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Festinger's Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

   

Added on  2020-03-13

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Running head: FESTINGER'S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCEFESTINGER'S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCEName of the UniversityName of the StudentAuthor Note

1FESTINGER'S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCEIntroduction:Cognitive dissonance entails situations that involve conflicting attitudes, behaviorsand beliefs. Such situation creates a sheer feeling of discomfort, which leads to a change inone of the attitudes, behaviors or beliefs to restore the balance by reducing the discomfort.One of the eminent social psychologist Leon Festinger developed the cognitive dissonancetheory in 1957 (Wicklund and Brehm 2013). This theory is considered counterintuitive sinceit comes under the counterintuitive theories of social psychology. The theory implies thatpeople in general have a tendency to hold their beliefs and attitudes to avoid the dissonance.It can be suggested from the theory that the powerful motive can control the cognitiveconsistency, which can lead to irrational or maladaptive behavior in person experiencingconflicts. The general understanding of the theory implies that the general behavior of aperson can be controlled by the external factors leading to disharmony or the dissonance,resulting the person to manage and maintain his reputation.Concept of the Theory:In the context of public relation, the cognitive theory of dissonance is applicable.Festinger suggests that any person is likely to build relationship or exposes himself to thesources that he thinks matches with his beliefs or perception. This is when the personexperiences any contradiction or the inconsistency in his beliefs; he is likely to alter hisattitude or the behavior towards the external source (Harmon-Jones and Harmon-Jones 2012).Precisely, the theory states that the people hold numerous cognitions and ideas aboutthemselves and the outer world, which clashes sometimes and leads to eliminate the cause ofdissonance, if unpleasant. As a result, people consciously or unconsciously alter the attitudeand the behavior, in order to manage and maintain his reputation (Perlovsky, 2014). Thebasic concept of the cognitive dissonance theory in the public relation present the idea that

2FESTINGER'S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCEthe perception of the situation creating the dissonance in the mind of the people (Wicklundand Brehm, 2013). For example, if a person is active smoker and sees an advertisement onthe television he can react in two ways. In the first way, he can immediately quit smokingperceiving that smoking is bad and harmful for health. In other way, he can change herperception about smoking and continue to do the act. Practice of the Theory in PR:The practices of the cognitive dissonance theory can be seen on the public relation,mostly in the audience of the media and the newspapers. The readers of the newspapers arethe perfect example of the cognitive dissonance theory based on the public relation(Vandenbosch and Eggermont 2012). The newspaper readers are generally decision makerregarding the news by reading the headline of the news. They are found to perceive the entirenews only by reading the headline. Accordingly, they decides and read the news. Themarketing strategies of business to some extent are based on the public relation theories. Thegeneral tendency of the people is resisting changing. It is difficult to the public relation andthe marketing executives to influence about any new ideas, the product, or the service, sincepeople initially decide the fact or the result out of the cognitive intuition (Gregory 2015). One of the major practices of the cognitive dissonance theory can be seen in thestakeholders’ management in any business. Conflicts can occur among the internalstakeholders regarding various issues. While working with the different teams there can beconflicts of the ideas or the opinions around anything. Different stakeholders are found tohave different beliefs and that can create contradictions in the opinion among them (De Nooy2013). There are many other examples of cognitive dissonance that can be seen in the workplace in terms of functions, personal and organizational values, training, norms andleadership. For example, the personal values in the context of making any decisions for the

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