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PubMed2004

Risk information--barrier to informed choice? A focus group study.

OBJECTIVES: To study consumers' information needs for informed choice on colorectal cancer screening, and to develop and evaluate information material that is evidence-based and communicates benefit as well as lack of benefit and risks as natural frequencies. METHODS DESIGN: Focus group study; during a first round consumers' needs and attitudes were surveyed, in a second round the information material was evaluated. The study was carried out in Hamburg, Germany. PARTICIPANTS: 50 women and men, 40 years or older without colorectal diseases. RESULTS: Consumers opted for traditional information that advises and guides them. If consumers were nevertheless given evidence-based information that considers the defined criteria it evoked cognitive dissonance which consumers tried to cope with by devaluating, minimising and not noticing the information. Cognitive dissonance inhibits processing of information. Researchers are confronted with a dilemma to either respect consumers' requests or to facilitate informed choice. CONCLUSION: Cognitive dissonance may be a barrier to informed choice. This should be considered when aiming at communicating risk information.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1999

Critical thinking and belief in the paranormal: a re-evaluation.

This paper evaluates the claim that believers in the paranormal exhibit poor critical thinking ability relative to disbelievers, as manifested in their inability to evaluate the competence of experimental abstracts. It is argued that such differences reported elsewhere (Alcock & Otis, 1980; Gray & Mill, 1990) may be accountable for in terms of the action of cognitive dissonance, or as due to experimental artifacts. A study was conducted which attempted to overcome earlier methodological shortcomings, and which assessed the cognitive dissonance account of differential performance. Altogether, 117 participants were characterized as believers, neutrals or disbelievers according to a pre-measure. Subsequently, each participant was asked to evaluate an abbreviated experimental report which was either sympathetic or unsympathetic to parapsychology. No differences in assessment ratings were found, failing to replicate the claimed effect and supporting an account in terms of artifact. There was a significant tendency for those participants who received a paper which was incongruent with their a priori beliefs to rate it as less competently conducted and analysed than those who rated the congruent paper, in keeping with the cognitive dissonance account.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Some empirical evidence for ecological dissonance theory.

Using Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory as a model, the extension to Barker's ecological theory, referred to as ecological dissonance theory, was developed. Designed to examine the motivational dynamics involved when environmental systems are in conflict with each other or with cognitive systems, ecological dissonance theory yielded five propositions which were tested in 10 studies. This summary of the studies suggests operationally defined measures of ecological dissonance may correlate with workers' satisfaction with their jobs, involvement with their jobs, alienation from their work, and to a lesser extent, workers' conflict resolution behavior and communication style.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2003

Self-consistency for low self-esteem in dissonance processes: the role of self-standards.

The self-consistency revision of cognitive dissonance theory predicts that people with low self-esteem are less likely to experience dissonance arousal compared to people with high self-esteem. Two experiments investigated how the accessibility of different self-standards in the context of a dissonant act activates the consistency role of self-esteem in the process of cognitive dissonance arousal. In Experiment I, after participants wrote a counter-attitudinal essay, priming personal self-standards caused more attitude change for those with high compared to low self-esteem, whereas priming no standards or priming normative self-standards caused the same level of attitude change among both self-esteem groups. Experiment 2 showed that the self-consistency effect for low self-esteem participants only occurred among those who were high in self-certainty when personal self-standards were primed. The importance of self-standards for understanding the role of self-esteem in dissonance processes is discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Academic and clinical dissonance in nursing education: are we guilty of failure to rescue?

The experience of cognitive dissonance in novice clinical nursing students is examined. These students often confront an incongruity between the rule-bound academic ideal of nursing with which they have been prepared and the more flexible, intuition-driven clinical reality they encounter. Without insightful guidance from clinical faculty, the students' response to this dissonance could include disillusionment with clinical nursing practice or devaluation of the academic ideal of nursing. Cognitive Dissonance Theory, the Novice to Expert Model, and the Neuman Systems Model provide insight into this phenomenon and serve as a theoretical foundation for recommended strategies and interventions for optimal response to dissonance between academic ideal and clinical reality in nursing students.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed2002

The two paradigms of persistence.

Persistence refers to the extent to which an individual pursues reinforcement that is no longer available. The most common generalization regarding persistence is the partial reinforcement extinction effect, which states that partial, rather than continuous, reinforcement creates the greatest level of persistence. Although the partial reinforcement effect is the most common effect in humans, exceptions exist, namely the generalized and the reversed partial reinforcement effect. Since the 1930s, psychologists have used 2 general paradigms for studying persistence in humans: the experimental paradigm and the cognitive/individual differences paradigm. For the experimental paradigm, the primary independent variable is the schedule of reinforcement used to establish the behavior prior to the removal of reinforcement. Explanations of persistence from the experimental perspective depend on associative principles derived from various theories of learning. By contrast, the cognitive/individual differences paradigm treats persistence as a function of trait variables, including locus of control and self-esteem, or general cognitive processes, such as cognitive dissonance or social cognition. In this article, the author reviews the status of the current literature on persistence and recommends directions for future research.

Cognition↗
PubMed1998

[How to proceed in the age of increasing antibiotic resistance?].

The authors examined the infection control activity, the quality of basic health care of 6906 patients in 44 praxis. The mass of accomplished treatments was compared with the virtual mass of desirable treatments according to up-to-date considerations. The presumptive purposivity and expectable efficiency of the realised treatments didn't satisfy the justly expected professional claims. The decrease in quality was basically due to the cognitive dissonance (deficiencies of cognition and/or erroneous adoptation of theoretical and practical knowledge) of physicians. The unnecessarily prescribed (polypragmatic) and simultaneously purposeless broad spectrum of antibiotic treatments ran to two-third of the total--mainly in the cases or viral and beta-hemolytic Streptococcal infections; the number of antibacterial treatments was three times more than needed. Better compromise could be reached by the introduction of quality control in the field of infection treatments in the basic health care system. Spreading of the antibiotic resistance cannot be prevented without of quality assurance in the field of infection control and without the wide use of a more reasonable kind of treatment practice.

Bacterial Infections↗
PubMed1997

Environment-behavior relations, behavior therapy and the process of persuasion and attitude change.

The phenomena described by the cognitive dissonance literature, especially to explain attitude change, have important relevance to understanding certain aspects of therapy. Contrary to popular beliefs, these phenomena can be described in behavior-analytic terms. To do so requires an analysis of learning histories that select and maintain consistency in what individuals say and do. An understanding of the environmental variables that produce consistency can then be applied to the kinds of attitude change and stability found in the cognitive dissonance literature that have therapeutic importance.

Attitude↗
PubMed1981

Dissonance and alcohol: drinking your troubles away.

Based on recent evidence supporting the assumption that cognitive dissonance is experienced as an unpleasant emotional state, and further evidence pertaining to the effects of drinking alcohol, it was predicted that among social drinkers, dissonance arousal would increase the amount of drinking and that drinking, in turn, would reduce dissonance and subsequent attitude change. This hypothesis was tested in the first two experiments by having subjects taste rate different brands of an alcoholic beverage--ostensibly to test taste discrimination but in fact to measure the amount of drinking--immediately after dissonance was aroused by having them write a counterattitudinal essay. The effect of drinking on dissonance reduction was assessed by measuring subjects' postattitudes immediately after the drinking task. Both experiments found that although dissonance arousal had little effect on the amount of drinking, whatever drinking occurred was sufficient to eliminate dissonance-reducing attitude change. The second experiment further established that these results occurred for light as well as heavy social drinkers. Evidence that the dissonance-reducing effect of drinking resulted form some effect of drinking alcohol was provided by the finding, in the second and third experiments, that neither water or coffee drinking was sufficient to eliminate attitude change in this paradigm. Both the practical and theoretical implications are discussed. The practical implication is that some forms of alcohol abuse may evolve through the reinforcement of drinking as a means of reducing dissonance; the theoretical implication is that dissonance may be frequently reduced through behaviors that ameliorate the feelings of dissonance without involving cognitive change.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Managing the mixed physician practice.

In general, utilization of health care resources translates into physician income. In both a capitated and a fee-for-service environment, the physician is reimbursed for patient care. The reimbursement structures of these two systems is quite different, however, and this difference creates a perplexing reward system for the physician. This article has two goals: To focus on the decision-making process of physicians in a mixed fee-for-service/HMO environment and the potential for cognitive dissonance in this system. To propose an approach for physician leaders in this setting to not only manage and minimize cognitive dissonance, but also strategically position their group for a successful future.

Capitation Fee↗
PubMed1996

The nurse executive as integrator: creating a field of health caring.

Nurse executives are emerging from a state of cognitive dissonance resulting from conflicts of values and practice from the bedside to the boardroom. Three changes in hospital systems are offering the opportunity to resolve cognitive dissonance and become congruent. These are patient-focused care restructure with multidisciplinary teams, managed care and capitation calling for enhanced clinical management, and the new organizational paradigm characterized as flatter, decentralized, staff empowering, and manifesting new science concepts of self-organization within fields. The nurse executive role becomes that of integrator, pulling together the best practices of nursing and new leadership.

Hospital Restructuring↗
PubMed2005

Contrast and the justification of effort.

When humans are asked to evaluate rewards or outcomes that follow unpleasant (e.g., high-effort) events, they often assign higher value to that reward. This phenomenon has been referred to as cognitive dissonance or justification of effort. There is now evidence that a similar phenomenon can be found in nonhuman animals. When demonstrated in animals, however, it has been attributed to contrast between the unpleasant high effort and the conditioned stimulus for food. In the present experiment, we asked whether an analogous effect could be found in humans under conditions similar to those found in animals. Adult humans were trained to discriminate between shapes that followed a high-effort versus a low-effort response. In test, participants were found to prefer shapes that followed the high-effort response in training. These results suggest the possibility that contrast effects of the sort extensively studied in animals may play a role in cognitive dissonance and other related phenomena in humans.

Awareness↗
PubMed1983

Dissonance arousal: physiological evidence.

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether cognitive dissonance is accompanied by physiological arousal. In Experiment 1, a standard induced compliance paradigm was replicated and was found to produce the expected pattern of attitude change. In Experiment 2, physiological recordings were obtained within the same paradigm. Subjects who wrote counterattitudinal essays under high-choice conditions displayed significantly more nonspecific skin conductance responses than other subjects, but they did not change their attitudes. The results are interpreted as support for viewing dissonance as an arousal process. The results are also interpreted as indicating that the subjects misattributed their arousal to the physiological recording device. The significance of the findings for dissonance theory, misattribution phenomena, and social psychophysiological research methods is discussed.

Arousal↗
PubMed2004

Primary prevention of eating disorders through attitude change: a two country comparison.

Primary prevention of eating disorders though increasing the knowledge base about eating disorders has been ineffectual, and in some cases has had a deleterious effect. The following study compared the efficacy of a classroom intervention using cognitive dissonance and repetition, in Italy and the U.S. In each country, health education classes of tenth grade students (U.S. n = 50, Italy n = 138) were randomly assigned to intervention and non-intervention sections. Subjects in the non-intervention sections received the standard health classes taught by their usual teacher. Students in the intervention sections received five classes taught by a psychologist (in the U.S.) or a psychiatrist (in Italy) specializing in eating disorders. Subjects in the intervention group also completed a cognitive dissonance essay designed to persuade a same sex friend that self-esteem should not be based solely on appearance. Intervention and non-intervention groups completed questionnaires before and after the intervention as well as at the end of the semester. The U.S. group had significantly higher Perfectionism scores and significantly lower Drive for Thinness scores (DT) than the Italian group. There was a significant decrease in DT for the intervention group in Italy. The intervention did not affect any other measures in the Italian group. There are clearly ethnic differences in comparing these two samples that may account for the baseline differences in eating attitudes. However, despite otherwise differing profiles, girls from each country had a desire to diet. This program appears to have made some impact in changing the attitudes away from a desire for thinness for Italian subjects. It is possible that many attitudes about weight, shape, and eating are established in this age group and a younger target audience would be more appropriate in the future.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1986

Physiological arousal, dissonance, and attitude change: evidence for a dissonance-arousal link and a "don't remind me" effect.

Two experiments replicated and extended research by Croyle and Cooper (1983) indicating that cognitive dissonance involves physiological arousal. In Experiment 1, subjects wrote counterattitudinal essays under conditions of high or low choice, and, to assess arousal effects owing to effort, with or without a list of arguments provided by the experimenter. In high-choice conditions only, and regardless of effort, subjects showed both arousal (heightened galvanic skin response) and attitude change. Arousal, however, did not decline following attitude change. The more effortful task (no arguments provided) produced increased arousal but not greater attitude change. In Experiment 2, the opportunity to change one's attitude following a freely chosen counterattitudinal essay was manipulated. As in Experiment 1, arousal increased following the essay but did not decline following a postessay attitude change opportunity. When subjects were not given an attitude change opportunity, however, arousal did decline. Thus, dissonance seems to create arousal, but attitude change sustains rather than reduces the arousal. It is suggested that if dissonance is a drive state, drive reduction typically may be accomplished through gradual cognitive change or forgetting.

Arousal↗
PubMed2004

College-student smoking: an initial test of an experiential dissonance-enhancing intervention.

This study was designed as an initial test of whether an experiential learning intervention, based on cognitive dissonance theory, would increase college-student smokers' intentions to quit smoking. One hundred forty-four college smokers were asked to prepare educational videos about (1) the risks of smoking or (2) the feasibility of quitting (in a 2 x 2 factorial design). Main effects for the experimental manipulations were not found. However, an interaction suggested that intentions to quit smoking were increased by either manipulation, but that the effects were not additive. In addition, risk perceptions were increased by the health-risk manipulation alone, but not when quitting feasibility was also targeted. As predicted, smoking history and smoking-related expectancies were both correlated with magnitude of dissonance. Moreover, dissonance magnitude was associated with the reported use of dissonance-reducing strategies, including intending to quit smoking and believing that tobacco use was out of their control due to nicotine addiction. The findings from this initial analogue study suggest that attitudes and intentions to quit smoking can be influenced by a brief experiential intervention.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

[Why do so many arts and social scientists have huge difficulties accepting (evolutionary)biologically based opinions for gender differences].

The contribution deals with the wide-spread rejection of (evolutionary) biological founded statements concerning sex differences by social sciences and arts, which are not based on objective objections, but are ideologically justified. The starting point therefore is to be seen in the justified critique of the biological legitimized racism and sexism in the sixties and seventies of the last century. The continuation of this rejecting position, though the modern biology has changed itself essentially, can be explained psychologically by Festinger's "Theory of Cognitive Dissonance".

Art↗
PubMed1989

Motivational basis of dissonance: the singular role of behavioral consequences.

This article provides the first empirical test of the idea that discrepancy is not needed in order to arouse cognitive dissonance. Dissonance was aroused when Ss felt responsible for some aversive consequence, regardless of whether their behavior was consistent (writing a proattitudinal essay) or inconsistent (a counterattitudinal essay) with beliefs. The data demonstrate that in both situations, dissonance is aroused. This result, based on the dissonance motivation model of Cooper and Fazio (1984), strongly suggests that the motivational basis for dissonance is the felt responsibility for aversive consequences. The theoretical implications of this outlook are explored, including a discussion of the many ways that it expands the applicability of dissonance theory.

Adult↗