Teaching Tip Sheet: Cognitive

Dissonance
Social Psychology Courses

Important Topic in Psychology

Cognitive dissonance theory has a long and esteemed history in social psychology.
As originally formulated (Festinger, 1957), cognitive dissonance is induced when a
person holds two contradictory beliefs, or when a belief is incongruent with an action
that the person had chosen freely to perform. Because this situation produces
feelings of discomfort, the individual strives to change one of the beliefs or behaviors
in order to avoid being inconsistent. Hypocrisy is a special case of cognitive
dissonance, produced when a person freely chooses to promote a behavior that they
do not themselves practice.

Lessons Learned from HIV/AIDS

Research
One example of hypocrisy can occur when a person adopts the role of HIV
prevention educator, encouraging others to use condoms, but does not use them
personally. As many HIV education programs utilize peer educators, this situation
may arise naturalistically quite often.
Two types of studies have been conducted to test the hypothesis that this state of
cognitive dissonance may lead to increased condom use or to altered perceptions of
past behavior on the part of the educator in order to reduce the dissonance. In one
study, Elliot Aronson and colleagues (Aronson, Fried, and Stone, 1991) asked
sexually-active undergraduate volunteers to develop a speech promoting condom
use from a set of facts. Participants were randomly assigned either to deliver the
speech in front of a camera (to "preach") or to silently rehearse the speech but not to
deliver it. Among these groups, participants were also randomized to review
occasions in their past when they had unprotected intercourse (high mindful), or not
to (low mindful), prior to developing the speech. Finally, participants reported their
levels of condom use in the past and reported their level of intention to use condoms
in the future.
Results indicated that participants in the preach/high mindful condition (the hypocrisy
condition) reported the highest levels of previous risk behavior, indicating that the
hypocrisy-induction procedure had "enabled subjects to overcome denial". While
interesting, this finding is not what dissonance theory would predict: these students
should have felt the greatest dissonance-based pressure to under rate their risk. The
intention measure produced a ceiling effect, with participants in all conditions
reporting strong intention to use condoms in the future. Participants were called
three months later and asked to report recent condom use. While many could not be
located, the results were suggestive that the hypocrisy induction had led to increased
condom use compared to the other conditions.
A subsequent study by this group (Stone, Aronson, Crain, Winslow, and Fried, 1994)
used the same procedure to manipulate hypocrisy, and employed measures similar
to those used in the earlier study. In addition, participants were offered the
opportunity to purchase condoms at the end of the session. The investigators
predicted that more participants in the hypocrisy condition would purchase condoms
in an effort to reduce cognitive dissonance by changing their sexual risk behavior.
Results verified this prediction: over 80% of participants in the hypocrisy condition
bought condoms, compared with 30-50% of participants in the other conditions.
Further, hypocrisy participants took significantly more condoms when they
purchased them.
Using a different approach, Jeffrey Kelly and colleagues (1997) compared HIV risk
reduction intervention strategies likely to produce differential levels of cognitive
dissonance among intervention recipients. This study randomly assigned individuals
with severe, chronic mental illness to one of three intervention conditions: a seven-
session cognitive-behavioral sexual risk reduction condition; the cognitive-behavioral
intervention with additional training to act as risk reduction advocates to friends; or a
single-session informational control. One would predict greater behavior change
among those trained as advocates because non-safe behavior would be hypocritical
and should produce dissonance pressure. Results supported this scenario for a
number of theoretical mediators and, more equivocally, sexual behavior change.
These results clearly have important implications for HIV risk reduction interventions
and further, exemplify how basic psychological research can be used to address
important social problems. That efforts to reduce cognitive dissonance may affect the
likelihood that an individual will engage in behaviors that put them at risk of
contracting a life-threatening illness attests to the strength and importance of
dissonance phenomena.

Teaching Strategies
Discussion could be generated concerning why the Aronson et al. study obtained
results for self-reported past risk that were contradictory to the predictions of
cognitive dissonance theory.

Key References
Aronson, E., Fried, C., & Stone, J. (1991). Overcoming denial and increasing the
intention to use condoms through the induction of hypocrisy. American Journal of
Public Health, 81, 1636-1638.
Kelly, J. A., McAuliffe, T. L., Sikkema, K. J., Murphy, D. A., Somlai, A. M., Mulry, G.,
Miller, J. G., Stevenson, L. Y., & Fernandez, M. I. (1997). Reduction in risk behavior
among adults with severe mental illness who learned to advocate for HIV prevention.
Psychiatric Services, 48(10), 1283-1288.
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Stone, J., Aronson, E., Crain, A. L., Winslow, M. P., & Fried, C. B. (1994). Inducing
hypocrisy as a means of encouraging young adults to use condoms. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(1), 116-128.

Author
Ann O'Leary, PhD
Department of Psychology, Rutgers University

https://www.apa.org/pi/aids/resources/education/dissonance