A painful reminder: the role of level and salience of attitude importance in cognitive dissonance.

Autor: Starzyk KB; Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. starzyk@cc.umanitoba.ca, Fabrigar LR, Soryal AS, Fanning JJ
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Personality & social psychology bulletin [Pers Soc Psychol Bull] 2009 Jan; Vol. 35 (1), pp. 126-37.
DOI: 10.1177/0146167208325613
Abstrakt: In his seminal book, L. Festinger (1957) emphasized the role of attitude importance in cognitive dissonance. This study (N = 308) explored whether people's use of dissonance reduction strategies differs as a function of level of attitude importance and whether the personal importance of an attitude is salient. Results showed that level and salience of attitude importance interacted to affect high-choice (HC) participants' tendency to use attitude change and trivialization to reduce dissonance. When HC participants were not reminded of the personal importance of their attitude (i.e., it was not salient), they changed their attitudes equally irrespective of attitude importance, but engaged in greater trivialization with increasing levels of importance. In contrast, when attitude importance was salient, HC participants changed their attitudes less with increasing attitude importance and showed no evidence of trivializing under any level of importance.
Databáze: MEDLINE