cause cognitive dissonance brought me here...

"Exactly where I'm supposed to be...

And every night we talked till it became so clear, 

and I could feel those dreams inside shifting gears, 

cause [cognitive dissonance] brought me here"

The theory of cognitive dissonance, one of the most heavily researched and provocative areas of social psychology, centers on the notion that human beings like when their attitudes and behaviors are consistent (Festinger, 1957). If our attitudes differ from our actions, we freak out and rapidly try to make sense of the discrepancy by using our incredible tools of self-persuasion and delusion. Now, because cognitive dissonance is such a freaking big deal in the realm of social psychology, there are all sorts of terms and ideas associated with it. It would take forever to delve deep into each of these ideas, so instead I’ll use a personal example to discuss the following ideas: effort-justification, post-decision dissonance/ free choice paradigm, and impression-management theory.

I’m moderately embarrassed that my blogs tend to center around the way I interact with members of the opposite sex, but generally I find romance dilemmas quite entertaining. For this reason, I figured I’d share the wealth that was once my incredibly complicated and annoying love life. Because, the way I look at it, the more complicated and annoying a love life, the more entertaining it is. How else do you explain the success of movies like “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days” or books like “Pride and Prejudice”?

Once upon a time, I was dating a musician pretty seriously (same high school sweetheart that I mentioned in a previous blog). When we broke up, I started “talking” to an athlete. We will refer to them as Mr. Musician and Mr. Athlete just to keep things clear and save me the time of actually describing them past these surfacey qualities. Now, I reached a point while talking to this athlete at which I realized that I missed the musical qualities of boy #1 (he had mentioned the prospect of getting back together, which made me second guess my new fling). So, as any good future SU student/ overly analytical young woman would do, I wrote a very thorough “Pro/Con” list of each option. I might have only been 17 years old, but I was a very intelligent young lady.

Meanwhile, Mr. Athlete started making more and more of an effort to hang out with me. He knew there was a chance of me going back to Mr. Musician, which just encouraged him even more to whip out his “A” game. So he would do sweet things for me, like help me memorize lines for a play or watch a movie with me instead of working on homework. He sacrificed more and more in order to win my affection. I remained distant, simply because I didn’t want to hurt him by leading him on, just in case I decided Mr. Musician was really the man for me. Little did I know that this distance would actually make Mr. Athlete even more vulnerable than before, and it made him like me more and more. The reason for this? Effort Justification, specifically Dr. G’s more casually termed, “cactus theory”.  What exactly is effort justification? Put simply, people love what they suffer for (Aronson & Mills, 1959). Whether they are hazed by a fraternity or spend an obscene amount of money on a new toy, people have to justify their effort by loving the outcome of it. So, the more Mr. Athlete poured into our fling, the more he liked me and wanted to be with me. The more of a “cactus” I acted like, the more he wanted me. (sad, now that I realize the truth behind his attraction to me...)

The “Pro/Con” list continued to grow for a while, until I finally decided that I was ready to make a decision. Mr. Athlete, strictly because of his novelty (I tend to like uncharted territory…), seemed to win the competition. But as soon as I made that decision, I faced the discomfort associated with post-decision dissonance/ free choice paradigm. The idea behind this particular type of dissonance is that after choosing between two attractive alternatives, the “Pros” of the unchosen alternative become very apparent and cause us to wonder if maybe we made a mistake (Brehm, 1956). In order to destroy this dissonance and restore our sanity, after an incredibly short amount of time we devalue the unchosen alternative, saying to ourselves, “I made the right decision, there’s no way I’d be happy with that other choice” (Brehm, 1956). Clearly, this applied to me after I chose Mr. Athlete. “Duh, I made the right choice! I don’t even like music all that much—he was always singing everywhere we went like it was all there was to life. But now, I’m with a much stronger and sexy man. He’s all athletic and stuff. I loooove sports. What was I thinking, even dating a musician in the first place?” Ok, so I’m clearly exaggerating. But it’s true!

I can’t help but wonder, after learning about this free choice paradigm, what would have happened if I had chosen Mr. Musician. Would I be just as happy? Saying to myself, “I fall asleep during the super bowl every year, I never have liked sports as much as music. Mr. Athlete is such a jock. I really love my intuitive, artistic man right now—what a great choice!”

An alternative explanation to cognitive dissonance in this particular example is impression-management theory. This theory states that what matters to us is not necessarily that we act consistently with our attitudes, but rather that we APPEAR to act consistently with our attitudes (Baumeister, 1982). This stems from a concern for our self-presentation. It’s a definite possibility that I chose Mr. Athlete simply because I had said to friends in the weeks leading up to the decision, “I need to explore my options, and date new people. I am too young to settle on one guy who plays guitar. What about all the guys out there who are athletic? I would rather be single than be in a serious relationship”. Maybe I really would have been happier with Mr. Musician, but I was so worried that people would see me as an inconsistent hypocrite that I decided to act in line with the attitude I had expressed to my peers. Food for thought.

So, who really cares which of the boys I ended up with, anyways? Either way, cognitive dissonance would have taken over and convinced me that the decision I made was the right one and I would have no regrets. And I must say, knowing this fact is both encouraging and terrifying. I hate to get all philosophical and stuff, but how will we ever know if we made the “right” decision? The whole idea of cognitive dissonance makes me think that maybe there’s no such thing as a “right” choice. Life is what you make it, I guess. Your satisfaction with decisions relies primarily on your ability to create consonance between your attitudes and behaviors. We’re all hypocrites. But the more you justify your actions to make them align with your beliefs, the happier you’ll be. Strange idea, but then again it's a strange world out there.

Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59,  177-181.

Baumeister, R. F. (1982). A self-presentational view of social phenomena. Psychological Bulletin, 91, 3-26.

Brehm, J. W. (1956). Post-decision chances in desirability of alternatives. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52, 384-389.

Festinger, L. (1957) A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.