Theories of Attitude Change

Theories of Attitude Change

1. Theories of Attitude Change Dr Neeta Gupta Practitioner Of CBT,REBT & EFT Associate Professor DAV (PG) College Dehradun

2. Cognitive consistency Theories of Attitude Change: Attitude is a multidimensional concept because it has three components. The cognitive consistency is based on the assumption that a person always tries to maximize consistency among the components of attitude. Consistency is also known as congruence, balance and so forth. 1.Heider’s P-O-X Model 2.Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory

3. Heider’s P-O-X model: Heider is known as the father of all Cognitive Consistency Theories. His P-O-X model is most popularly known as Balance Theory.

4. Your two best friends, Meera and Neha , are fighting. This makes you feel uncomfortable. You feel like you are caught in the middle and have to choose between two things that you care about . Sounds like you are in the middle of a situation with psychological inequality.  Fritz Heider  was a social psychologist who developed a theory about situations involving psychological inequality. He called his idea  balance theory .

5. In Heider’s P-O-X model P is the person, which is you in our example. O is the other, let's say this is Meera . That leaves Neha as the X, or the third element in the triangle. P (You) ( Meera )O X( Neha )

6. Among these three elements, Heider differentiated between two different types of relationships- Unity relationship: It indicates the degree to which the elements are perceived to belong together due to some kind of similarity. Affective relationship : indicates nature of liking among the elements and the nature of liking may be positive or negative. Since nature of prediction of the model is same for both relationships, we shall concentrate only upon the affective relationship for explaining attitude change.

7. According to model there can be 8 possible P-O-X combination P X O P O X P O X X P O Balanced

8. Imbalanced States: P X O P O X P O X X P O

9. Balance and Imbalance are very important in this theory. Balance: It is defined as a stable cognitive state, which is comfortable to the person or perceiver while Imbalance: is unstable cognitive state, which motivates a person to change the nature of one of the relationships to achieve a balanced state.

10. P O X ( Geeta ) ( Neha ) ( Meera )

11. Limitations of Heider’s Theory: Relationships are perceived as bipolar No option of degree of relationship. It does not predict which of the several ways of restoring balance will occur. No provision for handling complex cases. Despite these limitations it has a marked influence on the attitude and remains an important cognitive consistency model.

12. Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Thoery : Two cognitions may be in the state of consonance or dissonance.

13. The state of consonance does not produce any tension in the person. While dissonance is a negative drive state which is produced when a person holds two cognitions which are psychologically inconsistent hence produce tension.

14. Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors . This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.

15. Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and behavior in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance). This is known as the principle of cognitive consistency . What causes cognitive dissonance? 1.Forced Compliance Behavior , 2.Decision Making, 3.Effort .

16. When someone is forced to do (publicly) something they (privately) really don't want to dissonance is created between their cognition (I didn't want to do this) and their behavior (I did it ).

17. Forced Compliance Behavior Forced compliance occurs when an individual performs an action that is inconsistent with his or her beliefs. The behavior can't be changed, since it was already in the past, so dissonance will need to be reduced by re-evaluating their attitude to what they have done. This prediction has been tested experimentally :

18. Decision Making Life is filled with decisions, and decisions (as a general rule) arouse dissonance. For example, suppose you had to decide whether to accept a job in another city, or turn down the job so you could be near your friends and family. Either way, you would experience dissonance. If you took the job you would miss your loved ones; if you turned the job down, you would loose the job.

19. Effort: It also seems to be the case that we value most highly those goals or items which have required considerable effort to achieve. This is probably because dissonance would be caused if we spent a great effort to achieve something and then evaluated it negatively. We could, of course, spend years of effort into achieving something which turns out to be a load of rubbish and then, in order to avoid the dissonance that produces, try to convince ourselves that we didn't really spend years of effort, or that the effort was really quite enjoyable, or that it wasn't really a lot of effort.

20. Dissonance can be calculated by using following formula: Importance X No of Dissonant cognitions Dissonance =------------------------------------ Importance X No of Consonant Cognitions It is clear that more nearly equal the relative proportions of consonant and dissonant cognitions, the greater will be the magnitude of the dissonance. On the other hand if there are only few dissonant cognitions and many consonant cognitions, the magnitude of dissonance will be relatively low.

21. Ways to reduce dissonance: Change a Behavioural Cognitive Element, Changing an Environmental Cognitive Element, Adding new Cognitive Element Engaging in Trivialisation

22. https:// study.com/academy/lesson/balance-theory-in-psychology-definition-examples.html https:// encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRGhPUpLzjUhlfwoNVq_fPQOE8nEOm9JTXihg&usqp=CAU https:// www.google.com/search?q=cognitive+dissonance&rlz=1C1CHBD_enIN925IN925&sxsrf=ALeKk023Pb3Gw3o70p6HZ4ItpTYeomhGqw:1606745458857 https:// hyperproof.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Screen-Shot-2020-03-26-at-2.37.17-PM.png https:// d2slcw3kip6qmk.cloudfront.net/marketing/blog/2019Q2/decision-making/[email protected] https:// www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html https:// media.buzzle.com/media/images-en/gallery/health/1200-608489-how-to-reduce-cognitive-dissonance.jpg https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftenor.com%2Fsearch%2Fthank-you-emoji-gifs&psig=AOvVaw3WICTvTLnewRH98fBqxkN_& ust=1606837672627000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCNj_sPjOqu0CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD References:

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