discomfort, which motivates the individual to reduce or eliminate the dissonance. Dissonance is the negative result or outcome of two conflicting cognition that the individual is experiencing (Festinger, 1957). Cognition refers to “attitudes, belief, or knowledge of one’s behaviour” (Festinger, 1957). In cognitive dissonance theory, trivialization and bolstering are included. According to Simon, Greenberg and Brehm (1995), Trivialization refers to downgrading the value of importance towards dissonance. As stated by Cooper (2007), bolstering refers to upgrading the value of importance towards cognitions.

Before Festinger discovered cognitive dissonance theory, Heider stated that an imbalance between cognitions would result in the individual to respond appropriately so it correlates, if otherwise, it would cause an unideal situation in 1925 (Festinger, 1957). After Heider, in 1955, Osgood and Tannenbaum suggest that individuals are likely to evaluate their behaviour and adjust accordingly within the existing source of information (Festinger, 1957, p.43).

In other words, cognitions are bits and pieces of information that the mind captures then the mind fills in those gaps which are missing, and another information enters the mind afterwards (Harmon-Jones, Harmon-Jones & Levy, 2015, p.184). Hinojosa, et al. (2017, p.173) indicates that Festinger has identified an equation for cognitive dissonance, which is M = D/ (D + C). Therefore, the sum of number of consistent cognitions and number of inconsistent cognitions divided by the number of inconsistent cognitions equals to the level of discomfort experienced by the individual (Hinojosa et al., 2017, p. 173). If it contradicts with each other, there is where cognitive dissonance comes in.

When cognitions are conflicting with each other, it results in cognitive discrepancy (Hinojosa et al., 2017, p. 174). Festinger (1957) implies that a perfect example of cognitive dissonance would be an individual who knows that smoking is dangerous but still smokes. With cognitive dissonance, the individual will ultimately experience negative feelings, such as depression, angry, frustrated, and others (Matz & Wood, 2005, p.24). All of these occurs due to cognitive discrepancy. By understanding the importance of the concept clearly, people can avoid cognitive dissonance from happening.

However, Harmon-Jones (2000) implies that more conducted research indicates that violating one’s perception results in the risk of increasing dissonance, but it does not necessarily cause dissonance. Furthermore, Harmon-Jones, Amadio and Harmon-Jones (2009) address the fact that Festinger (1957) did not get in depth on the results of cognitive dissonance, which are reasons on why cognitive dissonance releases negative feelings or why it motivates the individual to adjust their cognitions. From Festinger’s (1957) perspective, he provides appropriate strategies on decreasing dissonance. However, Vaidis and Bran (2019, p.3) explained that it does not comply with reducing the chances of inconsistency which may elevate the problem back.

If we compared with emotional labour, it is more or less similar as both concepts experience negative feelings. Hochschild (1983) stated that emotional labour refers to a form of exchange between employee’s workload with any type of compensation, such as wages and others, which are expected to lead to negative outcomes. However, there are some slight differences as Morris and Feldman (1996) suggest that emotional labour exists when employees performed the company’s desired emotions or fake emotions portrayed by employees which are different from one’s self emotions known as emotional dissonance. Therefore, it can be distinguished by the fact that cognitive dissonance initiates when there are two different outcomes. Whereas, emotional labour initiates when there are two different emotions. But, both concepts are under the expectation against reality umbrella.

Research Summary of Cognitive Dissonance

In this section, it identifies the findings and key research papers of cognitive dissonance. In which, it also includes the antecedents and consequences of the concept. By antecedents, it indicates the factors that lead to cognitive dissonance. Lastly, this section will discuss about the consequences of cognitive dissonance which are the outcomes.

Outcomes of Cognitive Dissonance

As demonstrated by Hinojosa et al (2017, p.174), an individual will be motivated to change their behaviour as well as fine-tuning their cognitions to reduce cognitive dissonance. Other than that, Acharya, Blackwell and Sen (2018, p.400) suggest that an individual will make an effort to change their opinion or judgement to match with their actions. Through hypocrisy paradigm, which allows individuals to think deeply on the reason of pursuing that behaviour, this enables individuals to have an urge for performing the action in the future (Aronson, Fried & Stone, 1991). When there is the existence of conflicting and contradicting situations, it forces the individual to fix or resolve the problem by returning to a state where the conflict is under control (Chung & Cheng, 2018, p.38). Cooper (2007) implies that research shows a consistent behavioural pattern of individuals adjusting their attitudes to avoid cognitive dissonance. Individuals will not adjust their attitudes and behaviours, if they experience less cognitive dissonance, which complies with the lack of motivation to do so on the basis of inconsistent information (Murray, Wood & Lilienfeld, 2012, p.526). Vaidis and Oberlé (2014, p.1097) discovered that an individual whom adjust their behaviour to manage their cognitive dissonance by taking the opposite route to have the situation under control.

During a situation when two cognitions are not compatible with each other, cognitions with more prone to changes are able to adjust their behaviour to cognitions that remains unchanged (Vaidis & Oberlé, 2014, p.1092). According to Ellliot and Devine research, they implied that participants, whom are less firm with their opinion, are likely to change their judgements on the specific matter and agree to the more-resistant participants (Miklosovic, 2010, p.18). In order to reduce dissonance, an individual will change their perception towards the behaviour when the individual voluntarily engages in the behaviour rather being forced to comply with it (Festinger, 1957; Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959; Elliot & Devine, 1994). Thus, an individual is likely to change or revoke their decision, adjusting the importance between alternatives, or establishing similarities between the alternatives (Metin & Camgoz, 2011, p.132)

Antecedents of Cognitive Dissonance

Acharya, Blackwell and Sen (2018, p.400) stated that an individual will experience negative feelings when their actions contradict with their standards. Cognitive Dissonance is established when two perceptions on the subject matter are conflicting, as if, one perception is boring while the other is interesting (Cooper, 2019, p.2). Harmon-Jones and Mills (1999, p.7) stated that dissonance exists when an individual action is unpleasant, from one’s perspective, to achieve their planned outcome. In which indicates that the greater the undesirable efforts to acquire the outcome, the greater the dissonance (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999, p,7). Elliot and Devine (1994) assessed cognitive dissonance and showed no signs of compatibility with positive effect. Likewise, Zhang, Xia, Liu and Han (2018, p.8) implied that discomfort leads to negative feelings.

Practical Application of Cognitive Dissonance

First and foremost, cognitive dissonance exists in our daily lives. And, it is our job to avoid those circumstances and experiences. Personally, I would say that this usually occurs when visiting restaurant. When a restaurant is so overrated, it becomes too hyped up. It does not live up to standards we were expecting. As a person, we would feel disappointed and that is where cognitive dissonance comes in. Another example could be a test. The materials given by the teachers were not hard. However, we would feel frustrated when the exam is actually hard and far from what we expected. If that happens, cognitive dissonance would be experienced by one’s self.

On the basis of the level of rewards, employees will adjust their efforts accordingly to reduce dissonance (Liu & Sundar, 2018, p.62). Liu and Sundar (2018, p.66) discovered that a perceived importance of a task increases when employees receive lower monetary reward, relatively, it results in cognitive dissonance. However, those employees who received low monetary rewards reduce their efforts to reduce cognitive dissonance (Liu & Sundar, 2018, p.66). Through the reduction of efforts, poorer performance done by the employees to align their rewards and importance of tasks for the reduction of cognitive dissonance (Liu & Sundar, 2018, p.68). In regard to those statements, employees need to be paid accordingly with their performance so they would not feel disappointment. With that being said, as a leader, I would pay staff’s salary in accordance to their performance in the upcoming future. By aligning staff’s employees with their performance, staffs would not experience negative feelings. In which, it will not result in cognitive dissonance. Through pay discrimination set by managers, cognitive dissonance can arise (Ryan, Prybutok & Zhang, 2006, p.3678). Likewise, Griffeth, Horn and Gaertner (2000) suggest that there is a negative correlation between job satisfaction with turnover and organizational commitment.

Therefore, I conclude that cognitive dissonance consists of negative feelings that we desperately try to avoid those type of experiences. Throughout this literature review, cognitive dissonance was conceptualized by defining and analysing the concept of cognitive dissonance. Moreover, cognitive dissonance was researched to have a better understanding on the concept which is further discussed with antecedents and outcomes. Lastly, the concept, itself, was placed in a real-life situation such as work and life experiences. And, how the concept exists in our daily lives which states the practical application of cognitive dissonance.

Reference List

1. Acharya, A., Blackwell, M., & Sen, M. (2018). Explaining Preferences from Behavior: A Cognitive Dissonance Approach. Journal of Politics, 80(2), 400-411. doi: 10.1086/694541
2. Aronson, E., Fried, C. B., & Stone, J. (1991). Overcoming denial and increasing the intention to use condoms through the induction of hypocrisy. American Journal of Public Health, 81, 1636-1638.
3. Chung, S. H., & Cheng, K. C. (2018). How does cognitive dissonance influence the sunk cost effect. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 11, 37–45. doi: 10.2147/prbm.s150494
4. Cooper, J. (2007). Cognitive Dissonance. Los Angeles: Sage Publications
5. Cooper, J. (2019). Cognitive Dissonance: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going. International Review of Social Psychology, 32(1)
6. Elliot, A. J., & Devine, P. G. (1994). On the motivational nature of cognitive dissonance: Dissonance as psychological discomfort. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 382-394. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.67.3.382
7. Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
8. Festinger, L. & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2), 203-210.
9. Griffeth, R. W., Horn, P. W., & Gaertner, S. (2000). A meta-analysis of antecedents and correlates of employee turnover: Update, moderator tests, and research implications for the next millennium. Journal of Management, 26(3), 463-488
10. Harmon-Jones, E., & Mills, J. (1999). Cognitive dissonance: Progress on a pivotal theory in social psychology. Washington, D. C.: American Psychological Association
11. Harmon-Jones, E. (2000). An update on cognitive dissonance theory, with a focus on the self. Psychological Perspectives on Self and Identity, 119–144. doi: 10.1037/10357-005
12. Harmon-Jones, E., Amodio, D. M., & Harmon-Jones, C. (2009). Action-based model of dissonance: A review, integration, and expansion of conceptions of cognitive conflict. Advances in experimental social psychology, 41, 119-166.
13. Harmon-Jones, E., Harmon-Jones, C., & Levy, N. (2015). An Action-Based Model of Cognitive-Dissonance Processes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(3), 184–189. doi: 10.1177/0963721414566449
14. Hinojosa, S, A., Gardner, L, W., Walker, J, H., Cogliser, C., & Gullifor, D. (2017). A Review of Cognitive Dissonance Theory in Management Research: Opportunities for Further Development. Journal of Management, 43(1), 170-199. doi: 10.1177/019206316668236
15. Hochschild, A, R. (1983). The managed heart: commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
16. Liu, B., & Sundar, S. S. (2018). Microworkers as research participants: Does underpaying Turkers lead to cognitive dissonance. Computers in Human Behaviour, 88, 61-69.
17. Matz, C, D. & Wood, W. (2005). Cognitive Dissonance in Groups: The Consequences of Disagreement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(1), 22-57. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.88.1.22
18. McLeod, S. (2018). Cognitive Dissonance [PDF File]. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/simplypsychology.org-Cognitive-Dissonance.pdf
19. Metin. I., & Camgoz, M. S. (2011). The Advances in the History of Cognitive Dissonance Theory. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1(6), 131-136.
20. Miklosovic, C, J. (2010). Cognitive dissonance: effects of perceived choice on attitude change. Modern Psychological Studies, 15(2), 16-21.
21. Morris, J, A., & Feldman, D, C. (1996). The dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of emotional labor. Academy of Management Preview, 21(4), 986-1010.
22. Murray, A. A., Wood, J. M., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2012). Psychopathic personality traits and cognitive dissonance: Individual differences in attitude change. Journal of Research in Personality, 46(5), 525–536. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2012.05.011
23. Simon, L., Greenberg, J., & Brehm, J. (1995). Trivialization: The forgotten mode of dissonance reduction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(2), 247-260.
24. Ryan, S., Prybutok, V., & Zhang, X. (2006). Job Satisfaction and Turnover among IT Professionals: A Cognitive Dissonance Approach. AMCIS 2006 Proceedings (pp.3672-3679). Retrieved from http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2006/441
25. Vaidis, C. D., & Bran, A. (2019). Respectable Challenges to Respectable Theory: Cognitive Dissonance Theory Requires Conceptualization Clarification and Operational Tools. Frontiers in Psychology, 1-11. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01189
26. Vaidis, C. D., & Oberlé, D. (2014). Approaching Opponents and Leaving Supporters: Adjusting Physical Proximity to Reduce Cognitive Dissonance. Social Behaviour and Personality, 42(7), 1091-1098. doi: 10.2224/sbp.2014.43.7.1091
27. Zhang, L., Xia, Y., Liu, B., & Han, L. (2018). Why Don’t I Help You? The Relationship between Role Stressors and Helping Behaviour from a Cognitive Dissonance Perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, 8: 2220. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02220

What is cognitive dissonance?

Cognitive dissonance, coined by Festinger (1957) refers to an unpleasant psychological state in which an individual’s beliefs and knowledge do not align with their actions. Cognition refers to people’s ideas and knowledge about the external world, their immediate environment, and aspects about themselves which include attitudes, emotions, behaviours and beliefs. Persons seek to reduce unpleasant states brought about by their inconsistent cognitions.

Measuring Cognitive Dissonance

D*=

D*- total magnitude of dissonance experienced.

D- Sum of dissonant elements with the element in question.

C- Sum of the consonant elements with the same element.

For example, Maharaj was a People’s Partnership supporter (PP) but voted for a People’s National Movement (PNM) in the last election which created in him cognitive dissonance. He sought to reduce his total dissonance by adding the consonant condition with the PNM candidate in his region which supported many of his ideologies such as building a highway that connected Penal to San Fernando around the swamp instead of destroying parts of the swamp for road works, new housing scheme in safe environments, diversification of the economy than the candidate for the PP. Therefore, you add the consonant element to the denominator, thus reducing the magnitude of dissonance.

The magnitude of dissonance determines the pressure the person feels to reduce dissonance.

• The lower the magnitude, the less pressure the person feels.
• The greater the magnitude, the more pressure the person feels.
• When the magnitude of dissonance becomes small enough to be bearable, it motivates no further action besides avoidance of situations and information that can add dissonant elements.
• The degree of dissonance is inversely proportional to external pressure. If there is too much external pressure then there is too much justification for behaviour, therefore the person experiences little or no dissonance. A person may seek to rationalize their actions or thoughts.

(Festinger et al., 1957)

Ways people reduce cognitive dissonance.

Persons may reduce cognitions in the following ways to eliminate any inconsistencies from the original conflicting cognition:

1. Method
2. Definition
3. Example

Direct Method

Changing one’s behaviours to align with one’s thoughts or changing one’s thoughts to align with one’s behaviour. Whether the behaviour or thought is changed depends on the level of resistance of the behaviour or thought.

Tristan was pro-life (i.e. she believed abortion is wrong under all circumstances and the foetus is a life and should be given a chance) so she voted for a Republican candidate (conservative and pro-life) to become President.

Two years later, Tristan was forced to have an abortion because her child had too many complications and could have killed her. After she aborted her foetus, she reduced her dissonance by becoming pro-choice (i.e. a woman could keep her unborn child or abort her unborn child if she wants because it’s her body) so she voted for a Democratic candidate (liberal and pro-choice) to become President.

Rationalization

Attempting to explain away inappropriate behaviour so it may be appropriate especially when the thought and/or behaviour are too resistant to change.

An alcoholic or a heavy daily drinker may say his habits are relaxed after he had a long day at work instead of admitting that he is an alcoholic who is drunk every evening.

Trivialization

Attempting to reduce the importance of the dissonant behaviours or thoughts by using cognitive framing (people think they will profit from their actions or thoughts) and distortion.

A promiscuous guy knows that he should get tested for any sexually transmitted diseases but does not do it because he sees it unnecessary since he slept with decent people, he thought it was better to not know since it might alter his activities then tells himself his previous partners and himself will be fine.

Social Support

Seeking others who share the same outlook on life as them.

Jimmy is a white man who is internally racist yet his best friend is a Latino woman so he joins the Klu Klux Klan who was known for killing blacks and burning down black churches in the past. The Klu Klux Klan denies killing black people at present. Jimmy joins the Klan and seeks comfort in their ideologies which include ‘ Make America white again, Build a wall to prevent the Mexicans from migrating to the USA, The white race is superior so the whites should keep the race pure which means no interracial interaction or relationships with the outside world.’

1. Element
2. Definition
3. Example

Consonant

• When a person perceives one element follows logically from another.
• Leroy is a Rastafarian government minister in Jamaica who secretly smokes weed so when the parliament was voting for the legislation of marijuana, he was in support of the bill. Since he smoked weed he was in favour of legislation of marijuana.

Dissonant

1. When a person perceives the opposite element follows from another.
2. It will be amiss of Leroy who is a marijuana smoker to be against the legislation of marijuana.

Irrelevant

1. When a person perceives one element does not follow from another nor is it dissonant.
2. No dissonance will be created if Leroy who is Rastafarian marries a woman with completely shaved hair.
3. Testing Cognitive Dissonance
4. The Induced Compliance Paradigm
5. Principle: Get people to say or do something against what they will normally do.
6. Procedure: Festinger organized persons int o three groups: 1.control group/non-dissonance group 2. The group that was paid $1 3. Group that was paid $20.
7. The two experimental groups were given a boring task to complete in 30 minutes. The person who was paid $1 told the other person in that group the task was fun whereas the person who was paid $20 told the other person that the task was boring.

Results:

The group that was paid $1 for the task reported the task more favourable than the group that was paid $20.

The Free Choice Paradigm (Brehm, 1956)

Firstly, Brehm invited adult women to evaluate eight common household products, a coffee maker, lamp, radio, etc. Then the women inspected each product and rank-ordered them from least desirable (a ranking of 1) to most desirable (a ranking of 8) when they were placed in two conditions. In one condition, Brehm gave participants a choice between two highly ranked products, one ranked 5, 6, or 7 and the other ranked one point lower. In another condition, the choice was between a highly ranked product (5, 6, or 7) and a product ranked two or three points lower. After participants made their choice, Brehm wrapped the gift for the participants to take home and continued the study. Participants read consumer reports of four products they had evaluated, including the two products from which they had to choose only one. After reading the consumer reports, Brehm asked participants to rank all eight products a second time. This procedure provided participants with a context and rationale for re-evaluating the products and a variety of positive and negative qualities about the chosen and rejected items that might facilitate participants’ justification of their choice which reduces their dissonance.

Moreover, the women who were forced to make a tough choice between two highly ranked products experienced more dissonance than those who did not, and thus they were more motivated to change their evaluations of the chosen and rejected items after the fact, apparently to justify their decision and reduce their dissonance (e.g., Steele, Spencer, & Lynch, 1993; Stone, 1999).

Revisions of the theory

1. 1. Self-consistency Theory (Aronson, 1960)

Dissonance in Aronson’s theory is believed to be a conflict between any two relevant, important cognitions and when the inconsistent cognitions involve important elements of a person’s self-concept. Aronson studied how individual differences accounted for how sensitive people are to situations that arouse cognitive dissonance based on how manipulative they were or their preference for consistency.

Manipulators versus non-manipulators

Non-manipulators display significantly greater attitude to ensure that their once dissonant behaviour aligns with their attitude. On the other hand, manipulators should only experience dissonance under conditions where they might get what they desire by lying.

Preference for consistency (PFC).

Based on the studies conducted by Cialdini and colleagues, individuals who score high on the PFC scale generally behave consistently with dissonance theory, showing the typical dissonance reducing attitude change following counter-attitudinal behaviour under high choice; whereas those scoring low in PFC either show significantly less attitudinal-behavioural consistency than high PFCs (Nail et al., 2001), none at all (e.g., Cialdini et al., 1995), or even anti- consistency (Guadagno et al., 2001). Festinger (1957) originally conceived the need for cognitive consistency as a nomothetic motive, meaning one applying to people, in general.

1. 2. Self-perception theory (Bem, 1967)

In Bem’s (1967) self-perception theory, he believed that people are often unsure of their attitudes, feelings and behaviours. People often monitor their behaviour then infer after the fact what their attitude was based on the particular situation.

1. 3. Self-affirmation Theory (Steele, 1988)

Steele proposed that dissonance occurs when one learns or behaves in a way that threatens one’s perception of self-integrity. Thus, attitude change in the induced-compliance paradigm occurs to restore one’s overall sense of a good, competent, and stable self-image.

Steele found that persons with high self-esteem experience less dissonance than persons with low self-esteem because they have a positive self-image and self-concept from their wealth of knowledge about themselves.

Self-standards model of cognitive dissonance

Stone and Cooper (2001) developed the self-standards model of cognitive dissonance from self-affirmation theory and self-consistency theory to explain the complex relationship between self-esteem and the experience of cognitive dissonance. The self can serve either as to be a resource that can buffer self-threats or be a standard that one may or may not have lived up to. Persons with high self-esteem use the self as a buffer against self-threats whereas persons with low self-esteem use the self as a standard that they may not have lived up to.

Evaluation of cognitive dissonance theories.

Benefits

Applicability/ Usefulness

• Fostering more successful child-rearing (e.g., Lepper, 1973; Mills, 1958)
• Increasing condom use among sexually active college students (Aronson et al., 1991; Stone, Aronson, Crain, Winslow, & Fried, 1994).
• Promoting pro-community behaviours such as water conservation (Dickerson, Thibodeau, Aronson, & Miller, 1992), increasing community service and charitable donations (e.g., Howard, 1990; Kraut, 1973; Sherman, 1980).
• Reducing racial prejudice (e.g., Leippe & Eisenstaedt, 1994; Son Hing, Li, & Zanna, 2002).
• Providing insight into the treatment of phobias (Cooper, 1980).
• The success of therapeutic interventions more generally (e.g., Axsom & Cooper, 2004; Cooper & Axsom, 1982).

Heuristic Value

• The heuristic value of a theory refers to its ability to generate testable, empirical hypotheses. • Festinger’s original theory had high heuristic value. Later versions of dissonance theory added even more heuristic value since those revisions were able to explain individual differences.

Efficiency

• The efficiency of a theory refers to the ratio of phenomena explained by the theory of the theory’s complexity.
• No one version of dissonance theory can explain all of the data.
• Festinger’s theory was more comprehensive.
• Aronson’s theory was more effective in integrating individual differences.

Criticisms

1. Cognitive dissonance cannot be physically observed so we cannot objectively measure it, thus the measure of dissonance is somewhat subjective.
2. There is uncertainty about dissonance since it creates more guilt.
3. Not everyone acts or reacts in the same way when presented with dissonant elements due to their differences.
4. Cognitive dissonance theories may have low ecological validity.
5. The majority of experiments used students as examples instead of different groups of people. Therefore, the experiments do not accurately represent the majority of populations of different groups of people (biased sample).

Bibliography

1. Alcock, J., & Sadava, S. (2014). An introduction to social psychology: Global perspectives. London: Sage.
2. Baumeister, R. F., & Bushman, B. J. (2017). Social psychology and human nature (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
3. Breckler, S., Olson, J. & Wiggins, E. (2006). Social psychology alive. Belmont, CA: Thompson/Wadsworth.
4. CHADEE, D. E. R. E. K. (2019). Theories in Social Psychology. S.l.: WILEY-BLACKWELL.
5. Cognitive dissonance theory. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://highered.mheducation.com/sites/ 0767430344/student_view0/chapter7/index.html
6. Cooper, J. (2007). Cognitive dissonance: 50 years of a classic theory. London: Sage.
7. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
8. McLeod, S. A. (2018, Feb 05). Cognitive dissonance. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html
9. Nail, P.R., & Boniecki, K. A. (2011). Inconsistency in cognition: Cognitive dissonance. In D. Chadee (Ed.), Theories in social psychology (pp. 44-71). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
10. Sanderson, C. A. (2010). Social psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Introduction

In this current era, interaction between humans and computers has increased. Humans are surrounded by computers, so the question arises that how well humans and computers are mixing with together? Are they like oil and water which is a difficult match or they are like peanut butter and jelly which is a satisfying match indeed?

Imagine that while you are interacting with a banking ATM machine you become confused and inadvertently transfer a big amount to someone else’s account. Your money might be hard to get back.

Or, imagine that you are buying via Amazon that pair of shoes that you wanted and while making the purchase on your smartphone you mistakenly order 10 pairs rather than 1 pair of shoes. Guess you will end up having 10 pairs of same shoes for you.

Our daily lives are increasingly becoming dependent upon our interaction with computers, whether those be smartphones, tablets, PC’s, or the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) which will make computing ubiquitous and we will be immersed and surrounded by computing everywhere.

As it is important to study that how humans interact with animals or even each other, it is equally crucial to understand how humans and computers interact. The field of Human-Computer Interaction focuses on understanding the ways in which humans and computers interact, and attempts to advance our understanding so that computers and humans can work more closely in harmony with each other.

The gap between what a human is expecting or instructing the computer and what the computer is doing when human-computer interaction occurs can be at times quite serious and have terrible consequences.

Perhaps the most famous of the awful consequences examples consists of instances wherein a human pilot and a computer-based autopilot HCI mismatch led to fatal airplane crashes. One such example will be carefully examined to illustrate the nature of the cognitive dissonance that can occur between a human and a computer when the two are interacting with each other.

First, let us have a look at the role of cognitive dissonance in human interactions.

Cognitive Dissonance

In the study of human-computer interaction “Cognitive Dissonance” is an important topic. Let’s try to visualize the cognitive activity that takes place when two people are having an interaction with each other. Suppose two people are involved in the purchase of a car, one of them is the potential buyer and other is the potential seller. The buyer has in their mind that what kind of car they want, how much they are willing to pay, and other facets about making the purchase of the car. The seller has in their mind the worth of the car and is trying to identify how to sell the car to the buyer. So, the buyer has a mental state about wanting to buy a car, and the seller has a mental state about wanting to sell the car.

Both the buyer and the seller also have mental models about each other. Namely, the buyer has a mental model about the seller, trying to figure out what is in the mind of the seller as to how much are they willing to come down on the price of the car and how desperate are they to sell the car. Equally, the seller has a mental model of the buyer, trying to figure out how much the buyer is willing to pay and whether the buyer is serious about making the purchase or just playing around and not a true buyer.

Suppose that the buyer has in mind that she is willing to pay ₹150,000 for the car, and the seller has in mind that he is willing to sell the car for ₹150,000. The two briefly discuss the car and then amicably agree to the transaction. This is an example of very little cognitive dissonance since they both perceived cognitively in quite similar ways the car purchase and selling.

Suppose instead that the buyer has in mind that she is willing to pay only ₹100,000 for the car and that the seller has in mind that the lowest price for the car is ₹150,000. The two are now at logger heads in that they have a large disparity between their mental models.

Exasperating the matter, suppose further that the buyer is the type of person that likes to have protracted negotiations and relishes the game of bargaining, while the seller is the type of person that hates to negotiate and wants to just get to the point and move on. You can see that this attempt to have the two interact is going to be challenging since they not only have different views about the car purchase but they even have divergent views of how to approach the interaction.

We can make this even worse by adding to the interaction that the buyer believes that the seller does not want to sell the car at any price and will be resistant to the interaction, while we can add that the seller believes that the buyer is a hot head and will react adversely to the slightest provocation during the car purchase interaction.

As perhaps is evident, the cognitive mental states of the buyer and the seller are radically at odds, and each has their own views not only about what they intend but also what they believe the other party intends. This cognitive dissonance showcases that the chances of the interaction occurring smoothly is unlikely and there will be an awkward and ultimately possibly dissatisfying conclusion to the interaction.

Large gaps in cognitive dissonance can cause the human-to-human interaction to breakdown and lead to adverse consequences.

Now, substitute for the human-to-human interaction instead a human-to-computer interaction. The human in the human-to-computer interaction also has in their mind a mental model about the task, and also a mental model about what the computer “believes” about the task. Likewise, the computer has a “mental model” about the task, and a mental model of what the human “believes” about the task.

Computers are not at all like the mental capabilities of humans. Currently, the computer has been programmed by a human or humans that have incorporated into the computer various assumptions about the way in which it should “mentally” process tasks and also what assumptions are to be made about the human interacting with the computer.

Anyone that says “the computer did this or that” is falsely ascribing to the computer a human-like quality which is not the case today. The computer as programmed by a human or humans did this or that, and thus it is not the computer per se that has some particular responsibility but instead those that programmed the computer. I do not want to digress and get into the whole topic of whether computers can or will have their own sense of consciousness — and so will just for the moment alert you to be careful when anthropomorphizing computers today.

Famous Disaster Due to Cognitive Dissonance

In 1994, Aeroflot Flight 593 was flying from Moscow to Hong Kong when a sad and frightening example of cognitive dissonance occurred that led to a fatal crash of the plane and killed all 75 on-board the flight. The cognitive dissonance involved a series of cognitive mismatches between what the pilot and co-pilot thought was happening and what the computer auto-pilot “thought” was happening. Do not assume that this is a uniquely odd occurrence as there are many documented instances of cognitive dissonance incidents that have led to planes faltering and on occasions crashing.

The Aeroflot flight was flying along smoothly and the auto-pilot was on. The pilot opted to have his children come visit him in the cockpit, and his son sat at the co-pilot seat to pretend that he was helping to fly the plane. Turns out that the son applied significant force to the flight control column, and, regrettably, via how the auto-pilot worked, this exerting of force was a signal to the auto-pilot to allow the “pilot” to overcome the auto-pilot and switch the ailerons to go into manual control. Notice that at this moment of the flight that the auto-pilot was still overall in control of the plane, but had relinquished the aileron control to be handled by the human pilot (as per how the auto-pilot had been programmed to operate).

Though a silent indicator light came on at the flight dashboard, intending to echo to the pilot that the aileron is now in their control, it did not have an audible alert (which was common in other planes), and unfortunately, the pilot and co-pilot did not notice that the indicator light had come on.

With the flight control having been adjusted accidentally and unknowingly by the son, the plane started to bank into a 180-degree turn. The pilot realized that for some unknown reason the plane was banking, but for about nine seconds the pilot and co-pilot were baffled by the turn, not being able to figure out why the plane was banking and what the auto-pilot was trying to do. The plane started to lose altitude due to the manner in which the turn was taking place. Nine seconds might seem like a short amount of time, but not when you have a plane flying through the sky at full speed.

The auto-pilot detected that the plane was losing altitude and tried to use the other non-aileron controls to compensate for the problem arising. It pitched the nose of the plane up and tried to do a steep climb, but this led to the plane stalling in air, and another automatic system then pitched the plane downward to get out of the stall.

The co-pilot then took over from the auto-pilot and tried to push the plane upward to get out of the nosedive, but this again caused the plane to stall. Heading into a corkscrew dive downward, the pilot and co-pilot were unable to sufficiently recover the plane and it crashed, killing all 63 passengers and 12 crew members.

Experts that analyzed the incident indicated afterward that had the co-pilot let the plane’s auto-pilot try to get out of the final nosedive that it probably would have been able to do so, thus, the co-pilot inadvertently seemed to have contributed to the plane crashing by ironically taking off the auto-pilot and trying to take over the control of the plane.

I hope that you can vividly see how the human and computer interaction in this case is a showcase of cognitive dissonance.

The pilot and co-pilot had a mental model of flying, and the flight status, and a mental model of what the auto-pilot can do, and what the auto-pilot was doing during the flight. When the son inadvertently turned off the aileron control of the auto-pilot, the son was not aware that he had done so, and the pilot and co-pilot were not aware that it had occurred (in spite of the light indicator that came on). Notice too that the auto-pilot did as it was programmed to do, namely allowing the “pilot” to take over the aileron controls, even though in this case the pilot was not actually wanting to take over the ailerons.

The pilot realized that the banking turn did not make sense for his mental model of the flight – the flight should have been proceeding on a level course straight ahead. He could not imagine why the plane was suddenly taking a banking turn. We can guess that he probably searched his own mind trying to think about what would cause such a banking turn. It seems unlikely that he might have guessed that it was due to his son exerting force over the control column. The pilot might have thought it was a mechanical failure on the plane, but if that were the case then he probably was thinking that why didn’t he see other indicators alerting him about the plane condition. He probably assumed that the auto-pilot would not have initiated the banking turn because the auto-pilot was supposed to be flying straight ahead.

The auto-pilot was programmed to try and overcome the initial diving action of the plane and was not presumably aware that the pilot was now trying to take action. Back-and-forth the mental gaps occurred, and we can see that the mental model of the pilot and co-pilot was disparate from the “mental model” of the auto-pilot. This cognitive dissonance created a severe and catastrophic gap over the control of the plane.

One reaction to this incident might be to declare that the pilots were wrong to have allowed the auto-pilot to have control of the plane and they should have never engaged the auto-pilot.

This is an extreme perspective in that it assumes that only the human should do the task and that the computer cannot sufficiently provide assistance.

Another reaction to this incident is that the auto-pilot should be given complete control of the plane and therefore presumably avoid the frailties’ of the human pilots. Some would say that had the auto-pilot been fully in control, the son could not have caused the switch to human control, and so the incident would have never occurred.

This is another extreme perspective in that it assumes that only the computer should do the task and that the human cannot sufficiently provide assistance.

This is a false dichotomy.

It is a simplistic and myopic viewpoint to assume that in this Human-Computer Interaction that the “solution” to the problem would be solved by pushing everything onto the human or pushing everything onto the auto-pilot. Auto-pilots provide a valuable contribution to the flying of modern-day airplanes, and likewise, the human provides a valuable contribution to the flying of modern-day airplanes. Having the human-only fly the plane is not a reasonable approach in today’s world of flight complexities, and having the computer-only fly the plane is not a reasonable approach given the limits to today’s computer capabilities.

We must be more mindful about the HCI dissonance and how humans and computers interact.

Framework for Examining HCI Dissonance Gap

To illustrate the HCI dissonance gap, I provide in Figure 1 a four-square diagram that I believe helps to illuminate crucial aspects about how humans and computers interact.

On the left side of the four square, there is an indication of the potential risk to humans, ranging from a high risk (such as leading to death, akin to the Aeroflot flight) to a low risk (imagine that your spell checker mistakenly corrects a word that it thinks you misspelled but that you had purposely spelled the way that you intended – this is a dissonance gap, but a likely minor one!).

At the bottom of the four square, there is an indication of the gap distance, ranging from low (when the human and computer are relatively closely aligned) to high (when the gap between what the human is thinking and what the computer is “thinking” are at dramatic opposites).

There are four squares, consisting of High-Low on the risk factor, and High-Low on the dissonance gap.

Let’s take a look at each of the squares.

If the dissonance gap is Low-Low then this means that what the human thinks and what the computer “thinks” are relatively well aligned. Though we could try to push the two toward each other to try and ensure that there is no gap at all, the economics of making that push is probably not of a sufficient cost/benefit ROI (Return on Investment) that making that push is worthwhile to do. Assuming that the Low-Low gap is indeed minimal, we could say that the Human-Computer Interaction can remain “as is” and does not need to be adjusted.

If the dissonance gap is High-High then this means that what the human thinks and what the computer “thinks” are relatively disparate of each other. The likelihood then of problems arising are heightened, and given that the risk to humans is high, we should look carefully at what can be done to close the gap. It is probably the case that we would want to push both parties closer toward each other. We would want to adjust the computer so that it is better aligned, and we would want to somehow “adjust” the human so that they are better aligned. The economics of doing this are probably worthwhile, and especially when you consider incidents like the Aeroflot flight (in other words, circumstances where the gap can lead to death and destruction).

If the dissonance gap is High for risk to humans and Low as a gap, the High-Low square, typically the economically viable solution is to push the human toward the computer in terms of alignment. This might involve added training for the human or taking some other steps to ensure that the human is more mentally aware of and engaged in the task with the computer.

If the dissonance gap is Low for the risk to humans and yet High for the gap, typically it is more economically viable to push the computer toward the human in terms of alignment. This might involve some kind of reprogramming of the computer or otherwise altering the nature and involvement of the computer in this task with the human.

Remember the mentioning earlier of the false dichotomy of some believing that only the computer should do the task or only the human should do the task?

In Figure 2, I illustrate this notion of a false dichotomy. I show that such a viewpoint is thinking about only the High-Low square or the Low-High square, but is not also thinking about the High-High and the Low-Low squares.

It is crucial to avoid the trap of falling for the false dichotomy.

In Figure 3, I show the same four-square framework and have put the “As Is” into each of the squares. This is indicative of circumstances whereby there is misalignment between the HCI and yet there is no action taken to deal with the misalignment. The chances are that this head-in-the-sand kind of approach is going to ultimately lead to something disastrous since for the High-High, High-Low, and Low-High squares we are sitting on the edge of the razor, and at some point, something bad is probably going to occur. This is the proverbial “don’t know what you don’t know” which sometimes happens when there is not a proper analysis done of a human-computer interaction.

In Figure 4, I show the four-square framework and now have put that in each square we will try to push the human more toward the computer, and the computer more toward the human. Though this is an ideal approach, it is economically often not viable. The costs involved to push the human toward the computer, or to push the computer toward the human, might not be ROI attractive to do, and usually, the risk to the humans will help to ascertain what this economic trade-off is like.

When HCI is slanted or skewed toward the computer, we always need to be aware of and generally suspicious to make sure that the human is not overly far out of the loop. Shown in Figure 5 is a diagram that depicts a skewing toward the computer. The reason to be suspicious is that we need to ask whether the computer can really handle the full range of circumstances that might be faced in the task and whether it can sufficiently handle those circumstances.

Let’s take the example of self-driving cars, an exciting and emerging use of computers. The intent is to ultimately relieve the human of having to take any action of driving the car. During our efforts to get to that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, we need to be careful that we don’t falsely believe that the computer can do more than it can really do and that if we carve out the human entirely then to what degree are we creating risks for the human. This is not to suggest that we will not likely eventually get to the point of having no human involvement in a self-driving car, but we need to be careful to not jump ahead of ourselves and omit the human entirely prior to the point at which doing so makes reasonable sense.

Figure 6 shows the circumstance of HCI involving the human being the dominant performer of the task and the computer playing only a minor role. Humans are not infallible, and so having the computer be more involved might be beneficial as it can possibly mitigate the human foibles of the task. Or, it could even be simply that we want to relieve humans of performing the task for purposes of letting the human do something else or not be concerned about the task.

Self-driving cars are trying to alleviate the human of having to drive a car. This can be beneficial because the human could possibly use the driving time to instead focus their cognitive efforts on something else, maybe on their work efforts as they are heading into the office, or maybe for entertainment if joined in the car by fellow passengers and wanting to act as though they are in a cab that has a driver taking care of the driving task. In addition, self-driving cars are being justified on the basis of the number of car accidents that occur when driven by humans and the potential for reducing such incidents, saving lives, and reducing costs associated with our driving of cars.

Figure 7 shows a diagram of having the human and computer relatively closely aligned. The amount of gap is minimal between the two, and each has its own contributions toward the task, and the two are well aligned.

Relieving The Dissonance Gap

At the CDT forum that I attended, Nicholas Carr brought up the example of radiologists, medical doctors, and related medical professionals, and the examining of X-rays and MRIs for trying to diagnose diseases such as when looking for indications of say cancer.

Prior to the advent of computer analyses of X-ray images and MRIs, the human radiologist would need to look at the images and try to on-their-own figure out what maladies might be indicated. Computers have been increasingly used to also undertake these same kinds of analyses.

Some studies indicate that radiologists are reluctant to either use or even trust the computer analyses and so will at times ignore of discount whatever the computer analysis shows.

One solution voiced to this misalignment was to not allow the radiologist to at first see the computer analysis, and thus have the radiologist do their own image analysis first. Presumably, after doing so, the radiologist could then take a look at the computer analysis and use it as a kind of “collegial” second opinion.

This approach tends to border on the false dichotomy that has been have discussed earlier in this piece.

This idea of having the radiologist do their own analysis first, and then distinctly and separately use the computer analysis, will have other potential adverse consequences. Studies show that often an expert will anchor to their own opinion, and so the radiologist upon seeing an image might form an opinion that then no matter what the computer analysis secondarily indicates they will ignore or discount.

Furthermore, it is already well known that radiologists are often faced with mind-numbing case loads, along with urgency for doing the analysis, and that they often suffer from radiologist fatigue.

By shifting the computer to the back-seat of this task, we are not likely helping to overcome any of those factors of vast case loads, urgency to analyze, and fatigue. If anything, it would probably just make those factors worse, since the radiologist would be essentially doing the task twice, once on their own, and then again but then with the use of the computer.

A more satisfying approach would be to consider how to help seamlessly align the human and computer in this Human-Computer Interaction. For example, we might have the computer showcase its analysis on the image so that when the radiologist first sees the image that it does not dominate the image and allows and makes the radiologist perceive that they (as the human) are performing the task, but that it also is being augmented by the computer in a more subtle fashion.

We could even add a dose of serious gamification by perhaps having the radiologist consider the computer as a type of “game” in terms of what the radiologist discovers in the image versus what the computer discovers. When I say the word “game,” be aware that I am not suggesting this is not a very serious task, and I fully acknowledge and agree that this task has the potential of great risk to humans (imagine a misdiagnosis that fails to detect cancer, and yet the patient has cancer and so is not aware to take action accordingly). The use of gaming techniques can be done in a serious way, and actually, be quite beneficial since it can increase the human engagement involved.

Besides the potential for a false dichotomy perspective when trying to solve HCI dissonance gaps, another approach that some are advocating is a forced engagement between the human and computer on a randomly activated basis.

For example, some might suggest that with the pilot and auto-pilot, we ought to have the auto-pilot periodically and randomly hand control of the flight back over to the pilot. This is being done solely to keep the pilot engaged, and not because the auto-pilot has reached a point wherein it cannot properly control the flight.

Though at first glance this maybe seems sensible, kind of like a wake-up call for the pilot, this approach will have adverse consequences. The pilot will be on-edge as to when that next random hand-over is going to occur, and so it will be unlikely that any reduced stress on the pilot is going to happen during the auto-pilot efforts. Also, imagine that the auto-pilot does purposely want to hand over the flight because of some anomaly that has occurred, and the pilot might become momentarily confused or even lulled into less attention because they are expecting the next random handover to be taking place (which is not an emergency situation).

Carefully consider too the cognitive load that we are placing onto the pilot. One moment their mental processes are not especially on the flight, and the next moment by surprise (due to the random prompting) they have to mentally engage. This on-again and off-again effort of mental exertion might actually produce heightened pilot fatigue, ultimately leading them to be even worse at piloting once the flight is entirely handed over to them such as perhaps when landing the plane.

We need to be watchful of seeking overly simplistic solutions to complex HCI arrangements.

HCI as The Silent Killer

The lack of general awareness about the importance of HCI in today’s computer systems is alarming because we are all increasingly becoming dependent on computers.

Often, the rush to get a new computer system out the door does not incorporate sufficient attention to Human-Computer Interaction. Even if there is some attention, it is frequently performed by programmers that are not necessarily trained in the HCI facets. They then believe that they have done a good job of encompassing HCI, but then often upon fielding are horrified to discover that there are misalignments that they never envisioned.

Economics comes to play in this HCI focus too since there is “added” cost to being careful and thoughtful about the HCI aspects, though the benefits of that added cost can often well exceed the added costs. Firms that find themselves being sued and giving up large monetary awards for systems that did not have thoughtfully prepared HCI find out afterwards that they underestimated the value of HCI. There are often programmers that wanted to deeply do HCI, but the budget for doing the system did not include the needed expenditure.

Often a new app or computer system will land like a dud in the marketplace and a retrospective often shows that it is due to a poorly done HCI. In contrast, good and really good HCI’s are being increasingly expected by consumers and businesses, and so the poorly designed HCI’s won’t last. Part of the tremendous success of Uber has been partially attributed to the HCI that they put in place, and which allowed humans to more easily and in a frictionless way call for cab-like service in a manner that had not been made available widely before.

Next time that you are engaged in an interaction with a computer, think about what the computer is “thinking” and what you are thinking and see if there is a dissonance gap in that HCI.

Then find a way to deal with the HCI dissonance gap, thoughtfully and with purpose.

Chapter –I. Introduction

Background of the study

Cognitive dissonance is a social psychological phenomenon that creates mental discomfort which occurs after decision-making. Festinger described cognitive dissonance as a state which comes into existence when a person gets confused between two cognitions (thoughts), which cannot exist together and hence create tension for him. Each person has much cognition (beliefs or opinions) about himself or herself, other people, and the decision he or she makes. Any two cognitions can be either related or unrelated. Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that consumers experience tension following a difficult decision and may behave in some strange ways in an effort to reduce the dissonance (Fill, 2002: 62).

Dissonance occurs once a decision has been made as prior to making a decision an individual had an option of adjusting to any attitude or behavior which he deemed right as per his choice but once a decision is being made, a commitment has been established between the buyer and the consumer, where he cannot further adjust himself and is liable to stick to his decision. Cognitive dissonance is regarded as a precedent for customer satisfaction to be located between relationship marketing and satisfaction (as Chiu et al., 2005 suggested) to seehow cognitive dissonance discourages satisfaction, and conversely how mitigating cognitive dissonance encourages satisfaction.

Cognitive dissonance may be influenced by several factors-personal or impersonal. As dissonance experience is a psychological one, therefore it is imperative to understand the important personal factors that could shape the intensity of dissonance in an individual. Moreover, the dissonance could also be aroused when the perceived value of the product is disconfirmed after making a purchase. This generally leads to a state of mind known as cognitive dissonance that motivates an individual to get rid of induced discomfort psychological state.

In purchasing a smartphone, comparing the alternatives available to consumers, they may feel mental discomfort, since consumers have to make one choice out of many. This discomfort intensifies as the consumer makes a purchase of high involvement such as a more featured smartphone or a basic-featured (Solomen et al. 2012). This feeling is professionally coined as “cognitive dissonance” Kotler (2011).

Dissonance is known to arise mainly in three ways – First, any logical inconsistency can create dissonance. Second, dissonance can be created when a person experiences an inconsistency either between his attitude and his behavior or between two of his behaviors. Third, dissonance can occur when a strongly held expectation is disconfirmed, notes (Loudon & Della Bitta 2002). Evidence showed the presence of dissonance in the prepurchase stage of the decision-making process also as depicted by Koller and Salzberger2.

1.1 Problem Statement

The research follows the previous efforts made to uncover the impacts of cognitive dissonance on customer satisfaction. However, we regarded the role of cognitive dissonance in this relationship and regarded cognitive dissonance as the precedent for customer satisfaction with the attainment of ultimate goal of marketing firms (Park et al. 2012).

Cognitive dissonance has indirect impacts on behavioural and attitudinal loyalty. Indeed, this fact uncovers a key factor in customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Thus, researchers must consider this influence and look for ways to curb it and could have better thoughts for improvement. In our research, we studied the impacts of cognitive dissonance on consumer satisfaction level, which constructs of customer relationship marketing with respect to consumers, and assessed to see whether they can reduce cognitive dissonance and foster satisfaction and acceptance of cell phones in the consumer’s mind. (Pressey and methews 2000) also outlined high commitment, high trust, open communication, and long-term relationship as the indicators of relationship marketing. In summary, our research has an emphatic view of consumer psychology in catalytic marketing. The results of our study provide managerial implications to be used in formulating marketing strategy of marketers. As cognitive dissonance is a precedent for customer satisfaction, marketing managers must look for ways to eliminate the cognitive dissonance caused, since it can discourage satisfaction and there by brand equity towards the brands.

Researchers regarded cognitive dissonance from different perspectives. The latter can encourage incremental sales, and other incentives that finally can end in cost savings for the company (Palmatier et al. 2007) and through utilitarian and hedonic value lead to customer loyalty( Chiu et al. 2005).(Palmer 2006) also mentioned that relationship marketing has three levels including tactical, strategic, and philosophical level.

1.2 Research Questions :

Based on the considerations explained, the present study intends to answer the below research question.

1. Is it possible to mitigate cognitive dissonance in the post-purchase stage through relationship marketing activities and encourage satisfaction and loyalty?
2. What are the factors influencing consumer switch from one brand to another brand of smartphone?
3. Do age, gender, income, and product price affect the post-purchase behavior of consumers?

1.4. Objectives of the Study :

Various research questions were arising before the researcher that needs attention to solve the problems of marketers in the today’s dynamic world.

1. To identify whether demographic characteristics (age, gender) of a buyer can have an impact on the dissonance experienced after making a purchase.
2. To examine the factors influencing the consumer to switch from one brand to another brasmartphone phone.
3. To assess the impact of personal characteristics on dissonance and also has tried to give recommendations to the marketers that would help them to devise strategies for their products.

1.5 Limitation of the study:

• The size of the sample is moderate due to time constraints.
• Respondents may not give an accurate answer to the survey questions.
• Results obtained from the selection of the sample may not represent the overall scenario.

1.6 Theoretical Framework:

• The entire study of the research will be based upon three different type of variable that is, dependent variable(cognitive dissonance) and independent variables( Age, Gender, product’s price).

(Dependent Variable) (Independent Variable)(Communication)(Trust)(Cognitive dissonance)(Behavioral Loyalty)(Product’s Price)

Communication is the construct of relationship marketing, by which customers communicate with the brand and gain information on products and services.

Trust is the construct of relationship marketing which is central to it (Palmer, 1996; Pressey and Mathews, 2000; Berry, 2002; Ndubisi, 2007). Trust also leads to customer satisfaction (Bejou et al., 1998; Terawatanavong et al., 2007; Chattananon and Trimetsoontorn, 2009; Alejandro et al., 2011).

Satisfaction/dissatisfaction theory (Wilkie, 1994; Solomon et al., 2006) in consumer behavior along with the theory of cognitive dissonance shows that satisfaction suffers when consumers feel high cognitive dissonance (Mittelstaedt, 1969; Cohen and Goldberg, 1970; Geva and Goldman, 1991; Dutta and Biswas, 2005; Solomon et al., 2006; Lake, 2009; Jarcho et al., 2011).

Behavioral loyalty is customer loyalty that consists in the mere repetition of purchase behavior, without any mental and/or psychological considerations justifying such behavior and no clear preference for the purchased object

Attitudinal loyalty is the loyalty displayed by consumers when they repeatedly buy brands they know and trust; their consistent attitudes result in habitual buying behavior.

The product’s price is the price you charge your customers or clients will have a direct effect on the success of your business

1.7 Research Hypothesis:

For clarifying the objectives of the research, certain hypotheses were proposed. Recent studies in social psychology have observed the comparative cognitive style of judging and rationalizing things in terms of genuine sample t-tests and correlations have been devised from the data collected.

1.7.1 One sample t-test

A one-sample t-test is used to test whether a population mean is significantly different from some hypothesized value. The mean of a variable to be compared should be substantively interpretable. It can be used to determine if two sets of data are significantly different from each other, and is most commonly applied when the test statistic would follow a normal distribution if the value of a scaling term in the test statistic are known.

1.7.2 Correlation among factors affecting consumer buying behavior

The most familiar measure of dependence between two quantities is the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, or “Pearson’s correlation coefficient”, commonly called “the correlation coefficient”. It is obtained by dividing the covariance of the two variables by the product of their standard deviations. The Pearson correlation is defined only if both of the standard deviations are finite and non-zero. If the variables are independent, Pearson’s correlation coefficient is 0, but the converse is not true because the correlation coefficient detects only linear dependencies between two variables.

1. H01: There is no significant difference between the communication of brands and consumers’ cognitive dissonance.
2. H02: There is no significant difference in trust on brands and consumers’ cognitive dissonance.
3. H03: There is no significant difference in satisfaction and consumers’ cognitive dissonance.
4. H04:There is no significant difference in behavioral loyalty and consumers’ cognitive dissonance.
5. H05: There is no significant difference in attitudinal loyalty and consumers’ cognitive dissonance.
6. H06: There is no significant difference in the price of the product purchased and dissonance experience among customers.

1.8 Literature Review:

It is a general notion that customers evaluate the value of product after the purchase and determine the value produced from them. A human mind by and large evaluates the features of products that have been purchased and starts evaluating them with the expectations made before purchase and with the foregone competitor’s offering benefits. These cognitions continue to strike in the consumer’s mind, ailing him/her to reconsider the purchase just made whether it was a wise or pathetic decision. Customers after purchasing a product generally thinks about the pros and cons associated with them and their cognitions tend to force them to think again and again to their choice of decision. These beliefs get stronger when there exists a disruption between their expectation and disconfirmation.

Dimensions of cognitive dissonance orientation are also included in the literature. According to (Palmer 1996) commitment, interdependence, and trust are central to relationship marketing. (Pressey and methews 2000) also outlined high commitment, high trust, open communication, and long-term relationship as the indicators of relationship marketing. This dimension mainly looks for establishing loyalty. Empathy is the dimension enabling the two parties to see the situation from the perspective of each other in a cognitive sense and understand the desires and goals of someone else. Reciprocity is the dimension that causes each party to provide favour for the other in return of favours. Trust is the belief about the intentions of the other party within the relationship and, as a result, is the level to which each party feels that they can rely on the promise of the other. Trust is considered as the heart of other dimensions, since the greater the trust, the longer the relationship (Berry 2002; Yau et al.2000).

Once the purchase has been made, a human mind starts assessing the pros and cons of the purchase transaction made. This phenomenon leads to the emanation of myriad of conflicting thoughts in the mind of the buyer. The positive aspects of a choice forgone and the negative aspects of the decision made create ascending strain in the human mind and make the buyer rethink about the decision made, notes (Kassarjian and Cohen 1965). Dissonance though is a psychological concept but has a great bearing on the way consumers plan their purchase and effect of the purchase made on their future alliance with the organization. In an era of marketing, where a consumer is spoilt with a plethora of choices as regarding the product to buy, it is difficult to avoid a situation of confusion that leads to dissonance among the consumers. Since cell –phones are augmented with enormous features. However, consumers make their efforts in different ways to reduce the conflicting views which arise in their mind. When a purchase transaction gets completed, most of the consumers feel that their decision has got hugely effected by words of mouth, sales interventions, and deeply involved in variety-seeking. Hence, their cognitive consistency has been compromised to the various marketing interventions made by the seller (Bell 1967; Cummings and Venkatesan 1976).

1.9 Research Methodology

1.9.1 Research Approach

Based on conceptual and theoretical framework, this chapter focuses on the database, universe of the study, sample size, sampling design, data collection, demographic profile and detailed analysis of the statistical tools used in the entire study. The data collected will be useful in determining the various factors on the theoretical model of research. This research will be quantitative research. This research is based on descriptive and casual research design.

1.9.2. Sample Technique

The research will be conducted by using a questionnaire which will be based on factors affecting buying behavior of consumers regarding smartphone. A total of 200 questionnaires will be distributed among smartphone users. There will be no systematic pattern of selection sample in the study. Therefore, convenient sampling technique will be adopted.

1.9.3 Nature and Source of Data:

1.9.3.1. Primary Data

Direct data collection through the questionnaire format. The format of the questionnaire includes closed-ended questions, likert scale, and multi-response questions. The questionnaire will be given to different consumers of different gender and group.

1.9.3.2. Secondary Data

The secondary data were collected from various available sources through desk research including literature survey and referring e-libraries etc. Review of literature and other available information from various published journals, books, newspapers, etc.

1.9.4 Data Management and Analysis

The data was collected with the help of the questionnaire which will be analyzed with the help of the statistical package SPSS 20 and Microsoft Excel. Data will be interpreted through suitable statistical tools.

Data will be analyzed through Reliability analysis, Descriptive analysis, Correlation analysis, and Regression analysis.

References

1. Festinger. L., (1957), a theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.
2. G. D., Bell (1967), ‘The Automobile Buyer after Purchase’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 31(3), 12-16. 5.
3. H.H., Kassarjian. and B .C., Joel., (1965), ‘Cognitive Dissonance and Consumer Behavior, California Management Review, Vol. 8(1), 55-64.
4. Kassarjian H.H. and J.B. Cohen, (1965). Cognitive dissonance and consumer behavior. California Management Review. 8, 55-64.
5. Koller, M., and Thomas. S.,(2007), ‘Cognitive dissonance as a relevant construct throughout the decision-making and consumption process: an empirical investigation related to a package tour, Journal of Customer Behaviour, Vol. 6(3), 217-227. 6
6. Partington, D. 2003. Essential Skills for Management Research. London: Sage Publications.
7. Sweeney J.C., Hausknecht D. and Soutar G.N. (2000). Measuring cognitive dissonance: A multidimensional scale. Psychology and Marketing, 17(5), 369–86.
8. Westbrook R.A. and J.W. Newman (1978). An analysis of shopper dissatisfaction for major household appliances. Journal of Marketing Research, 15, 456-466.
9. Willert Jr. M.G. (1995). Coping Strategies and Emotional and Physical Status of Family Members of Mental Health Consumers. Doctoral Dissertation, The University of North Dakota [Publication number AAT960548]

In society shopping has become a main interest involving a person’s social status. The activity itself shows more about a person’s relationships within society, than the products or services purchased ([2] Miller, 1998). Consumers do not just value the product or service provided when shopping, they highly value their experience in which time and money is contributing to ([3] Umesh et al. , 1989). Studies show that instinctively after purchasing one product consumers end up purchasing more, this is known as ‘the shopping momentum’ ([4] Dhar et al. , 2007).

Cognitive attributes contribute to when consumers buy impulsively. ([5] Verplanken and Herabadi, 2001). Impulsive buying gives consumers adrenaline and excitement when an unintentional purchase is made. [6] Rook and Fisher’s study (1995) revealed that not all consumers reacted the same when it came to impulse buying. Some opinions believe that it is not complete impulsive buying, but that there is some form of thought process when a consumer purchases a product [7] Bayley and Nancarrow, 1998).

Consumers have a process which they go through before buying a product in order for them to feel secure and satisfied with their purchase. High involved individuals believe that they have high quality knowledge on the product they are purchasing, therefore feel content ([8] Smith and Bristor, 2006). They are also more prepared when it comes to risks, such as impulse buying. However, impulse buying can leave consumers extremely disappointed and unsatisfied as they had no previous knowledge on the product ([9] Rook and Fisher, 1995).

A study set place for college students to see how they shopped during spring break. Students were chosen as this was a period in which they had plenty spare time as wells as being one of the biggest contributors to shopping [10] Hobson and Josiam (1992). The study showed that only 58 of the 105 students surveyed took a spring vacation. The majority of the students came from the US, with the minority from foreign nationals. Ages ranged from 17-35 with 21 being the average. The reason the study focused on students specifically is because it can give an assumption on the shopping behaviours of adults in the future.

In the study it was found that the cognitive dissonance in the planned purchase scenario’s mean was more or less equivalent in the impulse purchase scenario. It was also concluded that the cognitive dissonance after a planned purchase was significantly higher than after an impulse buy. These results were unexpected however, there are other aspects which can show us a better understanding. For example, low involvement. The survey revealed other relations such as how far people were willing to travel depending on where they wanted to shop as well as how much money they spent or how cautious they were with their money.

There are many more aspects when it comes to analysing impulse buying and these should be studied in order for more in depth knowledge on why consumers impulse buy and if other factors influence them.

References

1. George, B. P., & Yaoyuneyong, G. (2010). Impulse buying and cognitive dissonance: a study conducted among the spring break student shoppers. Young Consumers, 11(4), 291-306.
2. Miller, D. (1998), A Theory of Shopping, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
3. Umesh, U.N., Pettit, K.L. and Bozman, C.S. (1989), ‘Shopping model of the time-sensitive consumer’, Decision Sciences, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 715-29.
4. Dhar, R., Huber, J. and Khan, U. (2007), ‘The shopping momentum effect’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 44 No. 3, pp. 370-8.
5. Verplanken, B. and Herabadi, A. (2001), ‘Individual differences in impulse buying tendency: feeling and no thinking’, European Journal of Personality, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 71-83.
6. Rook, D. and Fisher, R.J. (1995), ‘Trait and normative aspects of impulsive buying behavior’, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 305-13.
7. Bayley, G. and Nancarrow, C. (1998), ‘Impulse purchasing: a qualitative exploration of the phenomenon’, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 99-114.
8. Smith, J.B. and Bristor, J.M. (2006), ‘Uncertainty orientation: explaining differences in purchase involvement and external search’, Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 11 No. 6, pp. 587-607.
9. Rook, D. and Fisher, R.J. (1995), ‘Trait and normative aspects of impulsive buying behavior’, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 305-13.
10. Hobson, J.S.P. and Josiam, B. (1992), ‘Spring break student travel: an exploratory study’, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 87-97.

Stress affects millions of people around the world on a daily basis. Stress can either be caused by a good or bad experience, this can either negatively or positively affect the individual. Stress can be caused due to many different forms including post-traumatic stress, anxiety disorder, depression, physical, social and emotional stresses. This can occur because of situations such as sport, school, or work. This type of stress occurs due to pressures from coaches, parents, partners, family, or friends to reach a certain score or meet a deadline by a specific date or time, and in elite sports, the above come into factor as well as the public’s eye and quite commonly the persons own perspective of themselves. Almost half of the athletes will encounter stress in some form throughout their athletic career. A study conducted on Australian athletes found that 46% of them had at least one mental health issue such as an eating disorder (Gerber et al., 2018). Stress in athletes can often lead to burnout for a period of time or leaving the sport as a whole. Another big response to stress is the flight or fight. Hence this paper will discuss stress, what it is, the signs and symptoms along major models and theories.

Nearly every person will experience some form of stress at least once a week throughout their lives. Stress can be caused due to numerous different reasons and can come in many different forms. Someone fighting in a war may develop post-traumatic stress disorder whereas the next may be stressed over an exam and needing to get a certain mark for their future. Post-traumatic stress disorder is one of the biggest forms of stress that can be very severe for some even affecting an individual’s day-to-day life. Although it is something severe it luckily does not affect many, approximately half of United States adults will experience a traumatic event at least once in their lives, however merely 10% of women and 5% of men will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Ozer & Weiss, 2004). Many people will develop partial post-traumatic stress disorder or significant clinical symptoms (Ozer & Weiss, 2004). Post-traumatic stress is caused due to extreme external stress like shell shock from war or sexual assault that causes a feeling of extreme fear, horror, or helplessness (Ozer & Weiss, 2004). This is due to the event causing near death, serious injury, or death. Stress is also very common in elite athletes and can also occur at the amateur level due to pressures of team selection, the demands of high training loads, conflicts, and uncontrollable events such as biological changes and injuries. Along with this are the internal demands caused by the pressures put on one’s self (Gerber et al., 2018). The internal stems from the pressure which then invoked consequences dependent on the appraisal process Gerber et al, 2018). Stress in sport can lead to burnout syndrome because the athlete has risky traits such as perfectionism, a lack of coping strategies, or a lack of multidimensional personality (Gerber et al., 2018).

Models and theories can be formed in both cognitive and emotional processes as well as biologically focused models. The most influential cognitive response-oriented by a trauma response and highlights the significance of beliefs and emotions linked about the world and themselves. It can also be associations of reminders of linking or thinking of the event through cognition, physiological and behavioral response (Ozer & Weiss, 2004). This can be seen through previous assumptions being shattered due to the event; thus, the world is not safe this then makes the victims thinking of the world needs to be adapted so the shattered assumptions can be made sense of and integrate the event. This can then create avoidance and intrusion to arise, which is usually painful as it requires remembering the trauma and the accompanying distress (Ozer & Weiss, 2004). Recovery doesn’t begin for this process until the issue can be tolerated without avoidance or being emotionally overwhelmed (Ozer & Weiss, 2004). Cognitive formation comes later on when the memory is invoked, this then creates links to information about the event a raises cognitive, affective, physiological, and behavioral responses. This is due to only the network being activated setting all the others off, because of this fear is invoked which means continued symptoms and repetition. Recovery for this doesn’t occur until the individual builds enough strength that associations to network components are decreased and a mixture of desensitization and substitution occurs. (Ozer & Weiss, 2004). Biological factors focus on psychophysiological arousals like reminders such as sounds, images, and scripts (Ozer & Weiss, 2004). Biological factor generates the feeling of fear which then in cause creates the flight or fight response. Athletes can also be heavily affected throughout their careers with stress. Along with the internal models for athletes discussed earlier, there is also a cognitive model of stress for an athlete faces stress when they are faced with harm, loss, threats, or challenges when this occurs actions happen between the individual and the environment, these actions indicate a balance of forces when can exceed the individual’s resources (Gerber et al., 2018). This then can end in negative consequences if they don’t meet or neutralize the demands (Gerber et al., 2018).

Looking for symptoms in someone that may be affected by stress is one of the hardest things as physically they could look perfectly fine however mentally they could be really struggling. Physical symptoms can often be missed or seen as occurring because of something else happening or going on around the individual. Physical symptoms can be however be some of the easiest to point out when looking to see if someone is stressed. However, the mental symptoms are not easily seen unless the individual opens up and expressed what they are feeling. Some physical symptoms include sweating, dilated pupils, and increased inspiration (Headspace, 2019). Mentally some of the early symptoms include struggling to concentrate and feeling overwhelmed (headspace, 2019), when this starts to occur it is the best time to seek help to assist with ensuring the issue doesn’t grow bigger. Conversely, symptoms will differ from person to person and dependant on what is causing their stress. Post-traumatic stress disorder has several different symptoms including involuntary re-experiencing of trauma such as nightmares or intrusive thoughts, avoidance of reminders and numbing of responsivity such as not being able to have feelings of love and increased arousal including difficulty sleeping and concentrating, exaggerated startle response, and being hypervigilance (Ozer & Weiss, 2004). In severe events that cause stress, the fight or flight response can play a large role. This occurs due to the need for survival, Harvard Medical School (2018) explains that it happens due to hormonal changes and physiological responses to aid someone to fight for their life and safety of fleeing the environment for safety. Athletes are some of the most common people to endure stress as it is what they make their money to live off of. Athletes with a low mental toughness are more likely to fall into stress due to it causing perfectionism, selection worries, and the pressure to meet the goal they have set (Gerber et al., 2018). Furthermore, if resilience is not present in the athlete this may lead to a mental health issue due to the high amount of stress the athlete is surrounded by Gerber et al., 2018).

To conclude stress is a very broad subject that involves so much with the human brain’s responses and the person’s surroundings due to a certain event. Almost everyone will experience some form of stress in their life whether is general day-to-day stress, stress from work or school to meet a deadline, or get a certain mark. Or some form of severe stress like post-traumatic stress disorder whereas during the event provokes the flight or fight response or an elite athlete dealing with the stress of competition of dealing with the worries of not being selected in a team, which could lead them to burnout syndrome that could, in the long run, see them drop out of their sport and be left with nothing. All of these can leave lasting impacts on someone’s life either negatively or positively.

Introduction

The term cognitive dissonance which is associated with Leon Festinger came into existence in 1957. It is used to describe a psychologically disturbing state or imbalance that occurs when there is inconsistency about various cognitions on a thing. The most common examples of inconsistent cognitions are the awareness that smoking is harmful to the health, the belief that it is pleasurable and the urge to smoke.

Cognitive dissonance motivates actions to reduce dissonance. Cognitive dissonance theory argues that individuals possess cognitive elements about themselves, their past behavior, their beliefs and attitudes and their environments. Consonance is said to occur when one cognitive element follows from another.

If one does not follow another, they are said to be dissonant and this creates psychological tension referred to as cognitive dissonance. Since cognitive dissonance is associated with psychological disturbances, individuals change the dissonant cognitive elements to reduce dissonance. Cognitive dissonance takes place after individuals make decisions and before efforts to reduce dissonance are made.

Analysis

Most people ask themselves whether the qualities or characteristics of services can influence the possibility of cognitive dissonance. This can be addressed by looking at some of the things that characterise services. They include intangibility, inseparability, lack of faith and perishability. It is believed that these characteristics of services, the marketing problems that emerge and marketing strategies used in dealing with problems encountered cause cognitive dissonance among consumers of services

Intangibility leads to lack of protection through patents and makes it difficult to display or communicate services. These problems do not only make marketers uncomfortable but also the consumers. It is more difficult to evaluate services than it is to evaluate goods. As consumers purchase services, they face more risks than the ones they face when purchasing consumer goods. Intangibility therefore increases the difficulty of making the decision to purchase and the perceived risks involved in the process of purchasing .

Inseparability poses a challenge in that it forces the customer to be involved in production. It is also a problematic idea in that once customers get involved in production; it becomes difficult to produce services on a mass scale at a central location. In addition, the provider is seen as the service itself, something which is disadvantageous. Dissatisfaction as a result of the services received causes customers to feel responsible for the problem.

This is however different when they purchase the goods. Customers play an important role in satisfactory delivery of the service. As a result, they may have more complaints with regard to services than the goods. Special requests by customers may also be associated with varying prices for the same product. Such problems are believed to cause variability in the type of services the customers get thus initiating cognitive dissonance.

Perishability implies that it is not possible to keep inventories of services. Charging different prices to different customers is often the strategy used by marketers to avoid losing revenue. In addition, they use contests, coupons and premiums. An increase in the variability of service prices which is a marketing strategy used to respond to perishability increases the likelihood of cognitive dissonance among consumers of perishable goods.

Although cognitive dissonance has been discussed in different types of literature, it does not have a reliable scale to measure it. However, it can be assessed using a 22-item scale immediately after purchase. In the past, different indirect measures have been used to find out the occurrence of cognitive dissonance. In addition, more direct measures such as physiological measures have also been used.

The process of developing a scale for measuring cognitive dissonance starts with an exploration of the cognitive dissonance domain. Since there are various definitions and distinctions of the concept, researchers have attempted to develop a scale that can measure both the cognitve and emotional aspects of dissonance in the post purchase and pre-use phase of consumption.

The first stage in the development of the scale is the scale item generation. This involves generating a total pool of more than hundred dissonance items from exploratory research involving four focus groups with consumers. The validity of the content is then assessed by consumer behavior experts who are given the emotional and cognitive definitions of dissonance used in the study.

During the process of scale development, the adequacy with which a specified domain of content is sampled is a major consideration. Scale item generation is followed by the first stage of data collection and purification. Since the first stage alone is not enough, it is followed by the second stage of data collection and purification.

These processes are believed to establish important facts associated with cognitive dissonance. Dissonance follows a personal decision but may take place throughout the whole process of decision making and may never disappear completely. Its presence, magnitude and effects should be studied in all stages of the decision making process .

Consumer behavior is usually an interesting area to focus on. It involves a clear understanding of the psychology of the buyer and external influences such as culture, reference groups, family and social class. However, it is fortunate that there is basic knowledge about consumer behavior that exists and can be used by industries to make important decisions. Cognitive dissonance theory states that at some points, there are bits of relevant cognitions which may not be consistent with one another.

The theory appears fascinating to most researchers and practitioners since it presents marketing implications which appear to contradict tradition. For instance, advertising is intended at converting potential customers into buyers and once sales are made, the business comes to an end. Dissonance theory on the other hand implies that the purpose of advertising starts after a consumer buys the product.

Advertising only facilitates the attempt to rationalize the choice by the attractiveness of the brand the customer chooses. For instance, companies that advertise their goods are believed to make more sales since reading advertisements instigates the buying behavior.

However, the dissonance theory predicts otherwise by arguing that the buyers of a product tend to read advertisements more often than those who do not buy the product. According to cognitive dissonance theory, when one brand is chosen more by customers, its rank position goes upward while the rejected brand goes downwards (Oshikawa, 1969).

Conclusion

There is the need for more research to be conducted on the area of cognitive dissonance and the ever increasing importance of services. Services have been impacting the world economy in an enormous manner. Earlier reasearchers have also indicated the need to conduct more research on cognitve dissonance. They argue that it is of great concern since majority of consumers exhibit some form of dissonance occasioned by many factors.

References

Oshikawa, S. (1969) can cognitive dissonance theory explain consumer behavior? Journalof Marketing, 33(4), 44-49.

Kansal, P., & Bawa, A. (2008) Cognitive Dissonance and the Marketing of Services: Some Issues. Journal of Services Research 8(2), 32-51.

Sweeney, J. (2000). Cognitive Dissonance after Purchase. Psychology and Marketing , 17(5), 369-385.

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance refers to the discomposure that is triggered when one is unable to choose from contradictory views. It occurs in many real life situations where an individual’s behavior conflicts with integral beliefs to his or her self-identity.

When a conflict arises between belief and behavior, something should change in order to reduce or eliminate the dissonance (McConnell & Brown, 2010).

Control

There are various strategies that one should apply to minimize cognitive dissonance. This includes paying attention to supportive beliefs that outweigh the dissonant behavior or belief (Fiske, 2010).

It also entails the reduction of the utility of the conflicting belief. The other aspect is the adjustment of the conflicting beliefs to align them with other beliefs or behavior. Cognitive dissonance plays an important role in making judgments, decisions, and in evaluations (Egan, Santos & Bloom, 2007).

Arguments on the Impact of Cognitive Dissonance

There are two theories related to cognitive dissonance. This includes the theory of cognitive dissonance by Festinger and Carlsmith. The other one is the self-perception theory by Daryl Bem. Of the two, Festinger and Carlsmith have a strong argument on the impact of cognitive dissonance.

In self perception theory, Daryl Bem argued that people develop their attitudes by observing their own behavior. This theory does not mention that people experience dissonance, which they later seek to relieve (Nier, 2010).

This adds marks to the theory of cognitive dissonance and makes it clear that the self-perception theory cannot account for all the laboratory findings by itself (Sanderson, 2009).

In the theory of cognitive dissonance, dissonance is held as an unpleasant tension or a negative drive state, which the individual is motivated to reduce. In one of Festinger and Carlsmith’s experiments, some participants were bribed with one dollar and were asked to lie to another participant about how enjoyable the boring task was.

They gave in and rated the task for its enjoyment. There were inconsistencies noted with respect to their attitudes that led to dissonance. The dissonance was noted in the distress of the participants while lying. The other group that was not bribed had an obvious external justification for their behavior and thus suffered less dissonance (Nier, 2010).

The theory of cognitive dissonance is well armed to account for any or all laboratory findings by itself. The literature supports the existence of cognitive dissonance. Psychologists have incorporated dissonance into the basic studying processes. The theory of cognitive dissonance has helped students by motivating them in studies (Martinie, Olive & Milland, 2010).

In Aronson and Carlsmith’s experiment, the children refused to play with the toy. This was the case even after the withdrawal of the threat. In an experiment by Jack Brehm, cognitive dissonance is shown by the 225 female students as they were making a difficult decision.

Still, after one makes a choice between two things, one feels that there is something good about the rejected choice. He or she suffers the opportunity cost of rejecting it. In such a case, the opportunity cost is the dissonant.

As suggested by the theory, the research by Aronson and Mills in social psychology hold that dissonance is aroused by an occurrence of an unpleasant activity (Nier, 2010).

There is a very good example showing cognitive dissonance among smokers. It has been established that cigarette smoking leads to cancer, and smokers are aware of the risk.

Relating this issue with the theory of cognitive dissonance, it can be noted that smokers experience dissonance given their urge to smoke is threatened by the reality that smoking is harmful to their health. The above research and experiments support the theory of cognitive dissonance.

References

Egan, L. C., Santos, L. R., & Bloom, P. (2007). The origins of cognitive dissonance: Evidence from children and monkeys. Psychological Science, 18, 978-983

Fiske, S. T. (2010). Social beings: A core motives approach to social psychology. Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley.

Martinie, M., Olive, T., & Milland, L. (2010). Cognitive dissonance induced by writing a counterattitudinal essay facilitates performance on simple tasks but not on complex tasks that involve working memory. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 587-594.

McConnell, A. R., & Brown, C. M. (2010). Dissonance averted: Self-concept organization moderates the effect of hypocrisy on attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 361-366.

Nier, J. (2010). Taking sides: Clashing views in social psychology. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Sanderson, C. A. (2009). Social psychology. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.

Cognitive dissonance theory generally produces sensational discomfort, which leads to alterations in a particular behavior, belief, or attitude. Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) conducted an intriguing experiment where they requested participants to carry out a run of dull tasks. To tell the waiting participants that the undertaken tasks were actually interesting, each participant was either paid $1 or $20. Nearly all participants decided to go in the antechamber to motivate the confederates that the dull experiment could be fun. The ultimate results showed that when each participant was requested to assess the experiment, every participant who received $1 only rated such boring tasks as more enjoyable and fun than those who got paid just $20 to lie (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2006).

In their findings, the dissonance theorists found that paying only $1 to a participant as a motivation for lying is not sufficient. Thus, participants who received $1 only experienced dissonance. In fact, these partakers could simply overcome the dissonance by trusting that the uninteresting tasks were very pleasurable and motivating. In contrast, reasons for turning the pegs were provided by paying some participants $20, and therefore, there was no dissonance.

According to self-perception theorists’ findings, the participants decide based on their personal feelings and attitudes. When the participants’ internal cues are confusing or very weak, they could effectively put such persons in similar positions as the external observers. Hence, as an alternate explanation for dissonance theory, self-perception theory assumes the observers’ opinions or views by concluding that participants who received $1 ought to have actually enjoyed it since the paid $1 did not justify their acts. Nevertheless, the participants who received $20 to participate in the experiment just did that to get the paid amount.

The findings of the customary cognitive dissonance theory concept postulate the actuality of a drive like an incentive, which aids in maintaining the constancy amongst relevant cognitions. In 1974, Zanna and Cooper developed an attributional context in which the probable dissonance arousal occurrence was investigated and updated. According to their study, the findings indicated that provided an individual is in an induced compliance setting, then arousal posits to occur.

The counter attitudinal performance behaviors ensuing from the presumed arousal were found to make an individual experience dissonance while attempting to reduce it, probably through attitudinal change. If the conditional cues offer reasonable alternatives upon which the person could misattribute such arousal, then the occurrence of subsequent attitude change and dissonance will not take place. A study conducted by Kiesler and Pallak in 1976 confirmed the proposition of dissonance theory that when an individual opts to perform a behavior that is attitude discrepant, it will lead to an aversive arousal state.

While the underlying posited processes by these theories vary, the prediction drawn from all materializes to be similar. For example, individuals in both observe the external environment and the questionable behavior closely. Each of these theories emphasizes the significance of different situational cues. These include the level of financial inducement and freedom of choice as the probable external justification to ensure discrepant attitude behavior is performed (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2006). Further, these theories possess explanatory and rare predictive power since they represent vast attitude change data.

Reference

Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D. & Akert, R. M. (2006). Social Psychology. New Jersey, USA: Prentice Hall.