The psychophysiological correlates of cognitive dissonance

This preregistered study uses a combination of physiological measures to explore both the activation and reduction components of cognitive dissonance theory. More precisely, we use skin conductance to identify dissonance arousal, a short-term affective response to counter-attitudinal stimuli, and then use heart rate variability to measure dissonance reduction, which reflects longer-term patterns of emotional regulation and information processing. Our preliminary tests find weak evidence of dissonance arousal and no evidence of dissonance reduction using this physiological approach. We consequently reconsider (albeit optimistically) the use of physiology in future work on cognitive dissonance. We also discuss the implications of our findings for selective exposure and motivated reasoning.

Transient Value Refinements during Deliberation Facilitate Choice

After deciding among options, decision makers exhibit an increased positive evaluation of the chosen option coupled with a decreased evaluation for those rejected, resulting in a spreading of alternatives (SoA). There has been a longstanding debate as whether SoA results from post-choice dissonance reduction, or whether it plays an instrumental role in reaching a decision. Here we introduce a novel procedure that measures SoA implicitly during the process of choice. Participants provided simultaneous value ratings for the options on offer on each trial before finalizing their choice. The results clearly demonstrate that SoA occurs before choices are finalized. Furthermore, SoA is instrumental to the choice process: it enhances choice consistency and confidence and reduces response time. The SoA generated during choice is transient in nature, partially regressing toward baseline shortly afterwards.

Novel Modes of Dissonance Reduction: Justification of Support for Donald Trump

Two studies take a dissonance theory perspective to understanding why individuals support Donald Trump as president of the United States despite accusations that he has engaged in sexual misconduct and illegal activity. Participants were randomly assigned to a dissonance condition in which they read an essay about Trump’s sexual misconduct or a neutral essay. They provided open-ended responses to 2 questions that asked why participants support Trump and how they justify their support given allegations against him. These responses were coded by a judge who was blind to condition. Study 1 was conducted 2 months before Trump was impeached. In this study, 7 categories of reasons for supporting Trump, and 3 categories of justification despite allegations, were identified. A comparison of conditions showed that participants in the dissonance condition were more likely to state that they disbelieved the accusations and less likely to state that Trump’s policies matter and not his personal life. Study 2 was conducted 2 days after the vote to impeach Trump, when high dissonance would be expected for all Trump supporters. Results replicated the categories of support and justification from Study 1, plus additional categories. A quasi-experimental comparison of Studies 1 and 2 showed that those in Study 2 (soon after impeachment) were more likely to state that they support Trump because he truly cares about America and because of his stance on specific policies and issues. The current results suggest that individuals in a naturalistic context may choose a number of different strategies for reducing dissonance, including denying the veracity of information, increasing the importance of consonant information, making cognitions irrelevant, and directing attention to the immoral acts of others. These results are unlike those of most laboratory research on dissonance theory, in which participants are given only one dissonance reduction opportunity.

Radicalization as cause and consequence of violence in genocides and mass killings

Major theories of participation in genocides and mass killings offer seemingly opposing explanatory logics for how and why individuals come to commit violence. The long-standing consensus on “perpetrator ordinariness” contrasts with explanations that continue to highlight the prior, intensely held negative attitudes and beliefs about the victim group. I propose a theoretical reconciliation. Radicalization would be better theorized not only as an antecedent to the act of violence but also as a consequence of it. Killing transforms individuals. A well-established point in social psychology, not only do attitudes drive behaviors, but behaviors also shape attitudes. Some perpetrators dehumanize their victims, internalize exclusionary ideologies, and otherwise develop negative sentiments toward their victims following their participation in the violence. Attitudinal shift becomes a form of dissonance-reduction. Perpetrators come to espouse radical beliefs in order to justify their actions. This revised theorization has implications for our understanding of (1) perpetrator heterogeneity: individuals must vary in their vulnerability to radicalization, and (2) non-instrumental violence: why we often observe the infliction of gratuitous pain and suffering on victims. I re-interpret testimony of perpetrators from Rwanda, the Holocaust, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Cambodia to support the article’s central theoretical proposition.

Rationalization is irrational and self-serving, but useful

Rationalization through reduction of cognitive dissonance does not have the function of representational exchange. Instead, cognitive dissonance is part of the “psychological immune system” (Gilbert 2006; Mandelbaum 2019) and functions to protect the self-concept against evidence of incompetence, immorality, and instability. The irrational forms of attitude change that protect the self-concept in dissonance reduction are useful primarily for maintaining motivation.

Choosing what we like vs liking what we choose: How choice-induced preference change might actually be instrumental to decision-making

ABSTRACTFor more than 60 years, it has been known that people report higher (lower) subjective values for items after having selected (rejected) them during a choice task. This phenomenon is coined “choice-induced preference change” or CIPC, and its established interpretation is that of “cognitive dissonance” theory. In brief, if people feel uneasy about their choice, they later convince themselves, albeit not always consciously, that the chosen (rejected) item was actually better (worse) than they had originally estimated. While this might make sense from a pragmatic psychological standpoint, it is challenging from a theoretical evolutionary perspective. This is because such a cognitive mechanism might yield irrational biases, whose adaptive fitness would be unclear. In this work, we assume that CIPC is mostly driven by the refinement of option value representations that occurs during (and not after) difficult choices. This makes CIPC the epiphenomenal outcome of a cognitive process that is instrumental to the decision. Critically, our hypothesis implies novel predictions about how observed CIPC should relate to two specific meta-cognitive processes, namely: choice confidence and subjective certainty regarding pre-choice value judgments. We test these predictions in a behavioral experiment where participants rate the subjective value of food items both before and after choosing between equally valued items; we augment this traditional design with reports of choice confidence and subjective certainty about value judgments. The results confirm our predictions and provide evidence against the standard post-choice cognitive dissonance reduction explanation. We then discuss the relevance of our work in the context of the existing debate regarding the putative cognitive mechanisms underlying cognitive dissonance reduction.