Is Cognitive Dissonance an Intrinsic Property of the Human Mind ? An Experimental Solution to a Half-Century Debate

World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 54 2009
Is Cognitive Dissonance an Intrinsic Property of
the Human Mind? An Experimental Solution to
a Half-Century Debate
Álvaro Machado Dias, Eduardo Oda, Henrique Teruo Akiba, Leo Arruda, Luiz Felipe Bruder

that the participants receiving only one dollar rated the task as
Abstract—Cognitive Dissonance can be conceived both as a
less boring then did the participants that received twenty
concept related to the tendency to avoid internal contradictions in
dollars.
certain situations, and as a higher order theory about information
According to the authors, doing something unpleasant for a
processing in the human mind. In the last decades, this last sense has
modest payment leads to an internal conflict, which is
been strongly surpassed by the former, as nearly all experiment on
amended by the reevaluation of the task (attributional bias).
the matter discuss cognitive dissonance as an output of motivational
contradictions. In that sense, the question remains: is cognitive
The Festinger-Carlsmith experiment became a prototypical
dissonance a process intrinsically associated with the way that the
framework in the study of cognitive dissonance and was
mind processes information, or is it caused by such specific reproduced many times up to the current days.
contradictions? Objective: To evaluate the effects of cognitive
As this task reveals, cognitive dissonance has a ‘dialectic
dissonance in the absence of rewards or any mechanisms to structure’: it relies on the assumption that mental objects
manipulate motivation. Method: To solve this question, we introduce
associated with conflicting attributional values converge to a
a new task, the hypothetical social arrays paradigm, which was
applied to 50 undergraduate students. Results: Our findings support
economical cognitive output.
the perspective that the human mind shows a tendency to avoid
Extending the philosophical perspectives that can be
internal dissonance even when there are no rewards or punishment
associated with this idea, one may note that in the behavioral
involved. Moreover, our findings also suggest that this principle
level, the participants that rated the task as ‘not so boring’
works outside the conscious level.
may be considered irrational; while in the cognitive level,

these participants present a tendency towards consistency,
Keywords—Cognitive Dissonance, Cognitive Psychology, simplicity and cognitive parsimony, all of which can be
Information Processing.
assumed as rational principles. In conclusion, cognitive
dissonance assumes that the mind is internally consistent and,
I. INTRODUCTION
for that reason, generates biased behaviors.
HE concept of cognitive dissonance was developed by
In that sense, cognitive dissonance represents more than
T Leon Festinger [1] to describe internal contradictions just a hypothesis about a specific type of cognitive
which most people tend to avoid. According to the author, the
phenomenon; it is a ‘higher order theory’ regarding
beholding of two dissonant mental representations either lead
information and behavioral output, based on two axioms: 1.
to the reevaluation of one of them or to the emergence of a
We treat information according to the tendency to diminish
third cognition to amend the internal conflict.
contradiction and increase organization, and this can lead to
The most famous experiment supporting this hypothesis
irrational behaviors; 2. This phenomenon takes place outside
was conducted half a century ago by the author and Carlsmith
the conscious sight.
[2]. A cohort of volunteers (psychology students) participated
Within the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance
in a boring task and then was divided in three groups and a
disavowal the behaviorist assumption that rewards are always
control group: group one was offered one dollar to report to
associated with the tendency to increase a target-behavior. As
an unknown person (in fact, an experimenter) that the task
revealed in the aforementioned experiment, rewards are
was in fact exciting; group two received twenty dollars to do
inversely correlated with positive evaluations of the rewarded
the same; and the third group was not asked to do that. behaviors, thus suggesting that, in the long run, the former
Afterwards, the participants were asked to evaluate how could in fact diminish the occurrence of the latter.
boring they thought that the task was. The main finding was
From that standpoint, rewards should be conceived in terms

of their relations with mental representations –and that is
A. M. Dias: University of São Paulo, Institute of Psychology, Dept. of
precisely what behaviorism tries to avoid. For that reason, it
Neuroscience and Behavior (IP-NEC-USP), email: alvaromd@usp.br.
did not take long before the emergence of several behaviorist
E. Oda: University of São Paulo, Mathematics and Statistics Institute (IME-
USP), email: edu.oda@gmail.com.
alternatives to explain Festinger and collaborators’ findings.
H. T. Akiba: University of São Paulo, Psychology Institute (IP-USP), email:
Among these, the most influent is Bem’s ‘self-perception
henrique.akiba@usp.br.
theory’ [4, 5] which states that the attributional bias is not
Arruda, L.: University of São Paulo, Psychology Institute (IP-USP).
Bruder, L.F.: University of São Paulo, Psychology Institute (IP-USP).
related to the tendency to amend internal contradiction, but
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World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 54 2009
rather reflects the analysis that the participant do regarding his
Task 2
own behavior: “The individual’s own behavior will be used by
Immediately after the first task was conducted, each
him as a source of evidence for his beliefs and attitudes to the
participant was asked to construct several hypothetical social
extent the contingencies of reinforcement for engaging in the
networks to link predefined pairs of pictures. The selected
behavior are made more subtle or less discriminable” ([4],
pairs of cards were: (1,12), (2,7), (6,11), (4,5) and (8,9) -the
p.8).
numbers under the parenthesis represent the position of the
As much as it happened in relation to many other topics
cards in the order generated by the participant in the first
under discussion by cognitivism and behaviorism, this dispute
procedure.
is settled on a disagreement about the importance of the
We quantified the number of arrays within each
subjective experience in shaping behavior; and due to the fact
hypothetical social network in regard to each participant and
that it is too hard to extract evidences about such solipsistic
used that to evaluate if there was a relation between the
features of the mind, this conundrum has never been solved.
amounts of intermediary arrays in the second condition and
Fifty years after the presentation of the original theory,
the distance of that specific pair in the first condition.
there is not a single experimental proof that the mind
Finally, we considered whether the avoidance of dissonance
organizes information according to the principles of cognitive
effect was due to the fact that the participants selectively
dissonance. Accordingly, while the number of studies and
attended to the parameters of their previous classification (a
fields of applications of cognitive dissonance increased phenomenon named cognitive priming), or if the effect was in
dramatically, the theoretical range of the principle did not
fact deeply settled in the unconscious/non attended level. To
follow with the same enthusiasm.
evaluate that, we analyzed the ‘avoidance of association’
In the end, cognitive dissonance did not flourish as much as
tendency among the internal arrays of each of the social
a higher order theory addressing general information chains.
processing as it did in experimental settings wherein
motivation is manipulated by rewards and punishment.
C. Objective
Considering that picture, this paper aims to introduce the
Our main goal was to analyze whether the distance between
first test ever suited to solve this conundrum. Moreover, we
the figures of the pair would correlate with the amount of
also defined a framework to objectively quantify the degree of
interpolated figures, thus expressing a tendency to avoid
cognitive dissonance that the mind of different participants
proximity among figures previously assorted apart.
incorporates and a method to evaluate if cognitive dissonance
Considering that no rewards were offered, we assumed that
relies on conscious experience or not.
this could represent the perfect paradigm to investigate the

role of cognitive dissonance in general information
II. METHOD
processing.
Our secondary goal was to evaluate if the phenomenon
A. Participants
relies on conscious recalls or if it is unconscious. To achieve
50 undergraduate students from diverse courses of that, we tested if the selection an internal array increased the
University of São Paulo (Brazil) were included [there was no
chance of selecting a close related card to generate the next
payment or reward to participate].
array (‘small steps principle’) or if the selection of the internal
B. Procedures
arrays followed a random tendency in relation to the position
of the cards in first sequence.
The study involved: 1. Assorting cards representing human
Considering that no rewards were offered, we assumed that
figures (faces) in order of preference; 2. Using the other cards
this could represent the perfect paradigm to investigate the
(as many as desired) to freely create intermediary arrays to tie
role of cognitive dissonance in general information
the original pair through a social network. This ‘double task
processing.
condition’ was conducted sequentially, one participant at a
Our secondary goal was to evaluate if the phenomenon
time.
relies on conscious recalls or if it is unconscious. To achieve
Task 1
that, we tested if the selection an internal array increased the
In the first task twelve cards were presented to the chance of selecting a close related card to generate the next
participants, which were asked to organize them linearly and
array (‘small steps principle’) or if the selection of the internal
in order of preference, from ‘the one that they liked less’, to
arrays followed a random tendency in relation to the position
‘the one that they liked best’. Half of the cards had pictures of
of the cards in first sequence.
women and half of men; the ages covered adulthood (from
D. Example of the procedure
early 20th to late 60th), the races included where Caucasian,

Asiatic and Afro-descendent. The pictures were selected on
the internet (public domain images). We avoided picking
famous, or glamour persons. Our criterion was to try to select
twelve average individuals of the western urban society.
Every task was recorded with a hidden camera.
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World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 54 2009
It seems obvious that if we give a pair with distance 0, this
pair will consist of a double presentation of the same figure,
which means that in this case the participant should not add
any other step to the network. This leads to the assumption
that D0=0.
From that start point, we used the Method of Least Square
to fit the points (0,0), (1,D1), (5,D5) and (11,D11) with a
function from the family 6-exp(ax³ + bx² + cx + d), obtaining
the graph in Fig. 5.

We choose this family of functions because it pass through

Fig. 1 Figures as assorted by one of the participants.
(0,0) and tends to 6 when the distance goes to infinity.








Fig. 2 Hypothetical social array between figures ‘1’ and ‘12’.






Fig. 5 Curve for Cognitive Dissonance


Moreover, we looked for an even broader organizational
Fig. 3 Hypothetical social array between figures ‘2’ and ‘7’.
process. Using the Kendal-tau correlation index, we could
find a measure of how close to the most ordered sequence
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
were each of the sequences produced by the participants. That
is, we ordered each sequence of our experiment and then
E. How is the distance between cards of the pair related to
extracted the Kendal-tau index of it.
the length of the arrays?
Based on the distance from the curve in Fig. 5 and Kendal-
Our main parameter to consider the effect of cognitive
tau correlation index we defined the general lines of the
dissonance in this experiment is directly related to the ‘cognitive dissonance index’, which was confronted with the
number of arrays placed between the figures of each defined
results produced by a random simulation of 35000 samples, as
pair. In this sense, distances are 11 (pair 12,1), 5 (pairs 2,7
to analyze the significance of the experimental findings.
and 6,11), and 1 (pairs 4,5 and 8,9).


Fig. 4: Mean length of the constructed arrays (excluding the pair of
terminal cards) for each position pair – D5 stands for ‘Mean Value
for Distance 5’, and D1, for ‘Mean Value for Distance 1’. Standard
errors are shown.


It is notable that the number of steps increases dramatically

with the distance between the target cards, suggesting that the
Fig. 6a
participants tend to avoid the cognitive contradiction in this

associative process.



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World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 54 2009
As the data shows, there is a clear monotonically-increasing
relation between the mean position difference within a pair of
figures in the initial array and in the constructed sequences.
F. Is cognitive dissonance a consequence of the intention to
avoid contradiction, or does it works in an unconscious
level?
To answer whether the observed cognitive dissonance effect
is unintentional or an expression of the intention not to
associate cards previously assorted apart, we took for granted
that it is not feasible to track all the interpolated arrays as to
avoid associating figures previously distant in the original
line. In other words, we assumed that the answer to this
question should be searched within the relations between the
arrays. Thus, we tested whether the uniform step between the
cards of the pair is smaller, bigger or equal a random step,

experimentally defined as the uniform step of 35000

computer-generated random samples. The uniform step is
Fig. 6b
defined as Uniform step = Pair position difference / Number

of steps, and we evaluated the mean absolute deviation of the
uniform step for each sequence.
Fig. 6c

Fig. 7: Mean difference

Statistical analysis revealed that this ‘small step principle’
permeate the task’s execution, except for sequences 6-11 and
4-5. To confirm the effect, we also investigated whether there
is a tendency to increase the valence of the array-cards in
accordance to the closeness to the highest valence target card;
in other words, we investigated whether the sequences reveal
a crescent order. This secondary effect is also important
because it could be the case that the observed small steps are
not related to a consonant ordering, but relative to a ‘back and
forth’ disposition of the figures.
For that purpose we measured how distant the sequences
Fig. 6d
are from being completely increasing-order (its 'permutation

Fig. 6 a-d: Mean position difference between each pair of figures
index') and compared its average with the same measures from
(identified by their position in the first array) for all pairs in the
random simulations (again N=35000). The 'permutation index'
sequences (note that the graphics are symmetric since the distance is
measure we used is the so-called normalized Kendall-tau
the same for pairs a,b and b,a). Compare with the random sequences
distance between the original sequence and itself sorted in
(bottom), lateral views are provided for better visualization.
increasing order, and it is equal to the minimal number of
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World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 54 2009
consecutive card swaps required to turn the first sequence
the average number of social arrays, as much as the average
into the second, divided by n(n-1)/2 where n is the number of
tendency to avoid dissonant associations.
cards. It spans between 0 and 1, being zero for a completely
ordered sequence and 1 for a sequence in completely
REFERENCES
decreasing order (which requires n(n-1)/2 steps for ordering).
[1] Festinger, L., A theory of cognitive dissonance. 1957, Stanford: Stanford
University Press
[2] Festinger, L. and J.M. Carlsmith, Cognitive Consequences of Forced
Compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1959. 58: p.
203-210.
[3] von Neumann, J. and O. Morgenstern, Theory of games and economic
behavior. 1944, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[4] Bem, J.D., Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive
dissonance phenomena. Psychological Review, 1967(74): p. 183-200.
[5] Bem, J.D., Self Perception Theory. Advances in Experimental Social
Psychology 1972. 6: p. 1-62.

Fig. 8: Permutation index

The results were statistically significative for sequences (1-
12; 2-7; and D5). This means that only the sequence (6-11)
did not follow a low ‘permutation index’. Our results indicate
that the constructed arrays tend to preserve the same distance
order between cards, thus supporting the hypothesis of a
consonance between closely preferred cards.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this experiment we reveal the existence of an almost
linear relation between the distance within each target pair and
the mean number of arrays that tend to be inserted by the
participants. Moreover, we also reveal the existence of a
general tendency toward small steps and interpolation of
crescent-valence figures within the internal arrays (the ‘low
permutation index principle’).
The associating of these findings leads to the conclusion
that the principle of cognitive dissonance influences
performance is this task (and possibly in many other similar
tasks), regardless of rewards, punishments and any method to
produce motivational contradictions. Moreover, we found that
the principle of cognitive dissonance operates out of the
conscious level with almost the same strength as it operates
under conscious sight.
V. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
This study presents a potential solution to an old problem,
but it was tested in a small population. It is important to
replicate this investigation with a higher N, as much as to
investigate the effect among other populations, like anti-social
offenders and dementia patients. We are currently working on
both issues. Recent results suggest that major depression and
cognitive decline associated with aging (mild dementia,
subclinical Alzheimer, etc.) affect performance, diminishing
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