Cognitive Dissonance Theory Essay

Introduction of the theory – history The founder of cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957), Leon Festinger an American social psychologist has made this theory remarkable in the history of social psychology. It stimulated the well-established rule of reinforcement theory (Aronson, 1992; 1997). In mid-1950s, the reinforcement theory was ascendant in social psychology research. Psychologists were describing social-psychological circumstance through behavioral approaches. To demonstrate, reinforcement theorists explained conformity as an attempt not to feel anxiety while being alone against an unanimous majority in Asch’s well-known conformity experiment (1951). The reward was the comfort feeling of being in agreement with others. In addition,

Many researchers departed from reward-reinforcement based explanations and moved to cognitively oriented explanations, generated from cognitive dissonance theory. It inspired researchers to apply this theory in a broad range of topics such as attitudes toward smoking, condom use and conservation of water and energy (Aronson, Fried, & Stone, 1991; Dickerson, Thibodeau, Aronson, & Miller, 1992; Nel, Helmreich, & Aronson, 1969 as cited in Aronson, 1992, 1997). It also inspired research in a variety of disciplines such as economics, law, philosophy, political science and anthropology. The impact of cognitive dissonance theory continued from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. With a growing interest in purely cognitive processes such as information processes, the popularity of dissonance theory declined. However, the dwindling interest in dissonance theory did not have a long run. Motivational processes were combined with cognitive processes in mini-theories, which indicate reminiscent of dissonance theory in 1980s (Aronson, 1992;