Social Lecture 6: Consistency Theories and Attitude Change So far we have looked at attitude change from a purely pragmatic

point of view; looking at how it is done at the practical level. But as scientists, social psychologists cannot be satisfied with a purely descriptive analysis. Instead, we want to understand the process at a theoretical level. The theories we are going to discuss today are cognitive consistency theories. These theories share the idea that we all strive to maintain consistency between what we believe, and what we do. When our beliefs are inconsistent with each other, or with our behavior, then a state of tension results which leads us to try to bring our attitudes and behavior back into consistency again. These theories argue that a good deal of attitude change can be understood as attempts to maintain or regain cognitive consistency. We will begin with one of the first important cognitive consistency theories. It is called balance theory, and was proposed by Fritz Heider some years ago. The theory will be easiest to understand if we use it to analyze the source-message-audience situation we described in the last lecture. According to balance theory, the source, message and audience form a triad of interconnected elements. These interconnections, or links, represent the relationship, whether positive or negative, between the two elements. For example, suppose our source is a politician, who delivers a message favoring a surtax on pizza delivery, to someone who is strongly opposed to the idea. The relationship between the source and the message is positive if we think the source really believes what he says. The link between the source and the audience is positive if he likes and respects the source, and negative if he dislikes the source. The link is more or less positive or negative depending on how strongly the subject feels about it. Finally, the link between the audience and the message is positive if the audience agrees with the message, and negative if, as in this case, the audience opposes the message. According to balance theory, the amount of attitude change that will take place in this situation depends first on whether or not the triad is balanced; that is, whether this situation is cognitively consistent in the mind of the audience. We can decided that intuitively. Here is a situation in which someone the audience likes and respects advocates a position he disagrees with. This is not balanced, since we would ideally want people we like to agree with us. It is not always clear whether a situation is balanced or unbalanced. Fortunately, there is an easy way of determining that for any triad. Simply multiply the signs of the links together. If the result is positive, the triad is balanced; if the result is negative, the triad is unbalanced. In this case, we have a positive times a positive, which is positive, times a negative, which makes the overall sign of the triad negative, and confirms our earlier intuitive analysis that this particular triad is unbalanced. If the triad is balanced, then there is consistency, and no pressures to change. If the triad is unbalanced, as in our case, then there is pressure to restore balance and consistency by changing the relationships between two or more elements of the triad. In the present case, for example, we could balance the triad in three ways: if the audience thinks the speaker did not really believe his own message; if the audience disliked rather than liked the source; finally, if the audience agreed rather than disagreed with the message. In all three cases the triad would be balanced. Not all of these changes are equally easy or likely. It is hard to accept the idea that a person advocating a change in our attitudes doesn't actually believe what he is saying, so that is an unlikely change to bring this triad into balance. Secondly, the difficulty of changing a particular link depends on how strong it is. In our case, imagine that the audience is very positive toweard the speaker, but only moderately negative toward the message. In that case we would expect that attitude change would
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occur, since the link between the audience and the message is the weakest. On the other hand, if the audience's feelings toward the source are only moderately positive, but he is strongly opposed to a tax on pizza, then the link most likely to change is the one between the source and the audience. The theory says that balance would be achieved by having the audience decide that he didn't like the source. After all, we often change our minds about somebody because he disagrees with us on a point that we hold strongly. It is possible that balance could be achieved by changing the link between the speaker and the message. If we are very strongly attached to the speaker, and equally strongly opposed to the message, we may simply argue that he is saying what he is saying not because he believes it, but because of other pressures. Notice that this model nicely deals with the situation mentioned in the last lecture when we discussed the discrepancy between the position advocated by the source and the position currently held by the audience. We said that in general, attitude change increases with discrepancy up to a point, and that point depends on the credibility of the speaker. The greater the ccredibility, the large the optimum discrepancy. In the balance theory, the amount of discrepancy is indicated by the strength of the negative link between message and audience, while the prestige or credibility of the source is indicated by the strength link between the audience and the source. Obviously, the more positive the link between source and audience (the greater his credibility), the stronger the negative link between the audience and the message can be and still produce attitude change. If the strength of the source-audience link is 5+, then any amount of discrepancy up to 4+ will still result in attitude change. If, however, the strength of the audience-source link is only 2+, then any discrepancy over 2+ will lead to rejection of the source rather than a change in the direction of the message. We presented balance theory first because it is relatively simple. It is, however, more complex that our brief explanation might suggest. Nevertheless, it is time to move on to look at two other theories, and how they account for attitude change. So far we have talked about changing attitudes through information in a message. This method changes attitudes by altering our cognitions or beliefs, assuming that changes in feelings and behaviors will follow. We briefly mentioned changing attitudes by arousing emotions that are inconsistent with a our attitude. The reason anyone wants to change our attitudes, is that attitudes determine behavior. We tend to do certain things, and not others, as a result of our attitudes. Our attitude towards a product determines whether we buy and use it. Our attitude towards a politician and his or her position will determine whether or not we vote for him. In fact, we all tend to think of an attitude as being a precursor to behavior: We behave the way we do because of our attitudes. What I want to discuss now is how an attitude may change because of our behavior. This is the sort of counterintuitive situation that our next theory handles very well. That theory is Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory. Like balance theory, cognitive dissonance theory is based on the idea that we strive to maintain consistency between our various attitudes, and between our attitudes and our behavior. When our attitudes and behavior are consistent, we have what is called consonance. If there is inconsistency between two of our attitudes, or between our attitudes and our behavior, then we experience cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state, and there is pressure to reduce or eliminate it. Take the example of someone who smokes, but also believes that smoking is dangerous to his health. Clearly his behavior is inconsistent with his attitude and there will be dissonance. How can this dissonance be reduced or eliminated? The first thing we typically do (unconsciously) is find additional information that helps justify the inconsistency. Well, the smoker might find several facts to reduce his dissonance:
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(1) "I smoke low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes, which reduces the danger to my health." (2) "If I stopped smoking I would eat more, and being overweight is as much of a danger to health as smoking is." (3) "By the time I get cancer from smoking, they will have discovered a cure for it." Well, suppose that all of this does not provide sufficient justification for smoking, what then? This is one of the important points of cognitive dissonance theory: If, after locating all the consonant cognitions he can, there is still insufficient justification for the behavior, then dissonance can only be reduced by changing the attitude. In this case, the smoker's remaining dissonance would be reduced by changing his attitude towards the risks involved in smoking: "The evidence is really not completely clear that smoking is as risky as some people think. Most of the data are correlational, and we know that it is risky to draw causal inferences from correlational data." So here we would have a case in which inconsistency between an attitude and our behavior is resolved by a change in that attitude if sufficient justification for the discrepancy cannot be found. If there are no good reasons for the behavior, then the attitude must change. (Note that it is theoretically possible to eliminate the dissonance by denying unconsciously that the behavior ever took place, but this would be unlikely in normal circumstances. It might, however, be relevant when the behavior was contrary to very strong attitudes, such as a parent who accidentally kills a child through negligence. There might be a tendency here to forget or repress the negligent behavior entirely. But this is a rare case, and is handled by other theories, notably Freud's.) Cognitive dissonance theory had considerable impact because it was supported by a relatively large body of dramatic experimental evidence, which could not easily be accounted for by any other theory. In one study, by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959), subjects were asked to engage in a very boring and repetitive task. At the end of the session, the experimenter confessed that he was in a bit of a bind. His assistant had not showed up, and he needed some help with the next subject in the study who was now in the waiting room. All he had to do was to tell the student that the task was very enjoyable and interesting. (an obvious lie from the subject's point of view). In order to recompense them for their time, the experimenter told them he would pay them for helping him. For one group of subjects the amount offered was $1, while for a second group the amount offered was $20. All subjects agreed to help the experimenter, and went through with the deception of their fellow student. Later, subjects were asked to rate how enjoyable the task really was. Which group would you expect to have the most positive rating of the boring task? According to cognitive dissonance theory (and as it turned out), subjects paid $1 were more positive toward the task than subjects paid $20. The reason is that both groups presumably suffered about the same amount of dissonance, since they had done exactly the same thing: Told someone something that was inconsistent with their real beliefs. In general, we don't like to lie to others. To reduce dissonance, they would have tried to find justification for what they did. Both groups of subjects could use the fact that they were paid as reason for what they did, but it was a better reason for the $20 group than for the $1 group. Therefore the $5 had less justification for lying than did the $20 group. Since they had less justification, and more remaining dissonance, they would have had to change their attitudes toward the task to a greater extent in order to reduce or eliminate the remaining dissonance. This was a case in which the amount of original dissonance was the same in both groups, but the justification available for the action was different. Let's look at another case. In this study by Aronson and Mills (1959), female students were invited to join a discussion group on sex. Sounded interesting. When the volunteers arrived for their first session with the discussion group, they were told that since the group involved frank and open discussion of sex, it
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would be necessary to determine whether they had the necessary candor and openness to contribute to the group. The male experimenter then preceded to give them an embarrassment test. For the MILD group the test consisted of reading aloud five words that were related to sex, but not obscene, such as prostitute, virgin, and petting. For the second or SEVERE group, however, the test consisted of reading aloud twelve obscene words, and two passages from contemporary novels vividly desscribing sexual activity. After this little test, all subjects were told that since the discussion group was already in progress, they could not join in that evening, but would be allowed to listen to the group's discussion over headphones, to get an idea of what it was like, and they could then join in at the next meeting. What they heard was a dreadfully boring and uninteresting discussion. They were later asked to rate just how interesting the discussion was. According to dissonance theory, which group should have rated the the discussion the higher rating? Well, in this case, we have two groups who experience different amounts of dissonance. They have both undergone a trial to participate in a boring discussion group. That creates dissonance. But the dissonance is greater for the SEVERE group that experienced the more embarassing test. Since we can assume that there is no difference between the groups in the amount of justification they can come up with, the SEVERE group will have the most remaining dissonance after all other justification has been exhausted, and will have to reduce it by changing their attitudes towards the group the most. Therefore, the SEVERE group will rate the discussion as more interesting than the easy group. I hope these experiments have made the basic ideas of cognitive dissonance theory clearer. The basic idea is that any discrepancy between our attitudes and our behaviors creates dissonance which must be reduced. When all justification for the inconsistency has been exhausted, any remaining dissonance must be eliminated by changing the attitude. Cognitive dissonance theory was the first major theory to explore the idea that our own behavior can result in attitude change. In the years since it was first proposed, rival theories have developed which appear to be able to account equally well for some or all of the findings generated by work in cognitive dissonance theory. The most successful rival approach is that of our old friend attribution theory, which seems to have supplanted cognitive dissonance theory because it accounts for a broader range of phenomena. We discussed attribution theory as an account of how we infer the causes of someone else's behavior. These same processes seem to be involved when we try to determine why we behaved as we did, especially when our behavior seems to be in conflict with our attitudes or beliefs. We don't need to review attribution theory in any detail, but let's look at how it would account for the results of the two studies we used to illustrate cognitive dissonance theory. According to attribution theory, we look for the casuses of our own behavior in the same way we look for causes of the behavior of others. In the case of the student who lied to a waiting subject, attribution theory would argue that he attempted to decide why he had acted as he did, and when he could not find good external causes for his action, decided he must have said what he did to the waiting student because he really believed it. The extent to which he makes that argument of course depends on the extent of external reasons for the behavior. For subjects paid $20, there is more evidence of external causality than there is for subjects paid only $1. These latter subejcts are therefore more likely to make an attribution to dispositional causes for the behavior. That dispositional attribution involves the statement "I must have found the task relatively interesting, otherwise I would not have lied to the student." This statement by itself involves a change in attitude. Well, that brings us both to the end of our discussion of attitude change, and to the end of the section on social psychology, and to the end of Psychology 1A6. I hope that you found something in what we presented to you that caught your interest. I am only sorry that we had so little time to
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present what we all believe is the most interesting subject one could possible study. I hope that you will carry away with you not so much the individual facts and theories, though that would be nice, but the ways of thinking that characterize not only psychology, but all of the sciences. These habits of logic may be the most important legacy you could take with you, since they will prove useful in a variety of situations you never thought of. I hope that we will see some of you in our upper-level courses, and that some of you will seriously consider joining us in our programme, which is one of the best in Canada. Until then, goodbye and I wish all possible success for you all.

References Aronson, E. and Mills, J. The effect of severity of iniitiation on liking for a group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1959, 59, 177-181. Festinger, L. & Carlsmith, J.M. Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1959, 58, 203-210.

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