The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance: A Current Perspective1

TLDR: The theory of cognitive dissonance as mentioned in this paper has been applied to a wide range of psychological phenomena, such as interpersonal relations or feelings toward a communicator and his communication, and it has been used to explain human behavior.

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on theory of cognitive dissonance. The proliferation of research testing and extending dissonance theory results for the most part from the generality and simplicity of the theory. Although it has been applied primarily in social psychological settings, it is not limited to social psychological phenomena such as interpersonal relations or feelings toward a communicator and his communication. Rather, its domain is in the widest of places—the skull of an individual organism. The core notion of the theory is extremely simple: Dissonance is a negative drive state that occurs whenever an individual simultaneously holds two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent. The very simplicity of the core of the theory is its greatest strength and most serious weakness. Many of the hypotheses that are obvious derivations from the theory are unique to that theory—that is, they could not be derived from any other theory. One of the intriguing aspects of dissonance theory is that it frequently leads to predictions that stand in apparent contradiction to those made by other theoretical approaches, most notably, to a general reward-incentive theory. The implication of the chapter is that dissonant situations are ubiquitous and that man expends a great deal of time and energy attempting to reduce dissonance. It should be obvious that man does many other things as well.