Leon Festinger And Cognitive Dissonance

Leon Festinger introduced the concept of cognitive dissonance as a psychic tension in 1957. He studied the decision-making process in his experiment with cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is a feeling that arises from a conflict between a person’s thoughts, beliefs, and values ​​and his or her behavior. Cognitive dissonance comes from the incompatibility of thoughts, which creates considerable discomfort in people.

According to Festinger, this tension forces a person to create new ideas or skills to ease the tension. They often complement a person’s belief system. This theory is related to decision making. Whenever we decide to do something that is against our beliefs, we take advantage of several strategies that remove that tension.

Leon Festinger, creator of a revolutionary experiment

Leon Festinger was an American social psychologist born in New York in 1919. His theory of cognitive dissonance is particularly important in social psychology, especially in the areas of motivation and group dynamics.

The theory is based on the fact that we humans are aware of our actions, and whenever we do something that is contrary to our perceptions, we need to alleviate the resulting dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance test

The cognitive dissonance experiment, designed by Leon Festinger and his colleague Merrill Carlsmith in 1957, was conducted on students. It consisted of the following steps:

• One student was assigned boring assignments. These tasks were equally repetitive and uninteresting. However, the purpose of the experiment was not to evaluate the performance of these tasks.
• Upon leaving the room, the student was asked to convince the next participant that the experiment had been fun. So he was asked to lie.
• There was a reward for lying: the researchers offered $20 to half of the students, while the rest were only offered $1.
• The subject who was waiting to enter the room (along with the researchers) told the student who left the test situation that his friend had done the test the previous week and said it was boring.
• The students lied while the researchers observed them. Investigators noted how the lie was justified.

Cognitive dissonance manifested itself in those students who had agreed to lie about one dollar. They had to convince themselves that the experiment had been fun in order to alleviate the internal contradiction it caused.

Why? Because the reward wasn’t big enough to make the lie feel “good”. When they justified their actions, they seemed much tighter than the $20 group. The group that received more money was much more natural and indifferent.

Contradiction caused by lying

Numerous conclusions can be drawn from the cognitive dissonance experiment. The twenty-dollar group knew very well that the experiment had been boring. However, this group had good reason to say otherwise. But this was not the case for the group that received only one dollar. Here it was seen how the subjects tried to convince themselves of the fun of the experiment in order to alleviate the tension caused by the insufficient reward.

Conclusions of the Leon Festinger experiment

In the final stage, after lying, the researcher who led the experiment asked participants if the experiment had really been fun for them. The group members who received twenty dollars honestly expressed that the experiment had not been fun for them. Paradoxically, the underpaid group told the lie again, and many expressed a willingness to repeat the experiment.

Consequences of cognitive dissonance

• Avoidance. Individuals tend to avoid stimuli that could lead them back to their original state of dissonance. They avoid situations, people, thoughts, and places where they would have to face conflict again.
• Applying for approval. As a result of the strategies utilized, a person also seeks the approval of third parties for his or her story and the reasons that led him or her to fabricate them, as he or she must justify his or her behavior in some way.

• Comparison. People with dissonance tend to compare themselves to other people to justify their actions.

Cognitive dissonance today

60 years have passed since Leon’s experiment, and the subject continues to raise questions and controversies. It has been proposed, for example, to justify defense mechanisms that occur in a number of mental illnesses. It is also used in the psychosocial analysis of criminals and other people who justify their actions by hiding within a group or behind the phrase “we were told”.

The power of insurance and acquittal

The experiment also questions people’s tendency to seek mental relief. The contrast between social norms and our daily decisions puts us to experience cognitive dissonance more often than we would like. Problems arise when we adopt bad operating models when we want to get rid of that tension.

Knowing about cognitive dissonance also helps identify it when it hits the spot. It can also help measure the impact that the information you receive from your reference group has on you. It also allows you to observe how the norms that make it up condition your way of acting, thinking, and feeling.

Cognitive dissonance also challenges you to reflect on your values, causing you to change yourself and the way you act.