Induced hypocrisy is a sequential, two-step, cognitive dissonance procedure that prompts individuals to adopt a proattitudinal behavior. The present meta-analysis of 29 published and nine unpublished induced-hypocrisy studies enabled us to test three key dissonance-related issues. First, is hypocrisy effective in promoting change in behavioral intention and behavior? Our analyses supported the idea that hypocrisy (vs. control) increased both behavioral intention and behavior. Second, does hypocrisy generate psychological discomfort? Results pertaining to this issue were inconclusive due to the small number of studies measuring psychological discomfort. Third, are both steps necessary to generate change? Effect sizes conform to the idea that the transgressions-only condition can increase both behavior and intention. Our meta-analysis raises a number of theoretical issues concerning the psychological processes underlying induced hypocrisy and highlights implications for practitioners.

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that when behavior violates an antismoking injunctive norm, dissonance is aroused, but the injunctive norm constrains how people reduce their discomfort. In Experiment 1, participants with positive or negative attitudes toward public smoking wrote an essay for or against a ban on public smoking. Whereas attitude change occurred for those whose counter‐attitudinal essay supported the antismoking norm, those whose counter‐attitudinal essay violated the antismoking norm did not change their attitudes to reduce dissonance. In Experiment 2, participants who wrote against the ban on public smoking eschewed attitude change in favor of reducing dissonance through trivialization and act rationalization. The discussion focuses on how maintaining social connections makes cognitions resistant to change when dissonance is aroused.

This study investigated the influence of the assessment of the discrepant act on dissonance reduction. In particular, we tested the influence of normative standards on a trivialization of the discrepant act and the assessment of research topic importance. The results suggest that dissonance reduction varies depending on whether the discrepant act is assessed as violating normative standards or not. In the cognitive dissonance state and in the absence of standards, performing a discrepant act leads individuals to trivialize it. However, when individuals perceive that the discrepant act violates normative standards, they reduce cognitive dissonance by overestimating the research topic. This result is interpreted in terms of the avoidance of negative consequences of social control reactions and the protection of self-concept.

In the field of ethical consumption, research in recent years has attempted to explain the gap between principles and actual behaviour. Three experimental studies show that when the contradiction between what individuals say and what they do is made salient in the field of environmental protection, that is to say in a situation of induced hypocrisy, they indirectly reduce the resulting cognitive dissonance by being more altruistic towards associations that act for the environment but not towards humanitarian associations. This effect of induced hypocrisy fades as individuals become less vulnerable to the threat to the self by affirming values that are important to them.

Many health campaigns are designed to reduce dangerous binge drinking and challenge misperceptions of the prevailing drinking norm. For drinkers, this situation is problematic. Information about health risks and statements that only a few people binge drink (low descriptive norm) threaten their self-integrity, so to combat this self-threat and preserve their positive self-integrity, drinkers discredit the message as a coping strategy. Research suggests that this discrediting strategy could be countered with a self-affirmation procedure.In the present study, we attempted to demonstrate the beneficial effects of self-affirmation, and measure just how far it can protect self-integrity. Across three experiments, we found that self-affirmation does indeed reduce discrediting, but only providing there is no normative information in the health message. Individuals prefer the discrediting strategy to selfaffirmation when they are told that few people binge drink among their age group. The theoretical implications for self-affirmation are discussed.