Deception In Cognitive Dissonance Research

Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) is an uncomfortable feeling created by a situation that involves conflicting behaviors or ideas. In the example given in class (Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W., & Schachter, S., 1956) aliens would come and rescue a group of “Seekers” from a flood on December 21,1954 at midnight. When the aliens did not come, this created cognitive dissonance. They believed that aliens were coming; aliens did not show up. There are five ways to bring back cognitive consistency: changing one of the ideas, adding to the idea, changing a behavior, trivialization or obtaining social support. In our example to bring back consistency the seekers used two. They were told that the aliens made a new plan. Since they were …show more content…
Many studies have been done on the theory of cognitive dissonance over the years by the use of deception. In a paper presented by Dr. Nail and students at the Southwestern Psychological Association in Houston Texas he described using a role-playing paradigm to test the theory. “The purpose of the present research is to explore whether cognitive dissonance phenomena can be demonstrated without the use of deception” (Nail, P. R., Correll, J.S., Drake, C. E., Glenn, S.B., Scott, G.M., & Stuckey, C., 2010,). The experiment was double blind with between-subjects design questionnaire, the participants are asked to imagine a scenario of being stood up by a friend “Chris”. To measure sufficient justification one group was told the reason Chris did not show was because he was in an accident. To measure insufficient justification another group was told the reason he did not show was because he was invited out by a different friend. They then had to answer questions rating Chris as a friend. The results were successful. “After being stood-up, sufficient participants overall rated Chris as a better friend than insufficient, thus supporting the basic dissonance theory/insufficient justification effect” (Nail, P. R., Correll, J.S., Drake, C. E., Glenn, S.B., Scott, G.M., & Stuckey, C., …show more content…
“The present research if successful will examine the theory that dissonance can be reduced by social support and provide broader base of support in the literature for Festinger (1957) than currently exists.” (Nail 2016) In this research the role-playing paradigm used in the research by Nail et al. (2010 March). Nested within Insufficient justification three social support conditions were added. After being stood up you meet one, two or three friends, the idea that the more social support the less