COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: Leon Festinger and Me

[RonPrice]

The year I joined the Baha’i Faith the social psychologist Leon Festinger received the Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Psychological Association. He was also elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in that year. It was 1959. After masterful experimentation on the theory of cognitive dissonance, his research culminated in the publication of work that was at the time referred to as “the most important development in social psychology to date.”(1) Festinger also developed the theory of propinquity. The propinquity effect is the tendency for people to form friendships or romantic relationships with those whom they often encounter. In other words, relationships tend to be formed between those who have a high propinquity.–Ron Price with thanks to (1)Jack W. Brehm and A.R. Cohen Brehm, (eds.), Explorations in Cognitive Dissonance, Wiley, NY, 1962.

 

Festinger did not rest his theory on observational data alone. He proceeded to test it experimentally. In Festinger and Carlsmith's classic experiment, in that same year of 1959 when I was in grade 10, students were asked to perform tedious and meaningless tasks. I won’t describe that experiment here. The result of the experiment, though, was in accord with the theory of cognitive dissonance. -Ron Price with thanks to “Leon Festinger,” in The New World Encyclopaedia.

 

While I was just forming my belief system back

in those days of the Baby Boom and the start of

the X-generation, in those days of what was said

to be the end of ideology;1 the days that offered

the good life in the suburbs; the days when that

mask of faith was drawn aside; when a superficial

propriety reigned in the West and rock and roll

woke people up from dreams of Doris Day, Ike

the General, luxury without stress, or genetilia.2

 

People were given undeniable evidence that their beliefs

were wrong but they did not change them. Convictions

of their truth often increased acting with great fervour

to convince others to believe also. What leads to such

paradoxical behavior? Deeply held conviction & actions

that must be taken for the sake of this belief and are very

difficult to undo; the belief must be able to be disconfirmed

by events in the world……such undeniable disconfirmatory

evidence must occur and be recognized by the individual;

and the individual believer must have good social support.

Historical examples are the Millerites who expected the 2nd

coming of Christ in the year 1843, but He came in a way that

they never expected. Arousal of dissonance resulted when the

prophecy failed. Altering beliefs would have been too difficult

and it was the same for millions back then when I was putting

my beliefs into some package of organic sweet reasonableness

that would have to deal with my life’s inevitable dissonances.

 

1 Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology, 1960.

2 D.T. Miller and M. Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were, Doubleday & Co., Inc., NY, 1977. p.302.

 

Ron Price

2 December 2010