Exam 6: The Need to Justify Our Actions: the Costs and Benefits of Dissonance Reduction

Why does making a decision tend to generate dissonance, how is this dissonance reduced, and under what conditions is postdecisional dissonance reduction the greatest?

According to the authors of your text, when people are tempted to behave immorally and they choose to be either moral or immoral in that situation, how do they justify their actions?

According to the authors of your text, why would people experience cognitive dissonance after investing a lot of time and effort in pursuit of a goal that falls short of their expectations?

Mills (1958) had elementary school children compete for attractive prizes.The children could cheat to win the prizes, but they didn't know that the experimenter would be assured of detecting the cheaters.Some children cheated, and others did not.The next day,

Research presented in the text (McMillan, Stice, & Rohde, 2011) had high school and college women write essays against the "thin is beautiful" idea.By writing about the emotional and physical costs of pursuing this unhealthy body image, the women showed

Based on MRI research on people who were experiencing and later resolved cognitive dissonance, what would you expect to happen to Mary, who just reduced her dissonant feelings about visiting the tanning salon by telling herself that she isn't genetically predisposed to skin cancer, so it won't affect her?

Too late, your neighbor discovered that he couldn't flush his toilet.He has asked you to come help him unstop his plugged toilet.It's not a task that you look forward to, but you come over to help.Based on the psychology of insufficient justification, you'd be most likely to change your attitudes about fixing broken plumbing if you helped

According to the authors of your text, using ________ rewards or punishments leads to longer lasting attitude change than using ________ rewards or punishments.

Recall that Aronson and his colleagues asked college students either to compose a persuasive message advocating the use of condoms or to compose and deliver their message in front of a video camera.Considering which participants in this study later actually purchased more condoms, what would be the best way a high-school Health teacher could promote condom use in his/her class?

Based on information from the authors of your text about cognitive dissonance and immoral behavior, which of the following people would be most likely to condone having an extramarital affair?

Social psychologists had African American students do carefully constructed self-affirming writing assignments regarding their good qualities outside of school.If this approach was to work for you with a group of students who were in danger of being academically dismissed, how would it affect them?

When people receive bad news-perhaps that they did not get a dream job they applied and interviewed for-what tends to happen?

Members of the Heaven's Gate cult, who "knew" there was a spaceship following the Hale-Bopp comet, returned a perfectly good telescope they had purchased because they failed to see the spaceship they "knew" was there.Such behaviors demonstrate that

According to results of dissonance studies, who is more likely to believe that lying is truly a heinous, unconscionable, and unforgivable act?

Lisa is a car salesperson.She has just gotten you to agree to a deal on a new car and to write out a check for the down payment.She takes this to her manager and comes back a while later saying that, because of taxes and fees, the price of the car will actually come out to $600 over what you agreed upon.According to the research on lowballing, which of the following is most likely to occur?

In general, the more ________ a decision between alternatives, the ________ the postdecision dissonance.

Recall that Aronson and his colleagues designed experiments to remind students of their own hypocrisy when it came to using condoms during sex.Participants who made videotaped speeches in which they talked about the difficulties they had using condoms actually changed their attitudes and behaviors related to condom use.These experiments are actually variations on the phenomenon of the ________ paradigm.

Suppose that both Oscar and Sam went through hazing rituals for the same fraternity.Oscar went through a very long and involved hazing process while Sam went through relatively mild rituals.After they both got into the fraternity, they realized that there were a lot of negative things associated with membership that they hadn't expected.According to cognitive dissonance, which of the following would you expect to happen?

Of the following, how are individuals most likely to reduce cognitive dissonance?

Dissonance theorists might assert that just as we suffer for the things we like, we also convince ourselves that we like the things for which we suffer.Use concepts related to the justification of effort to explain this statement.