Cognitive Dissonance Study

Most people believe that they see the outside world the way it really is. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological process that occurs when people actions negate their beliefs by acting contrary to their attitude with little justification. There is research that has progressively demonstrated that a person's internal state can influence his or her perceptual experience of the outside world. Cognitive Dissonance and the Perception of Natural Environments conducted a study that demonstrates that the motivation to resolve cognitive dissonance affects the visual perception of physical environments. The researchers wanted to know if the effect of cognitive dissonance could affect visual perception. When attitudes and actions contradict each other …show more content…
The group were split into two: freedom of choice and experimenter choice. The freedom of choice group where they were told that they could do other tasks in lieu of the emotion test, even though the experimenter didn't say what they were. The students were told that they would walk across a busy quadrangle dress in a Chiquita banana outfit and walk from one statue to the next and after report about their emotions and the distance from the statues. The experimenter told them they would prefer that they do the emotions test and asked the students if they would choose the emotions task and signed a waiver. The experimenter choice group found out that other tasks were available but a supervisor had selected the emotion task for them to do. They signed a waiver saying that they did not choose the emotions task. They also had a controlled group where they weren't told about the outfit until they reached the quadrangle or about options to it. After each group completed the task they were shown what 1foot looks like and asked them to estimate the distances between the statues. Also, they were asked to pick a number on a 9 point scale how thy felt that they had chosen to perform the emotion …show more content…
The perception of natural environment is basically based on how you view the environment, whether you imagined or completed a task. The remaining question I think is important is if they as their subjects to do a task that they never done before or asked the subjects did they knew anything about Chiquita banana, only to eliminate biases about that task. I think that the findings are optimistic because with more studies and better technology, results can be more accurate and understanding. The more important question remaining is perception of natural environment differ between the sexes pertaining to certain