In my article "The Need for Psychology Understanding,” I discussed how fiction writers need at least a basic understanding of psychology in order to write realistic content, dialogues, characters, and relationships. One such psychological concept is cognitive dissonance. Writers can make use of cognitive dissonance in explaining and/or describing why a character makes certain decisions. It can also be used to explain a character’s thought process so that the reader can gain a better understanding of not only the character but also the decisions that he or she has made and will make in the rest of the story.

Cognitive dissonance is the tension that is created by two opposing thoughts that are psychologically inconsistent (Aronson, 1997). This occurs when an individual engages in a behavior that results in the individual having two different viewpoints or thoughts in regards to the behavior they performed (Aronson, Blanton, & Cooper, 1995). This theory began in 1995 with a psychological experiment conducted by Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith and was later expanded upon by Elliot Aronson (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959; Aronson, Blanton, & Cooper, 1995). Cognitive dissonance plays a large role in regards to attitude and behavior change. The theory supports the belief that the best way to change a person’s attitude with regards to a person or situation is to have the person be exposed to the person or situation on a regular basis which will, in turn, alter the person’s attitude over time (Aronson, 1997). For example, if a store wanted to entice people to like their new recipe for whole wheat bread, even though most of their customers disliked the product the store might give out free samples or reward customers who try the new bread with coupons for other products. Cognitive dissonance could be caused in those who tried the new bread because if they did not dislike it, then it would help soften their view of the product and cause them to be more likely to purchase the product in the future.

External rewards play a role in regards to attitude changes as it has been found that when an individual engages in a task for a low reward or is required to put a lot of effort into the task, then the individual regards the task more favorably due to the cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1961). An experiment conducted by Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills (1959) proved this when college girls who volunteered to join small discussion groups were interviewed with different questions prior to acceptance into an existing group. The study found that the girls whose introduction questions focused on embarrassing topics found the initial meeting more interesting than the girls that were given non-embarrassing questions; even though the first meeting involved the use of intercoms where the girls were unknowingly all listening to the same pre-recorded content (Aronson & Mills, 1959). This experiment showed that the girls who faced the embarrassing interview questions caused them to rationalize the difficulty by believing the meeting was worth it and enjoyable.

References

Aronson, E. (1997). Back to the future: Retrospective review of Leon Festinger's--A theory of cognitive

dissonance. The American Journal of Psychology, 110(1), 127-137. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.proquest.com%2Fdocview%2F224840246%3Faccountid%3D3783

Aronson, J., Blanton, H., and Cooper, J. (1995). From dissonance to disidentification: Selectivity in the

                self-affirmation process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(6), 986–996.

Aronson, E. & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. J. abnorm. soc.

                Psychol., 59, 177-181.

Festinger, L. (1961). The psychological effects of insufficient rewards. American Psychologist, 16(1), 1–

                11. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1037/h0045112

Festinger, L., and Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of

                Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203–211.