Page 143 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Unit 7: Perception and Communication

(b) Cognitions may not come in contact with each other - contradictions can go unnoticed. Notes
Behavior may be mindless. For example, we might enjoy a national park - without
realizing we are overtaxing it.
Note: The following relate primarily to counter attitudinal behavior.
(c) Aversive consequences are not perceived. In order for cognitive dissonance to occur,
a product must result from the counter attitudinal behavior. That product is the
bringing about, or possible occurrence, of an aversive event. Aversive event =
something that goes against your self interest, or that you would rather not have
occur.
For example, in a variation of the boring tasks experiment, some subjects were led
to believe they had actually deceived their fellow student, while others thought
they had not deceived them. Only those who thought they had succeeded experienced
dissonance.
For example, in another variation, subjects were led to like or dislike the other
student. The only subjects who changed their attitude about the task were those who
successfully convinced a student they liked.
Note that the consequences need not actually occur; it is the subjects perceptions that
the consequences will result from their actions that is important.
(d) Person must feel personally responsible. If the person feels that environmental
forces caused the action, or that the unwanted events were unforeseeable, they
won’t feel dissonance. How voluntary is the behavior? Were the consequences
foreseeable. Note that foreseeable is not the same as foreseen – if you could have
foreseen it but didn’t, you can feel dissonance.
We close with a commonly proposed alternative to dissonance theory.

7.3.4 Bem’s Self-perception Theory

Says we infer our attitudes from our behavior. There is no tension, rather, behavior just serves
an informative purpose. We calmly observe our behavior, and draw reasonable inferences from
it, just as we do when observing other people.
For example, in the Festinger experiment, those who got $20 would assume their behavior was
forced by the environment. Those who only got $1 would assume they did what they did
because what they said was true.
For example, Bem showed that the results of cognitive dissonance experiments could be
replicated quite well by observers. People read descriptions of the procedures, and predicted
people’s attitudes correctly.

For example, “I must have really been tired, I slept a long time.”
“I must not like him, I was really rude to him.”
“I must really like this course, I studied really hard for the exam.”
It is hard to choose between self-perception and cognitive dissonance theory since both usually
make the same predictions. However, there is evidence that, as c. d. theory predicts, physiological
arousal (that is, tension) accompanies dissonance conditions. Further, when arousal is eliminated
(through the use of drugs or alcohol), attitude change does not occur.
On the other hand, self-perception can explain some things dissonance can’t. For example, when
people are suddenly rewarded for doing something they did before just because they liked it,
they can come to like it less.

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