Cognitive Dissonance and Attitutde Change–Although attitudes are difficult to change, under many situations they can changed. Veen et al in 2009 found that when the person’s actions conflict with the prior attitudes, these often change the person’s attitudes to be more consistent with their actions. This phenomenon is known as cognitive dissonance and it is considered to be one of the most influential theories in psychology. According to Veen, attitudinal changes also occur in neural changes. For this, they scanned participants with functional MRI while the subjects argued that the uncomfortable scanner environment was nevertheless a pleasant experience. They found that cognitive dissonance engaged the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula. It was also noted that the activation of these regions tightly predicted participants’ subsequent attitude change. These effects were not observed in a control group. These findings explain the neural representation of cognitive dissonance, and support the role of the anterior cingulate cortex in detecting cognitive conflict and the neural prediction of attitude change.
As proposed in Festinger’s theory, there are basically two factors that affect the strength of the dissonance. These factors include the number of dissonant beliefs and the importance attached to each belief. Hence, dissonance can be removed by using the following methods:
1. By reducing the importance of dissonant beliefs,
2. By adding more consonant beliefs that prevail over the dissonant beliefs.
3. By changing the dissonant beliefs so that they are no longer contradictory.
The reason for the occurrence of dissonance is to make a choice between two incompatible beliefs or actions by an individual. The rate of dissonance is high when the two alternatives are equally attractive. This conflicted approach is responsible for creating a tension. In this condition the change in attitude leads to the direction of lower dissonance. The integrated housing scheme provides a good example regarding the attitudinal change towards a certain community people. When people start living in integrated society, they get the chances for more interaction and communication with the people belonging to different community. They get to know each other and results in change in their beliefs within the course of time. Thus the individual is able to get over the negative attitude and change to a more positive attitude. This is how attitude changes. In the given situation, dissonance is created by facts and figures and the individual reduces the dissonance by changing his attitude.
Thus the two basic principles of cognitive dissonance regarding to the attitudinal changes can be stated below:
1. Dissonance occurs when a person has to choose between contradictory attitudes and behaviour.
2. Dissonance can be removed by changing the importance of conflicting beliefs and acquiring new beliefs.
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