Misattribution of dissonance and behaviour-consistent attitude change.

Abstract

Dissonance theorists have speculated that people who have misattributed dissonance arousal to an external .source may come to question the appropriateness of this attribution. Moreover, they may then be motivated to alter their attitudes. The current study tested this latter notion by having an experimenter discredit the plausibility of an external source after misattribution had presumably occurred. Sixty-four female undergraduates were given a pill described as having either unpleasant side effects or no side effects. Subjects (Ss) then were committed to write counter-attitudinal essays under high-choice conditions. Some Ss were then told that a mistake had been made, and that they had actually been given the other form of the pill. As predicted, Ss who had initially been led to believe that the pill had aversive side effects but were later told that it did not, manifested behaviour-consistent attitude change. Resume Les tenants de la theorie de la dissonance supposent que si Ton associe a tort une cognition dissonante a une source externe, on peut en venir a s'interroger sur la pertinence de l'association. De plus, on peut etre motive par la suite a modifier ses attitudes. On a verifie s'il en etait ainsi avec l'aide d'un experimentateur qui devait nier la plausibilite d'une source externe une fois que l'association erronee aurait ete etablie. On a donne a 64 etudiantes du premier cycle une pilule qui devait occasionner des effets secondaires desagreables ou n'en occasionner aucun. Les etudiantes devaient ensuite rediger des essais dont 1'orientation £tait contraire a leurs attitudes, mais a l'egard desquels elles avaient vraiment l'impression d'exercer leur libre arbitre. On a ensuite avis£ certaines d'entre elles qu'une erreur avait ete conimise et qu'elles avaient en fait re<;u l'autre type de pilule. Comme predit, les etudiantes a qui on avait d'abord laiss£ croire aux effets desagreables pour ensuite les informer du contraire ont manifeste un changement d'attitude conforme au comportement. Research stimulated by Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance theory has demonstrated that people who behave in a counter-attitudinal manner

Do I Know What I’m Doing? Cognitive Dissonance and Action Identification Theory

“…From Beauvois and Joule’s perspectives, these two rationalization processes are mutually exclusive (Gotz-Marchand, Gotz, & Irle, 1974; Simon, Greenberg, & Brehm, 1995) as choosing one of them makes it highly unlikely that the other will also be chosen. Moreover, Joule and Martinie (2008) have put this exclusive switch model of alternate modes of dissonance reduction to the test, using the misattribution paradigm (Fointiat, 1996; Wright, Rule, Ferguson, McGuire, & Wells, 1992; Zanna & Cooper, 1974). Besides this exclusive model of modes of reduction (sometimes referred to as the “all-or-none model”) some researchers support a complementary model (also called “hydraulic model”, Brehm & Cohen, 1962; Fointiat, 1998; Leippe & Eisenstadt, 1994; Stone, Wiegand, Cooper, & Aronson, 1997).…”

Forced Compliance, Misattribution and Trivialization

“…It is worth mentioning that Fointiat (1998) showed that if participants in a misattribution situation did not change their attitude, they were found to use another mode of dissonance reduction, namely act rationalization (Beauvois & Joule, 1996, 1999Beauvois, Joule, & Brunetti, 1993;Joule, 1996). Moreover, in misattribution situations attitude change can occur if counterattitudinal behavior is reintegrated (Higgins, Rhodewalt, & Zanna, 1979), or if participants come to question the appropriateness of the misattribution's source (Wright, Rule, Ferguson, McGuire, & Wells, 1992). In sum, participants in misattribution situations experience cognitive dissonance.…”