Applying Cognitive Dissonance Theory to Real World Events

In general, people do not like feeling as if their attitudes and beliefs contradict their behaviors because this means there is a "lack of balance among cognitions, or ways of knowing, beliefs, judgments, and thoughts" (West & Turner, 2006, p. 131). According to Cognitive Dissonance Theory, this is a dissonant relationship, and it causes stress and overall unpleasantness (West & Turner, 2006). To relieve this stress, people either change their behaviors or their attitudes and beliefs so there can be a consonant relationship; a consonant relationship is when "two elements are in equilibrium with one another" (West & Turner, 2006, p. 131). A recent news article about the television show "South Park" said creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were angry because Comedy Central would not allow them to show an image of the Islamic prophet Muhammad on their show because Muslims would consider it sacrilegious (Bauder, 2006). In response to being censored, Stone and Parker showed an image of Jesus excreting on President Bush and the American flag (Bauder, 2006). By pushing the limits of televising a potentially offensive image to the public, Stone and Parker created a consonant relationship with their beliefs and attitudes by taking action and showing they should be allowed freedom of speech.

The issue of the news article is free speech. In the article, Peabody awards director Horace Newcomb said South Park's offensiveness "reminds us of the need for being tolerant" (Bauder, 2006, p. 1). It is arguable that while freedom of speech is important, it is just as important to have limits. However, Stone and Parker believe in an all-or-nothing deal, which explains why they go to such great lengths to be offensive (Bauder, 2006). In a nutshell, Cognitive Dissonance Theory applies to the issue of freedom of speech because being censored makes Stone and Parker feel they were being forced to behave in a way that causes dissonance with their beliefs and attitudes. In order to harmonize their attitudes and behaviors, Stone and Parker changed their behavior by showing another offensive image in their show to substitute the Muhammad image. Kearsley (2006) said Cognitive Dissonance Theory is particularly relevant to decision-making. Obviously, Stone and Parker made a decision to defy Comedy Central and in doing so reduced their dissonance.

Professor Mullin (2006, April 27) said Cognitive Dissonance Theory was developed by Leon Festinger; he believed ways to reduce dissonance included preventing it, either through selective exposure, selective attention, selective interpretation or selective retention, or rationalizing after making a decision by listing reasons why it was the right decision. Selective exposure is looking for information consistent with one's current beliefs and behaviors, selective attention is only paying attention to information consistent with one's beliefs and behaviors, selective interpretation is interpreting vague information so it goes along with one's beliefs and attitudes, and selective retention is only remembering information that is consistent with beliefs and behaviors (West & Turner, 2006). According to West and Turner (2006), magnitude of dissonance is the amount of discomfort a person feels and it determines what actions a person will take to reduce dissonance. There are three factors that influence the magnitude of dissonance: importance, dissonance ratio, and rationale (West & Turner, 2006). West and Turner (2006) said importance is the degree of significance of an issue, dissonance ratio is "the amount of dissonant cognitions relative to the amount of consonant cognitions (West & Turner, 2006, p. 135), and rationale is the explanation of why there is an inconsistency between attitudes and behaviors.

In the case of Stone and Parker, deciding to air an offensive image is consistent with their attitudes and beliefs. Stone and Parker have the belief that it is important to have free speech rights and their attitude is they like to exercise their rights, so it makes sense that they behaved in a way that shows they have free speech rights. Stone and Parker do not believe in censorship; it causes them dissonance. Because they were willing to take action to correct this dissonance, their magnitude of dissonance was great. The issue of freedom of speech is important; in the show the character Kyle said "Either it's all OK, or none of it is. Do the right thing" (Bauder, 2006, p. 1). Blanton, Pelham, Dehart and Carvallo (2001) said one reason people may take such bold actions is due to overconfidence. As the "cognitive dissonance associated with feeling uncertain (is) increased, confidence (is) increased in a way that was not warranted by the increases in accuracy" (Blanton, Pelham, Dehart & Carvallo, 2001, p. 382). Stone and Parker felt uncertain about the extent of their freedom of speech rights, so they became more confident about having freedom of speech rights. They may not have been accurate about what freedom of speech rights they had, but they managed to push the limits with the image of Jesus and the American flag.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory explains well what Stone and Parker believe and their attitudes towards freedom of speech. However, it is does not adequately explain their behavior. Although it explains why Stone and Parker would show a possibly offensive image, Cognitive Dissonance Theory is geared more towards persuasion theories and how to use cognitive dissonance to persuade people. In this case, Stone and Parker are neither being persuaded nor trying to persuade anyone; they are merely trying to harmonize their attitudes and beliefs with their behaviors.

Simon, Greenberg and Brehm (1995) said another way to reduce dissonance is through trivialization. The researchers discovered that most scholars believed the most common way to reduce dissonance is through changing one's attitude (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm, 1995). However, they believed that using trivialization to reduce dissonance had been overlooked (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm, 1995). They believed that if given the chance, people would relieve their discomfort by making certain values or issues less important (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm, 1995). In their experiments, the researchers created different scenarios in which people were either forced to change their attitudes or they were allowed to merely trivialize an issue (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm, 1995).

Simon, Greenberg and Brehm (1995) conducted four studies where psychology students had to choose whether or not they supported or opposed their university to have mandatory cumulative finals at the end of each semester. The first study found that "when the preexisting attitude is highly salient, people trivialize the cognitions rather than change their attitudes" (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm, 1995, p. 256). The second study found that people trivialize "when the opportunity to evaluate the importance of the cognitions is presented prior to the opportunity to indicate their attitude" (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm, 1995, p. 256). And the third and fourth studies found that "making important values or issues salient leads to trivialization rather than attitude change" (Simon, Greenberg & Brehm, 1995, p. 256). Overall, trivialization is used to reduce dissonance, and people may even use it more often than they would change their attitudes to create a consonant relationship.

Sultz, Leveille and Lepper (1999) said people rationalize the choices they make. They believed Cognitive Dissonance Theory would "predict only a greater separation with a difficult choice than with an easy choice" (Sultz, Leveille, & Lepper, 1999, p. 41). The researchers conducted an experiment where participants had to judge how appealing eleven posters were to them (Sultz, Leveille, & Lepper, 1999). Once they judged, they were allowed to choose one poster to take home with them (Sultz, Leveille, & Lepper, 1999). Sultz, Leveille and Lepper (1999) wanted to know if after making a difficult choice, the participants would rationalize they had made the better choice to reduce dissonance. They predicted "the amount of dissonance is greater the closer the alternatives are in desirability before the choice is made" (Sultz, Leveille, & Lepper, 1999, p. 44). However, they found that the evaluation of the chosen alternative in a set of alternatives where it was easy to choose a poster rose more than the evaluation of the rejected alternative in a set of alternatives where it was more difficult to choose a poster (Sultz, Leveille, & Lepper, 1999). In a way, this is like minimal justification, which is the idea that one only needs to offer "the least amount of incentive necessary to obtain compliance" (West & Turner, 2006, p. 137). Although this deals more with the persuasion aspect of Cognitive Dissonance Theory, it supports the idea that the poster chosen in a difficult set of choices rose more in evaluation than the rejected poster in an easy set of choices. Minimal justification states that given a situation where the person receives a small reward, that person will justify his or her actions and start to believe what he or she did was the best thing to do, and choosing to do it was a good thing (West & Turner, 2006).

The news article and the empirical studies are similar with how they applied theory because they all explained ways of reducing dissonance. However, there are some differences between the studies and the article because the article merely shows there was a need to take action in order to reduce dissonance whereas the studies found specific ways to reduce dissonance. The studies themselves differed because one study found trivialization was another alternative to reduce dissonance and the second study found that there are different degrees of dissonance and different ways people rationalize to relieve dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory does not apply to all situations, and it does not completely apply to the issue of free speech in the news article. It does not explain why Stone and Parker showed an possibly offensive image of Jesus and the American flag, it merely explains that Stone and Parker had to take some sort of action to reduce dissonance. Some of Cognitive Dissonance Theory's shortcomings are that is applies mostly to persuasion theories; it does not necessarily apply to all instances where people feel dissonance. It does help explain how to persuade people by exploiting their feelings of dissonance, but it does not provide many alternatives for relieving their discomfort. One way to make the theory more applicable to more situations is to include trivialization and rationalization as ways of reducing dissonance in the theory. Another shortcoming of the theory is the coping mechanisms listed in the theory. Although selective exposure, selective attention, selective interpretation and selective retention are effective ways of preventing dissonance, they focus more on attitude changes, and do not allow for behavioral changes.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory is an effective way of explaining why people may either change their attitudes or their beliefs. There are many ways of reducing dissonance; some ways are not as well known as others, but it is important to be open to all options. Overall, it is important to people to reduce their levels of discomfort.

References

Bauder, D. (2006, April 13). 'South park' duo skewers own network. Los Angeles Times,1-2.

Blanton, H., Pelham, B. W., DeHart, T., & Carvallo, M. (2001). Overconfidence as dissonance reduction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37, 373-385.

Kearsley, G. (2006). Explorations in learning & instruction: The theory into practice database. Theory into Practice, 1-2.

Mullin, D. (2006, April 27- May 2). Theories of Cognition and Communication. Class lecture for Communication 89, Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Shultz, R. T., Leveille, E., & Lepper, M. R. (1999). Free choice and cognitive dissonance revisited: Choosing "lesser evils" versus "greater goods." Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 25, 40-48.

Simon, L., Greenberg, J., & Brehm, J. (1995). Trivialization: The forgotten mode of dissonance reduction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 247-260.

West, R., & Turner, L. H. (2006). Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and

Application. (3^rd Edition). Boston: McGraw-Hill.