Cognitive Dissonance and Affect: An Initial Test of a Connectionist Account

Abstract

In their connectionist model of cognitive dissonance, Van Overwalle & Jordens (2002) put forward the hypothesis that positive affect increases behaviour-induced attitudes, while negative affect decreases attitudes. In this article, this hypothesised role of affect was tested for two well-known paradigms in the cognitive dissonance literature: free choice and induced compliance. For the free-choice paradigm, we replicated the findings in the difficult-high choice condition of Shultz, Léveillé and Lepper (1999) and additionally induced negative mood. As predicted, negative mood resulted in a more negative attitude compared to no mood induction. For the induced compliance paradigm, we replicated the Linder, Cooper & Jones (1967) dissonance and reinforcement findings and additionally induced opposite mood in the no-choice (reinforcement) conditions. Specifically, we induced positive mood in the low reward condition and negative mood in the high reward condition. Again as predicted, positive mood increased the attitude and negative mood decreased the attitude, resulting in an elimination of the reinforcement effect. Festinger (1957) defined cognitive dissonance as an aversive state produced by inconsistent cognitions that people have about oneself, others or the environment. The tension or arousal produced by this cognitive discrepancy motivates people to reduce dissonance through behavioural change or cognitive restructuring such as attitude change. Several revisions and advancements of cognitive dissonance theory proposed during the last decades emphasised different affective aspects of this dissonant arousal state (for an overview, see Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). One of these theoretical revisions, inspired by the self-perception theory of Bem (1967), was the attributional account proposed by Cooper and Fazio (1984). They suggested that the causal interpretation of the discrepant behaviour motivates dissonance reduction. If a person makes an internal attribution for the aversive consequences of the behaviour, then dissonance arousal will motivate attitude change.

On the Characteristics of the Cognitive Dissonance State: Exploration Within the Pleasure Arousal Dominance Model

“…Perhaps due to these psychometric issues, the Dissonance Thermometer is also not used in a standardized way. The discomfort index is often assessed separately from the rest of the scale (Harmon-Jones, 2000b;Galinski, et al, 2000;Monin et al, 2004;Norton et al, 2003;Vaidis & Gosling, 2011), or measured with different instructions and methods of scoring (Harmon-Jones, 2000b;Monin et al, 2004;Norton et al, 2003;Vaidis & Gosling, 2011), and some researchers alter the index by using only some of the original items (Holland, Meertens & Van Vugt, 2002) or by combining it with other items (Jordens & Van Overwalle, 2005;Matz & Wood, 2005;Pelt & Fointiat, 2018;Priolo et al, 2016). This lack of standardization impairs the comparability of the results and limits their interpretation.…”

Choice-induced preference change and the free-choice paradigm: A clarification

“…The experimenter has collected a set of comparable options to be used as stimuli. Those can be, for instance, holiday destinations (as in Sharot et al 2009Sharot et al , 2010 or artistic paintings and posters (as in Gerard and White, 1983;Jordens and Van Overwalle, 2005;Lieberman et al, 2001;Shultz et al, 1999). Each participant in the experiment is confronted with these options in three different phases.…”