Exam 6: Cognitive Dissonance and the Need to Protect Our Self-Esteem

A mother is trying to get her child to behave in the store and to stop running around, yelling, and grabbing things off the shelves. According to cognitive dissonance theory, if she wants to stop the child's behavior immediately for the time being, she should use a __________, but if she wants to more permanently change the behavior, she should use a __________.

It is not uncommon for cultures to dehumanize their enemies. What explains why, for example, a Vietnam veteran might dehumanize the Vietnamese or a Nazi might dehumanize the Jews?

According to the authors of your text, what is one way people can begin to learn from their mistakes?

People in collectivist cultures are most likely to experience dissonance when __________.

According to dissonance theorists, the practice of threatening mild punishment works because it arouses __________ cognitive dissonance and therefore causes __________.

When unscrupulous salespeople use lowballing as a means of selling cars, they take advantage of buyers' illusions that their decision to buy a particular car was __________.

In a study referred to in the text (Peterson, Haynes, & Olson, 2008), smokers were asked to create an anti-smoking video to be shown to high school students, invoking dissonance in the smokers. To alleviate the dissonance they would then experience, what were these smokers more likely to do?

When people state publicly an opinion that is at odds with their own private attitudes, they are engaging in __________.

Triandis (1995) and others have argued that dissonance-reducing behaviors may be less prevalent on the surface in societies in which __________.

The Pattersons bought their TV from a store with a thirty-day return policy, and the Stevensons bought the same TV from a different store with a policy that "All Sales Are Final!" Based on what the text reports about cognitive dissonance, which family is more likely to be satisfied with their TV?

According to your text, people can also reduce dissonance by focusing on and affirming their competence at some other dimension unrelated to the threat. This is known as __________.

According to the authors of your text, what is one major danger of engaging in self-justification strategies?

Which of the following people is using an internal justification to reduce dissonance?

According to the authors of your text, when the Bush administration received evidence that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq-after they had already invested troops and money in the war-the administration engaged in __________.

Ken participates in a psychology study where he has to make statements that are contrary to his thoughts and values. Then the researchers remind him of this inconsistency. Ken has participated in which of the following?

Recall that Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) paid participants either $1 or $20 to tell another person that a boring, tedious task was really fun and interesting. The results of their experiment demonstrated that __________.

Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy once wrote, "We do not love people so much for the good they have done us as for the good we have done them." This quote is most closely related to the concept of __________.

The author of your text presents that idea that much of human thinking is not rational, but rationalizing. What does your author mean by rationalizing thought?

People are unlikely to change their attitudes after saying something they don't truly believe if there is __________ for the lie.

If a person goes through a demanding process involving lots of effort and hard work to achieve a goal, what would cognitive dissonance suggest that person will think about the experience afterwards?