Decision making

A detailed Summary of Decision making

How do human beings make decisions? What triggers a person to take action at any given point? These are all questions that will be answered with the theoretical research into Leon Festinger's theory of Cognitive Dissonance. We often do not realize the psychological events that take place in our everyday lives. As psychologist and theorist gain a better understanding of Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory, manipulation could occur more easily than it already does in today's society.

Leon Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory looks at the interaction within yourself and the conflicts that arose between your own opinions. When a person has conflicting opinions or tension is felt inside that person's head, it is more likely persuasion will occur. If no tension was felt between the two conflicting thoughts, or there were no conflicting opinions there would be no need to persuade you. If you think about it persuasion occurs only because there is tension between two facts, ideas or people.

When two attitudes collide we must strive to strike a balance between the two attitudes. The balance varies depending on the intensity we feel about each attitude and our pre-disposed positions concerning the attitu

Another example of observable Cognitive Dissonance occurred is when the same three friends and myself were watching television. An anti-smoking campaign sponsored by TheTruth.com came on the television. Various facts about the amount of people that die every year from smoking and statistics about the amount of Americans with lung cancer were shared. I asked the girls what they thought about the information. They all agreed that it could happen to them, but they hoped it did not. In this case, I believe dissonance was created by exposure to information. The girls did not like the information and downplayed its validity. Not one of the girls stood up and said, "I am going to quit smoking today, I am really at risk of getting lung cancer!" Once again personal involvement was a given, and once again no action was taken. The girls feel to strong about smoking and refuse to quit. We must ask ourselves what a solution to this problem could be? Why is it that smokers in the face of grave danger, refuse to reduce dissonance by acting out their urge to quit smoking?

If you were to not use Festinger's model, most likely you would have assumed that my opinion would have changed her attitude and actions. After all, I did have a contradictory opinion that did not follow hers, and dissonance was felt. This theory, unlike many others, must factor in the human psyche as a variable. The persuasion process did not occur in this case because my friend's attitude towards not smoking was so anti-quitting, that it might be impossible to change. You cannot think of this theory in regards to machines you must look at it from the human perspective.

Another example of Cognitive Dissonance that may help explain the theory further is an experiment made by the founder of the CDT (Cognitive Dissonance Theory) Leon Festinger who asked subjects to perform a series of dull tasks. They were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell a waiting subject that the tasks were really interesting. Subjects who were paid $20 to do so did not change their attitudes towards the tasks - they continued to think they were boring. However, those who had been paid $1 did change their attitudes and came to believe that the tasks had in fact been enjoyable. Cognitive dissonance theory explains these sequence of events as follows: being paid $20 provides a very consonant reason for complying with the experimenter's wishes and there is therefore no dissonance; being paid only $1 is not sufficient incentive for lying and so those who were paid $1 and did comply experienced dissonance. They could only overcome that dissonance by coming to believe that the tasks really were interesting and enjoyable.

Jack W. Brehm [and] Arthur R. Cohen

The research conducted here supports the claim that it is nearly impossible to change the actions of smokers even though massive amounts of cognitive dissonance are felt. I believe that many of the people being observed reduced the overall magnitude of dissonance by adding new cognitive elements. No matter how much dissonance is felt, the smoker will always find elements that are consonant (agreeable) with the fact of smoking. The will power of

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