Social Judgment Theory PDF

CHAPTER 14 Objective Interpretive Socio-psychological tradition Social Judgment Theory of Muzafer Sherif...

CHAPTER 14 Objective Interpretive Socio-psychological tradition Social Judgment Theory of Muzafer Sherif Ryan and David are college roommates and friends. Like many students, they don’t talk much about politics, but they’ve had a number of conversations about an issue that sharply divides them—gun control. I’ve listed 11 comments made during their wide-ranging discussions. Read through these opinions and consider the diversity of viewpoints they represent. a. You must pass a mandatory background check to buy a gun. b. A handgun in the home makes it a safer place. c. Except for law enforcement, guns should be outlawed. d. All gun ownership is protected by the Second Amendment. e. Hunting rifles have a legitimate purpose. f. Allowing citizens to buy assault weapons is crazy. g. Any regulation will lead to the government taking away all guns. h. US citizens should be allowed to carry concealed weapons. i. Courses on handling guns would make the country safer. j. The more guns out there, the more violence and death. k. It takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun. Take a few minutes to mark your reactions to these statements. If you follow each instruction before jumping ahead to the next one, you’ll have a chance to experience what social judgment theory predicts. 1. To begin, read through the items again and underline the single statement that most closely represents your point of view. 2. Now look and see whether any other items seem reasonable. Circle the let- ters in front of those acceptable statements. 3. Reread the remaining statements and cross out the letters in front of any that are objectionable to you. After you cross out these unreasonable ideas, you may have marked all 11 statements one way or another. It’s also possible that you’ll leave some items unmarked. 171 172 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION THREE LATITUDES: ACCEPTANCE, REJECTION, AND NONCOMMITMENT I’ve just taken you on paper through what social judgment theory says happens in our heads. We hear a message and immediately judge where it should be placed on the attitude scale in our minds. According to the late Muzafer Sherif, a social psy- chologist at the University of Oklahoma, this subconscious sorting of ideas occurs at the instant of perception. We weigh every new idea by comparing it with our present Social judgment– point of view. He called his analysis of attitudes the social judgment–involvement involvement approach, but most scholars refer to it simply as social judgment theory. Perception and evaluation Sherif believed that the three responses you made on the previous page are of an idea by comparing it necessary to determine your attitude toward gun control, or any other attitude with current attitudes. structure. In all probability you circled a range of statements that seemed reasonable to you and crossed out a number of opinions you couldn’t accept. That’s why Sherif would see your attitude as a latitude rather than any single statement you underlined. He wrote that an “individual’s stand is not represented adequately as a point along a continuum. Different persons espousing the same position may differ considerably in their tolerance around this point.”1 He saw an attitude as an amalgam of three zones. The first zone is called the Latitude of acceptance latitude of acceptance. It’s made up of the item you underlined and any others you The range of ideas that a circled as acceptable. A second zone is the latitude of rejection. It consists of the person sees as reasonable opinions you crossed out as objectionable. The leftover statements, if any, define or worthy of consideration. the latitude of noncommitment. These were the items you found neither objectionable nor acceptable. They’re akin to marking undecided or no opinion on a traditional Latitude of rejection attitude survey. Sherif said we need to know the location and width of each of these The range of ideas interrelated latitudes in order to describe a person’s attitude structure. that a person sees as David comes from a family where guns are a way of life. Some of his fondest unreasonable or objectionable. childhood memories are of hunting with his father and target practice at a shooting range with his uncle’s pistol. He’d like to share these experiences with Ryan, but Latitude of so far his friend has balked at having anything to do with guns. Ryan says because noncommitment guns put so many people at risk, there should be strict laws about their purchase The range of ideas that and use. David would like to convince Ryan that guns are safe, great sport, and a person sees as neither acceptable nor provide ultimate security in an increasingly violent world. If he can do that, maybe objectionable. Ryan would back off on his desire for more government regulation. Social judgment theory recommends David try to figure out the location and breadth of Ryan’s three latitudes before further discussion. Figure 14–1 shows where Ryan places those 11 statements along the mental yardstick he uses to gauge gun safety. As you will discover in the next few pages, if David has a good idea of this cognitive map, he’ll have a much better chance of crafting a message that will per- suade Ryan to be more optimistic about firearms. EGO-INVOLVEMENT: HOW MUCH DO YOU CARE? There’s one other thing about Ryan’s attitude structure that David needs to know— how important the issue of gun safety is to Ryan. Sherif called this ego-involvement. Ego-involvement refers to how central an issue is in our lives. Does it have personal significance? How important is it to us?2 In Figure 14–1, I’ve used an anchor to represent the position that most closely represents Ryan’s commitment—the more guns floating around in society, the greater the number of people who will be shot and killed.3 Sherif said that’s what our favored position does: It anchors all our other thoughts about the topic.  CHAPTER 14: SOCIAL JUDGMENT THEORY 173 t en itm e nc m n n m ta io io co ep ct ct je je on c Ac Re Re N of of of of de de e e ud ud itu itu tit tit t t La La La La NO CONTROL CONTROL STRONG 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 zy k K n s t c gu un en se ed t e h e O gi at m ch ry g dm ra ur c le w es ith de ho ay tla co d rifl ca en r w ns in e aw ou un y g or ed Am un po g gu in o gr dg e m s in dl an ak ea un t d nd al ck , un an ns -h oo tt tw G ce a H ’ co gu b H v n G e ul un o Co ss S sa e G G or Pa As M FIGURE 14–1 Ryan’s Cognitive Map Regarding Gun Control If gun control were only a casual concern for Ryan, it would be fitting to rep- resent his stance with a small anchor that could easily be dragged to a new position. That might be the case for someone who didn’t own a gun, never fired a bullet, and had no personal contact with anyone who had been threatened or shot with a gun. But that’s not Ryan. In high school he volunteered with a dozen other students to tutor inner-city kids in reading and math. They each were paired with the same boy or girl every week, but got to know the other kids through the games they’d play after study. Halfway through the semester, a boy named Cleon whom Ryan joked around with each week was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting. Ryan thinks about Cleon a lot. Closer to home but less tragic, Ryan’s grandfather shot himself in the leg while loading a pistol. Lots of blood, but no permanent damage. Within the family it’s Ego-involvement become an ongoing joke, but in light of the massacres in Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, The importance or Orlando, and Las Vegas, Ryan is acutely aware of the damage a gun can cause. Oth- centrality of an issue to a ers may experience only passing concern, their low ego-involvement represented with person’s life, often a small anchor, but Ryan’s ego-involvement runs deep. demonstrated by membership in a group People who hold extreme opinions on either side of an issue almost always care with a known stand. deeply. While it’s possible to feel passionate about middle-of-the-road positions, social judgment researchers find that large attitude anchors are usually located toward the ends of the scale. Extreme positions and high ego-involvement go together. That’s why religion, sex, and politics are traditionally taboo topics in the wardroom of a US Navy ship at sea. When passions run deep, radical opinions are common and there’s little tolerance for diversity. Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln illustrates Sherif’s concepts of ego-involvement and attitudes as latitudes.4 Against the advice of his cabinet, the president pushes Congress to pass a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. A yes vote falls somewhere within each Republican’s latitude of acceptance. But to get the needed 174 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION two-thirds majority, Lincoln needs to switch the votes of 20 Democrats, whose party publicly opposes the amendment. Abolition appears to fall within their latitude of rejection. Yet Lincoln’s men see a window of opportunity. Leaving Congress are 39 lame- duck Democrats who now have weaker party ties. With that lower ego-involvement, these 39 men may have a wider latitude of noncommitment toward the amendment and could be encouraged to abstain rather than vote no. Some might be swayed to broaden their latitude of acceptance, making a yes vote possible. The film shows Lincoln’s political operatives in the House balcony noting which Democrats are sweat- ing or at least not cheering when their leaders lambast the amendment. The aides then use Lincoln’s popularity, moral arguments, job offers, threats, and bribes to induce latitude change. The amendment passes and slavery is abolished by a two-vote margin. Everything I’ve presented up to this point deals with the way social judgment theory describes the cognitive structure of a person’s attitude. We now turn to the two-step mental process that Sherif said is triggered when a person hears or reads a message. Ryan will first evaluate the content of any message from David about gun control to see where it falls vis-à-vis his own position—how far it is from his anchor. That’s the judgment phase of social judgment theory. In the second stage of the process, Ryan will adjust his anchored attitude toward or away from the message he’s just encountered. The next two sections explain the way Sherif said the two stages of this influence process work. JUDGING THE MESSAGE: CONTRAST AND ASSIMILATION ERRORS Sherif claimed that we use our own anchored attitude as a comparison point when we hear a discrepant message. He believed there’s a parallel between systematic biases in the judgments we make in the physical world and the way we determine other people’s attitudes. The last time I taught social judgment theory in class, I set up three pails of water to illustrate this principle. Even though the contents looked the same, the temperature of the water in the left bucket was just above freezing, the water in the right bucket was just below scalding, and the water in the middle bucket was lukewarm. A student volunteered to plunge her left hand into the left bucket and her right hand into the right bucket at the same time. Twenty seconds was about all she could take. I then asked her to plunge both hands into the middle bucket and judge the temperature of the water. Of course, this produced a baffling experience, because her left hand told her the water was hot, while her right hand sent a message that it was cold. Contrast Sherif hypothesized a similar contrast effect when people who are hot for an A perceptual error idea hear a message on the topic that doesn’t have the same fire. Judged by their whereby people judge standard, even warm messages feel cold. Sherif’s original social judgment–involvement messages that fall within label nicely captures the idea of a link between ego-involvement and perception. their latitude of rejection Since highly committed people tend to have large latitudes of rejection, any message as farther from their anchor than they that falls within that range will be perceived by them as more discrepant from their really are. anchor than it really is. The message is mentally pushed away to a position that is farther out—not within the latitude of acceptance. So the hearers don’t have to deal with it as a viable option. All of this is bad news for David if he tries to lower Ryan’s resistance to gun ownership using a direct approach: Look, criminals can always get a gun. If that person wants to harm you on the street or in a bar, he’ll think twice under a concealed carry law, because he can never be  CHAPTER 14: SOCIAL JUDGMENT THEORY 175 sure you won’t pull a gun on him. And if that guy breaks into your house to rob you or terrorize your family, you’re the last line of defense. You’d better be armed. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is for the good guys to have guns. On a gun control scale where 1 represents a total ban on gun ownership and 11 means no regulation at all, David may intend his words to register at 7, 8, or 9 in Ryan’s mind. But because these words fall within Ryan’s latitude of rejection, he will hear them as farther away from his latitude of acceptance than they really are—perhaps at 9, 10, or 11—and think David is out of his mind. Contrast is a perceptual distortion that leads to polarization of ideas. But according to Sherif, it happens only when a message falls within the latitude of rejection. Assimilation is the opposite error in judgment. It’s the rubberband effect Assimilation that draws an idea toward the hearer’s anchor so it seems that he and the speaker A perceptual error share the same opinion. Assimilation takes place when a message falls within the whereby people judge latitude of acceptance. For example, suppose David says he’s pleased the NRA messages that fall won’t oppose a law mandating a buyer background check using a federal database. within their latitude of acceptance as less That surprising statement would seem to be at a 4 on the gun control scale, but discrepant from their the theory suggests Ryan will hear it as more similar to his anchoring attitude than anchor than they it really is, perhaps at a 3. really are. Sherif was unclear about how people judge a message that falls within their latitude of noncommitment. Most interpreters assume that a perceptual bias won’t kick in and that the message will be heard roughly as intended. DISCREPANCY AND ATTITUDE CHANGE Judging how close or how far a message is from our own anchored position is the first stage of attitude change. Shifting our anchor in response is the second. Sherif thought that both stages of the influence process usually take place below the level of consciousness. According to his theory, once we’ve judged a new message to be within our lat- itude of acceptance, we will adjust our attitude somewhat to accommodate the new input. The persuasive effect will be positive but partial. We won’t travel the whole distance, but there will be some measurable movement toward the speaker’s perceived position. How much movement? Sherif wasn’t specific, but he did claim that the greater the discrepancy, the more hearers will adjust their attitudes. Thus, the message that persuades the most is the one that is most discrepant from the listener’s position yet falls within his or her latitude of acceptance or latitude of noncommitment. If we’ve judged a message to be within our latitude of rejection, we will also adjust our attitude, but in this case away from what we think the speaker is advo- cating. Since people who are highly ego-involved in a topic have a broad range of rejection, most messages aimed to persuade them are in danger of actually driving Boomerang effect them further away. This predicted boomerang effect suggests that people are often Attitude change in the driven rather than drawn to the attitude positions they occupy. opposite direction of what The mental processes Sherif described are automatic. He reduced interpersonal the message advocates; influence to the issue of the distance between the message and the hearer’s position: listeners driven away from rather than drawn to an Stripped to its bare essential, the problem of attitude change is the problem of the idea. degree of discrepancy from communication and the felt necessity of coping with the discrepancy.5 So the only space for volition in social judgment theory is the choice of alternative messages available to the person who’s trying to persuade. 176 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR THE PERSUADER Sherif would have advised David to avoid the gun-lover quips that appear on bumper stickers: Guns don’t kill people, people kill people and Have you hugged your gun today? They will just push Ryan deeper into his anti-firearms stance. To make sure his words have a positive effect, David should select a message that falls at the near edge of Ryan’s latitude of acceptance, which the “background check” statement does. Even when the perceptual process of assimilation kicks in, Ryan will still judge David’s message to be somewhat discrepant from his own point of view and shift his attitude slightly in that direction. Or David might try a somewhat riskier strategy to produce a greater attitude shift by saying something that falls within Ryan’s latitude of noncommitment: Ryan, we’ve been friends for a long time. I know you hate guns in general and I understand some of the reasons why. I also know that basketball is a big chunk of your life. The sport of hunting is a big chunk of mine. I get the same thrill bagging “I’m happy to say that my final judgment of a case is almost always consistent with my prejudgment of the case.” ©Dana Fradon/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank  CHAPTER 14: SOCIAL JUDGMENT THEORY 177 a duck for dinner as you do bagging a three-pointer under pressure. Sure, there are crazies out there who sleep with a loaded AK-47, but I’d like you to think of me and other serious hunters as responsible citizens using legitimate equipment. The idea of crafting a message to fall within Ryan’s latitude of acceptance or noncommitment is frustrating to David. He wants more change than these strategies offer. But according to social judgment theory, limited change is all he can get in a one-shot attempt. If he were talking to a person with wide latitudes of acceptance and noncommitment, a bigger shift would be possible. Toby, a student in my class, saw himself that way over a broad range of issues: Time and time again I find myself easily persuaded. Afterward I wonder, How did I get talked into this one? Credit it to my flexibility, willingness to try, or naive trust in people’s motives. I always pay attention to advice given by a friend or an expert. Social judgment theory would say that I simply have a wide latitude of noncommit- ment. That’s because I have low ego-involvement most of the time. The situation is not a hill to die on, so why should I get my pride involved? Toby isn’t typical. We’re more likely to encounter people who are dogmatic on every issue. “Don’t confuse me with the facts,” they say. “My mind is made up.” These cantankerous souls have wide latitudes of rejection. When dealing with highly ego-involved people, we have to work within a narrow range. True conversion from one end of the scale to the other is a rare phenomenon. The only way to stimulate large-scale change is through a series of small, successive movements. Persuasion is a gradual process. It’s also a social process. If David and Ryan’s friendship deepened, their lati- Reference groups tudes of acceptance toward what the other was saying would expand. Sherif noted Groups that members use that “most dramatic cases of attitude change, the most widespread and enduring, to define their identity. are those involving changes in reference groups with differing values.”6 ATTITUDES ON SLEEP, BOOZE, AND MONEY: EVIDENCE SUPPORTING SJT Research on the predictions of social judgment theory (SJT) requires highly ego- involving issues where strong resistance to some persuasive messages is likely. The topics of sufficient sleep, alcohol consumption, and asking for money seem ripe for assessing the theory’s validity. Sufficient sleep. In an early experiment testing social judgment theory, psychol- ogists Stephen Bochner (University of New South Wales) and Chester Insko (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) queried college students about how much sleep they thought a person should get each night.7 Before the study, most college students accepted the conventional wisdom that the human body functions best with eight hours of sleep. They then read an article written by an expert in the field that claimed young adults actually need much less. The message was the same for all with one crucial difference. Some students were told they needed eight hours, some seven, some six, and so on, right down the line. The final group actu- ally read that humans need no sleep at all! Then each group had a chance to give their opinions. Sherif’s theory suggests that the fewer hours recommended, the more students will be swayed, until they begin to regard the message as patently ridiculous. The results shown in Figure 14–2 confirm this prediction. Persuasion increased as the hours advocated were reduced to 3, a message that caused students to revise their 178 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION 6.0 6.2 zz 6.4 z zz zz Students’ zz 6.6 zz postmessage zz 6.8 zz opinion of zz zz zz sleep needed 7.0 zz zz zz (in hours) 7.2 zz z z 7.4 zz zz zzz 7.6 7.8 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Optimal sleep advocated by expert (in hours) FIGURE 14–2 Sleep Study Results Based on Bochner and Insko, “Communicator Discrepancy, Source Credibility and Opinion Change” estimate of optimum sleep down to 6.3 hours. Anything less than 3 hours apparently fell outside their latitude of acceptance and became progressively ineffective. But a highly credible speaker can shrink the hearer’s latitude of rejection. When the “expert” in the sleep study was a Nobel Prize-winning physiologist rather than a YMCA director, persuasion increased. Alcohol consumption. In the fall of 2004, Michigan State University communi- cation professors Sandi Smith, Charles Atkin, and three other university colleagues measured students’ perception of drinking behavior at the school.8 They found a campuswide pluralistic ignorance of the actual amount of booze consumed by stu- dents who drink at a party. Whereas reported alcohol consumption averaged 5.3 drinks—with 63 percent downing five drinks or less—students thought the norm was closer to six drinks (5.9 percent). This gap concerned health center officials because perceived social norms affect Pluralistic ignorance The mistaken idea that behavior—in this case, the idea encouraged risky binge drinking. In preparation for everyone else is doing or a campuswide social norms campaign to correct the misperception and publicize thinking something that the actual norm, Smith and Atkin measured student body latitudes of acceptance, they aren’t. noncommitment, and rejection of various messages. Based on their research they selected the following true phrase to be included in every communication about student drinking behavior: “Most (63 percent) drink zero to five when they party.” The message fell within most students’ latitude of noncommitment—as discrepant from campus opinion as possible while still being believable. The intensive, three-month campaign involved posters across campus, table tents in the cafeteria, and multiple ads in the campus newspaper and in a news magazine handed out at orientation. Almost all students reported seeing the zero-to-five-drinks message many times. The campaign was a success. When Smith and Atkin measured perception of drinking in the spring, they found that students had lowered their esti- mate to 4.9—one drink less than they had thought in the fall. Even more impressive, the average number of drinks consumed at a party during that time span fell from 5.3 to 4.5—almost a full glass or mug. Like the lung-cancer role-play experiment reported  CHAPTER 14: SOCIAL JUDGMENT THEORY 179 in the introduction to this section, this research validates an effective strategy to induce lasting change in beliefs and behavior, even when the issue is highly ego-involving. Asking for money. An anecdotal story of SJT in action comes from a university development director I know who was making a call on a rich alumnus. He anticipated that the prospective donor would give as much as $10,000. He made his pitch and asked what the wealthy businessman could do. The man protested that it had been a lean year and that times were tough—he couldn’t possibly contribute more than $20,000. The fundraiser figured that he had seriously underestimated the giver’s latitude of acceptance and that $20,000 was on the low end of that range. Without missing a beat he replied, “Trevor, do you really think that’s enough?” The alumnus wrote a check for $25,000. How do you feel about the fundraising ploy just described? The persuasive technique obviously worked, but the application of social judgment theory raises some thorny ethical questions. Is it OK for fundraisers to alter their pitch based on a potential donor’s latitude of acceptance? Is it all right for politicians to be inten- tionally vague so that their message has broad appeal? Are these choices you want to make, or want others to make when they try to influence you? ETHICAL REFLECTION: KANT’S CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE Social judgment theory focuses on what’s effective. But, according to German philosopher Immanuel Kant, before we adjust what we say so that it serves our ends and seems reasonable to others, we should consider what’s ethical. Kant believed that any time we speak or act, we have a moral obligation to be truthful. He wrote that “truthfulness in statements which cannot be avoided is the formal duty of an individual to everyone, however great may be the disadvantage accruing to himself or another.”9 Others might wink at white lies, justify deception for the other’s own good, or warn of the dire consequences that can result from total honesty. But from Kant’s perspective, there are no mitigating circumstances. Lying is wrong—always. So is breaking a promise. Kant came to this absolutist position through the logic of his categorical imper- ative, a term that means duty without exception. He stated the categorical imperative as an ethical absolute: “Act only on that maxim which you can will to become a universal law.”10 In terms of SJT, Kant would have us look at the difference between what we plan to say to influence others and what we truly believe. We should then ask, What if everybody did that all the time? If we don’t like the answer, we have a Categorical imperative Duty without exception; solemn duty not to do the deed. act only on that maxim The categorical imperative is a method of determining right from wrong by which you can will to thinking through the ethical valence of an act, regardless of motive. Suppose David become a universal law. understands that the idea of a universal background check before any gun is pur- chased is right on the edge of Ryan’s latitude of acceptance. He’s tempted to say that the NRA is not opposed to that regulation—which was true in 1999 after the Columbine massacre, but no longer.11 In order to establish some common ground with his friend on this divisive issue, bending the truth might seem to be of little moral consequence. But the categorical imperative says don’t do it. Ever. No excep- tions. In the words of a sports-minded colleague who teaches ethics, “Kant plays ethical hardball without a mitt.” If we say, I “Kant” play in that league, what ethical scorecard will we use in place of his categorical imperative? 180 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION CRITIQUE: A THEORY WELL WITHIN THE LATITUDE OF ACCEPTANCE The social norms campaign on alcohol consumption and the college fundraiser’s appeal for a generous contribution demonstrate that social judgment theory has practical utility—one of the six criteria of a good scientific theory. The trick for the influence practitioner is figuring out where the other person’s latitudes of accep- tance, noncommitment, and rejection lie. That’s what audience analysis, market research, and focus groups are all about. Social judgment theory offers specific predictions about what happens in the mind of someone who hears or reads a message that falls within his or her latitude of acceptance or rejection. Sherif’s appeal to the perceptual distortions of assimi- lation and contrast, as well as the crucial role of ego-involvement, offer a compelling explanation of what goes on behind the eyes. Of course, these mental structures and processes can’t be seen. We can only infer what’s going on inside the head by observing the input and the output—the message and a person’s response. The SJT explanation of persuasion is complex, but given Sherif’s claim that an attitude can’t be identified by a single point on a continuum, it’s hard to imagine a simpler account of what’s happening. In fact, some persuasion scholars think the theory is too sim- plistic because it doesn’t take evidence, lines of argument, and style of delivery into account. As the studies I’ve described demonstrate, social judgment theory requires quantitative research, and that’s the kind social scientists have designed. But com- pared to the hundreds of empirical studies run to test and refine other leading theories of persuasion, the research base of SJT is relatively small. That may be because it’s hard to locate a wide range of experimental subjects who run the gamut of high to low ego-involvement and hold widely different opinions on the same topic. And once they are willing to participate, the process of locating their three latitudes can be tedious for everyone involved. Even so, specific predictions of SJT are testable; some have been supported and a few found to fail. For a dramatic failure, look closely at the results of Bochner and Insko’s sleep experiment (see Figure 14–2). Note that there was no boomerang effect—even when students were told they never needed to sleep. Despite the questions that surround social judgment theory, it is an elegant conception of the persuasion process that falls well within my latitude of accep- tance. There’s an intuitive appeal to the idea of crafting a message just short of the latitude of rejection in order to be as effectively discrepant as possible. That would be my message to David and Ryan as they try to persuade each other on the crucial issue of gun control. I wonder in what latitude of attitude my advice will fall? QUESTIONS TO SHARPEN YOUR FOCUS 1. How does the concept of attitudes as latitudes help you understand your attitude toward the various requirements of this course? 2. Suppose you find out that the guy sitting next to you is highly ego-involved in the issue of gun control. Based on social judgment theory, what three predic- tions about his attitude structure would be reasonable to make? 3. What practical advice does social judgment theory offer if you want to ask your boss for a raise? 4. Do you have any ethical qualms about applying the wisdom of social judgment theory? Why or why not?  CHAPTER 14: SOCIAL JUDGMENT THEORY 181 A SECOND LOOK Recommended resources: Daniel J. O’Keefe, “Social Judgment Theory,” in Persuasion: Theory and Research, Sage, Los Angeles, CA, 2016, pp. 19–34; Donald Granberg, “Social Judgment Theory,” in Communication Yearbook 6, Michael Burgoon (ed.), Sage, Beverly Hills, CA, 1982, pp. 304–329; Daniel J. O’Keefe, “Social Judgment Theory,” in Persuasion: Theory and Research, Sage, Newbury Park, CA, 1990, pp. 29–44. Original conception: Muzafer Sherif and Carl Hovland, Social Judgment: Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Communication and Attitude Change, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1961. Further development: Carolyn Sherif, Muzafer Sherif, and Roger Nebergall, Attitude and Attitude Change: The Social Judgment–Involvement Approach, W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia, PA, 1965. Attitudes as latitudes: Kenneth Sereno and Edward Bodaken, “Ego-Involvement and Attitude Change: Toward a Reconceptualization of Persuasive Effect,” Speech Monographs, Vol. 39, 1972, pp. 151–158. Ego-involvement: William W. Wilmot, “Ego-Involvement: A Confusing Variable in Speech Communication Research,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 57, 1971, pp. 429–436. Assimilation and contrast: Alison Ledgerwood and Shelly Chaiken, “Priming Us and Them: Automatic Assimilation and Contrast in Group Attitudes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 93, 2007, pp. 940–956. Message discrepancy: Stan Kaplowitz and Edward Fink, “Message Discrepancy and Persuasion,” in Progress in Communication Sciences: Advances in Persuasion, Vol. 13, George Barnett and Frank Boster (eds.), Ablex, Greenwich, CT, 1997, pp. 75–106. Boomerang effect: Hilobumi Sakaki, “Experimental Studies of Boomerang Effects Fol- lowing Persuasive Communication,” Psychologia, Vol. 27, No. 2, 1984, pp. 84–88. Sleep study: Stephen Bochner and Chester Insko, “Communicator Discrepancy, Source Credibility and Opinion Change,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 4, 1966, pp. 614–621. Changing social norms for drinking on campus: Sandi Smith, Charles Atkin et al., “A Social Judgment Theory Approach to Conducting Formative Research in a Social Norms Campaign,” Communication Theory, Vol. 16, 2006, pp. 141–152. Critique: Hee Sun Park, Timothy Levine, Catherine Y. K. Waterman, Tierney Oregon, and Sarah Forager, “The Effects of Argument Quality and Involvement Type on Attitude Forma- tion and Attitude Change,” Human Communication Research, Vol. 33, 2007, pp. 81–102. CHAPTER 16 Objective Interpretive Socio-psychological tradition Cognitive Dissonance Theory of Leon Festinger Aesop told a story about a fox that tried in vain to reach a cluster of grapes dangling from a vine above his head. The fox leaped high to grasp the grapes, but the deli- cious-looking fruit remained just out of reach of his snapping jaws. After a few attempts the fox gave up and said to himself, “These grapes are sour, and if I had some I would not eat them.”1 DISSONANCE: DISCORD BETWEEN BEHAVIOR AND BELIEF Aesop’s fable is the source of the phrase sour grapes. The story illustrates what former Stanford University social psychologist Leon Festinger called cognitive disso- nance. It is the distressing mental state that people feel when they “find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold.”2 Cognitive dissonance The fox’s retreat from the grape arbor clashed with his knowledge that the The distressing grapes were tasty. By changing his attitude toward the grapes, he provided an accept- mental state caused by able explanation for abandoning his efforts to reach them. inconsistency between a Festinger considered the need to avoid dissonance just as basic as the need person’s two beliefs or a belief and an action. for safety or the need to satisfy hunger. It is an aversive drive that goads us to be consistent. The tension of dissonance motivates us to change either our behavior or our belief in an effort to avoid that distressing feeling. The more important the issue and the greater the discrepancy between our behavior and our belief, the higher the magnitude of dissonance we will feel. In extreme cases, cognitive dissonance is like our cringing response to fingernails being scraped on a blackboard—we’ll do anything to get away from the awful sound. It’s no surprise, then, that persuaders try to create dissonance in order to change people’s beliefs and behaviors. 194  CHAPTER 16: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY 195 HEALTH-CONSCIOUS SMOKERS: DEALING WITH DISSONANCE When Festinger first published his theory in 1957, he chose the topic of smoking to illustrate the concept of dissonance. Although authoritative medical reports on the link between smoking and lung cancer were just beginning to surface, there was already general concern across the United States that cigarette smoking might cause cancer. Ten years prior, country singer Tex Williams recorded Capitol Records’ first million-seller, “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette).” The gravelly voiced vocal- ist expressed doubt that smoking would affect his health, but conveyed enthusiasm for cigarettes even if they were fatal.3 Tex Williams wasn’t alone. At the time, many smokers and nonsmokers alike laughingly referred to cigarettes as “coffin nails.” But as the number and certainty of medical reports linking smoking with lung cancer, emphysema, and heart dis- ease increased, humorous references to cigarettes no longer seemed funny. For the first time in their lives, a hundred million Americans had to grapple with two incompatible cognitions: 1. Smoking is dangerous to my health. 2. I smoke cigarettes. Consider the plight of Cliff, a habitual smoker confronted by medical claims that smoking is hazardous to his health—an idea that strongly conflicts with his pack-a-day practice. Festinger said the contradiction is so clear and uncomfortable that something has to give—either the use of cigarettes or the belief that smoking will hurt him. “Whether the behavior or the cognition changes will be determined by which has the weakest resistance to change.”4 For Cliff it’s no contest. He lights up and dismisses the health risk. In his discussion of smoking, Festinger suggested a number of mental gymnastics that Cliff might use to avoid dissonance while he smokes.5 Perhaps the most typical way for the smoker to avoid mental anguish is to trivialize or deny the link between smoking and cancer. I think the research is sketchy, the results are mixed, and the warnings are based on junk science. After the surgeon general’s report on smoking was issued in 1964, denial became an uphill cognitive path to climb, but many smokers continue to go that route today. Smokers may counter thoughts of scary health consequences by reminding themselves of other effects they see as positive. Smoking helps me relax, I like the taste, and it gives me a look of sophistication. These were the motives cigarette adver- tising appealed to when Festinger first published his theory. For example, Old Gold was the primary radio sponsor for Chicago Cubs baseball: “We’re tobacco men, not medicine men,” their ads proclaimed. “For a treat instead of a treatment, try Old Gold.... There’s not a cough in a carload.” Although it’s hard for smokers to pretend they aren’t lighting up, they can elude nagging thoughts of trauma by telling themselves that the dire warnings don’t apply to them since they are moderate smokers, or because they’ll soon quit. My boyfriend is a chain smoker, but I smoke less than a pack a day. As soon as I finish school, I’ll have no problem stopping. Conversely, other smokers manage dissonance by disclaiming any ongoing responsibility for a habit they can’t kick. Let’s face it, cigarettes are addictive. I’m hooked. Although most behaviors are not as difficult to 196 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION change as the habit of smoking, Festinger noted that almost all of our actions are more entrenched than the thoughts we have about them. Thus, his theory focuses on the belief and attitude changes that take place to avoid or reduce cognitive dissonance. REDUCING DISSONANCE BETWEEN ACTIONS AND ATTITUDES Festinger hypothesized three mental mechanisms people use to ensure that their actions and attitudes are in harmony. Dissonance researchers refer to them as selec- tive exposure, postdecision dissonance, and minimal justification. I’ll continue to illus- trate these cognitive processes by referring to the practice of smoking, but they are equally applicable to other forms of substance abuse or addiction—alcohol, drugs, food, sex, pornography, gambling, money, shopping, work. Most of us can spot at least one topic on that list where we struggle with an inconsistency between our thoughts and our actions. So if smoking isn’t an issue for you, apply these ways of reducing dissonance in an area that is. Hypothesis 1: Selective Exposure Prevents Dissonance Festinger claimed that people avoid information that’s likely to create or increase dissonance.6 This selective exposure hypothesis explains why staunch political conser- vatives watch Sean Hannity on Fox News but stalwart liberals catch Rachel Maddow Selective exposure on MSNBC. Not only do we tend to listen to opinions and select reading materials The tendency people that are consistent with our existing beliefs, we usually choose to be with people have to avoid information who are like us. By taking care to “stick with our own kind,” we can maintain the that would create relative comfort of the status quo. Like-minded people buffer us from ideas that cognitive dissonance because it’s incompatible could cause discomfort. In that sense, the process of making friends is a way to with their current beliefs. select our own propaganda. Two communication researchers looked back over 18 experiments where people were put in dissonant situations and then had to choose what kind of information they would listen to or read. Dave D’Alessio (University of Connecticut– Stamford) and Mike Allen (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee) discovered that the results consistently supported the selective exposure hypothesis.7 People tended to select information that lined up with what they already believed and ignored facts or ideas that ran counter to those beliefs. Entertainment is a tried-and-true way to get around people’s selective expo- sure filters. Another way is humor. Both of these occur in movies. A University of California, San Francisco, survey documented that 75 percent of Hollywood films show attractive actors smoking, and that this modeling encourages young teens raised in smoke-free homes to adopt the practice. With some success, Harvard School of Public Health researchers are now proactively challenging directors not to introduce smoking into their films. Nevertheless, a follow-up study associated with the same University of California group found that smoking incidences increased by 43 percent from 2010 to 2016 for movies rated PG-13 and below.8 German psychologist Dieter Frey surveyed all the pertinent research on selective exposure and concluded that even when we know we’re going to hear discrepant ideas, the avoidance mechanism doesn’t kick in if we don’t regard the dissonant information as a threat.9 Warm personal relationships are probably the best guarantee that we’ll consider ideas that would otherwise seem threatening.  CHAPTER 16: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY 197 Selective exposure is a way to avoid dissonance in the first place. When that fails, the next two hypotheses try to explain how we reduce that anxious feeling. Hypothesis 2: Postdecision Dissonance Creates a Need for Reassurance According to Festinger, close-call decisions can generate huge amounts of inter- nal tension after the decision has been made. Three conditions heighten postde- cision dissonance: (1) the more important the issue, (2) the longer an individual delays in choosing between two equally attractive options, and (3) the greater the difficulty involved in reversing the decision once it has been made. To the Postdecision dissonance extent that these conditions are present, the person will agonize over whether Strong doubts experienced he or she made the right choice.10 Sometimes referred to as “morning-after- after making an important, the-night-before” regrets, the misgivings or second thoughts that plague us after close-call decision that is a tough choice motivate us to seek reassuring information and social support for difficult to reverse. our decision. A classic example of postdecision dissonance is the mental turmoil a person experiences after signing a contract to buy a new car. The cost is high, there are many competing models from which to choose, and the down payment commits the customer to go through with the purchase. It’s not unusual to find a person examining online car reviews after they have the car. The buyer is seeking informa- tion that confirms the decision already made and quiets nagging doubts. Many who recover from multiple addictions testify that quitting smoking is harder than giving up booze. Just as countless alcoholics turn to Alcoholics Anon- ymous for social support, people who try to give up tobacco often need at least one friend, family member, romantic partner, or co-worker who’s also going through the pangs of withdrawal. They can remind each other that it’s worth the effort. Of course, the decision to stop smoking doesn’t fulfill Festinger’s third condition of a once-and-for-all, no-going-back, final choice. One can always go back to smoking. In fact, those who swear off cigarettes typically have a few lapses, and total relapses are common. Encouragement and social support are necessary to tamp down the doubts and fears that follow such a tough decision. Smokers who consciously decide not to quit face similar qualms and anxieties. They are bombarded with messages telling them they are putting their health at risk. People who care for them deeply urge them to stop, and nonsmokers look down on them because they don’t. University of Kentucky communication professor Alan DeSantis describes the camaraderie he found among regular customers at a Kentucky cigar shop. Just as smoke from cigars drives some folks away, smokers keep postdecision dissonance at bay through collective rationalization with friends who smoke cigars together. DeSantis sees Cigar Aficionado as serving the same function. He writes that although the magazine professes to simply celebrate the good life, it actually serves “to relieve the cognitive dissonance associated with the consumption of a potentially dangerous product by adding cognitions, trivializing dissonant information, selectively exposing readers to pro-smoking information, and creating a social support network of fellow cigar smokers.”11 Hypothesis 3: Minimal Justification for Action Induces Attitude Change Suppose someone wanted to persuade an ex-smoker who is dying of lung cancer to stop publicly bashing the tobacco industry and to respect cigarette companies’ right to market their product. That is one of the assignments given to Nick Naylor, chief 198 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION spokesman for tobacco companies in the movie Thank You for Smoking. His job is to convince “Big Tobacco’s” former advertising icon—the Marlboro Man—to switch from outspoken critic to silent partner. Before cognitive dissonance theory, conven- tional wisdom would have suggested that Naylor work first to change the bitter man’s attitude toward the industry. If he could convince the cowboy that the ciga- rette companies are well-intentioned, then the man would change his communica- tion behavior. It seemed natural to think of attitude and behavior as the beginning and end of a cause-and-effect sequence. Attitude → Behavior But Festinger’s minimal justification hypothesis reverses the sequence. This hypoth- esis suggests that the best way for Naylor to change the Marlboro Man’s attitude toward his former employers is to get him to quit speaking out against them. Behavior → Attitude Minimal justification Festinger attached one important condition, however. Instead of giving the cowboy hypothesis massive incentives to abandon his public critique ($100,000 in cash, lifetime health A claim that the best way care for his wife, or a threat to harm his kids), Naylor should offer the mini- to stimulate an attitude mum enticement necessary to induce him to quietly step off his soapbox. Festinger change in others is to offer just enough concluded: incentive to elicit Thus if one wanted to obtain private change in addition to mere public compli- counterattitudinal ance, the best way to do this would be to offer just enough reward or punishment behavior. to elicit overt compliance.12 Naylor doesn’t follow Festinger’s advice. Instead, he does it the old-fashioned way by throwing lots of money at the Marlboro Man. He goes to his rundown ranch with a briefcase filled with bundles of hundred-dollar bills, which he pours out on the floor. He labels the money a gift rather than a bribe, but makes it clear that the cowboy can’t keep the money if he continues to denounce the tobacco companies. As it turns out, the offer is more than enough because the dying man is worried about how his family will manage after he’s gone. So the Marlboro Man takes both the money and a vow of silence, but his antagonistic attitude toward his former employers hasn’t Compliance changed. Outward compliance without inner conviction. For Naylor, that’s enough. Public conformity to There is, however, a brief moment in their discussion that suggests the potential another’s expectation of a minimal justification strategy. When the Marlboro Man looks longingly at the without necessarily having cash, he wonders out loud if he might keep half the money and still denounce the a private conviction that matches the behavior. tobacco companies. His question reveals that somewhere between 50 percent and 100 percent of the cash on the floor there’s a tipping point where the cowboy becomes willing to be bought off. Festinger predicted that if Naylor were to offer that “just-enough” amount, not only would the Marlboro Man alter his communi- cation behavior, but the dissonance he would feel would also cause him to be less angry at the cigarette companies. Festinger’s startling $1/$20 experiment shows how this might work. A CLASSIC EXPERIMENT: “WOULD I LIE FOR A DOLLAR?” There is nothing particularly radical about Festinger’s first two hypotheses. His selec- tive exposure prediction nicely explains why political rallies attract the party faithful and why the audience for religious radio and television tends to be made up of committed believers. As for postdecision dissonance, all of us have tried to convince  CHAPTER 16: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY 199 ourselves that we’ve made the right choice after facing a close-call decision. But Festinger’s minimal justification hypothesis is counterintuitive. Will a small incentive to act really induce a corresponding attitude change when heaping on the benefits won’t? Festinger’s famous $1/$20 experiment supported his claim that it will. Festinger and social psychologist James Carlsmith recruited Stanford University men to participate in a psychological study supposedly investigating industrial rela- tions.13 As each man arrived at the lab, he was assigned the boring and repetitive task of sorting a large batch of spools into sets of 12 and turning square pegs a quarter turn to the right. The procedure was designed to be both monotonous and tiring. At the end of an hour the experimenter approached the subject and made a request. He claimed that a student assistant had failed to show up and that he needed someone to fill in. The experimenter wanted the subject to tell a potential female subject in the waiting room how much fun the experiment was. Dissonance Counterattitudinal researchers call this counterattitudinal advocacy. We’d call it lying. advocacy Some of the men were promised $20 to express enthusiasm about the task; Publicly urging others to others were offered only $1. After adjusting for inflation, that’s about $170 or $8.50 believe or do something today.14 It’s comforting to know that six of the men refused to take part in the that is opposed to what the advocate actually deception, but most students tried to recruit the young woman. The gist of the believes. typical conversation was similar for both payment conditions: SHE: “I heard it was boring.” HE: “Oh no, it’s really quite fun.” Publicly, that’s what persuaders in both conditions said. What differed were the men’s privately expressed attitudes after the study was over. Students who lied for $20 later confessed that they thought the task of sorting spools was dull. Those who lied for $1 maintained that it was quite enjoyable. (Festinger and Carlsmith practiced their own form of deception in the study—subjects never received the promised money.) By now you should have a pretty good idea how Festinger interpreted the results. He noted that $20 was a huge sum of money at the time. If a student felt qualms about telling a “white lie,” the cash was a ready justification. Thus, the student felt little or no tension between his action and his attitude. But the men who lied for a dollar had lots of cognitive work to do. Their internal dialogue tried to explain away the logical inconsistency of saying a boring task was actually interesting: I’m a Stanford man. Am I the kind of guy who would lie for a dollar? No way. Actually, what I told the girl was true. The experiment was a lot of fun. Festinger said that $1 was just barely enough to induce compliance to the experi- menter’s request—enough to get them to lie, but not enough to justify it. So the students had to create another justification. They changed their attitude toward the task to bring it into line with their behavior—in other words, to eliminate dissonance. THREE STATE-OF-THE-ART REVISIONS: THE CAUSE AND EFFECT OF DISSONANCE The $1/$20 study has been replicated and modified many times in an effort to figure out what creates dissonance and how people reduce it. Based on hundreds of experimental studies, most persuasion researchers today subscribe to one of three revisions of Festinger’s original theory. To illustrate these revisions, we’ll consider President Barack Obama, who has struggled with smoking during his adult life. Obama put away his cigarettes before 200 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION A B C D Attitude/Behavior Dissonance Attitude Dissonance Inconsistency Created Change Reduced FIGURE 16–1 Festinger’s Process Model of Cognitive Dissonance Based on Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance his 2008 presidential bid, but relapsed during the campaign and his first two years in office. In 2011, however, Obama’s doctors declared that he had broken his 30-year cigarette habit.15 According to First Lady Michelle Obama, it seems that dissonance caused the president’s decision to stop: “I think he didn’t want to look his girls in the eye and tell them that they shouldn’t do something that he was still doing.”16 That sounds like a straightforward explanation, but for cognitive disso- nance theorists it isn’t enough—they want to know what was going on in the mind of the president that generated and eliminated dissonance. In order to understand each of the explanations described in the following sections, it will help you to picture the overall dissonance arousal and reduction process. Figure 16–1 shows that four-step sequence. So far we’ve discussed Festinger’s belief that we experience dissonance when we face logical inconsistency, or beliefs and behaviors that don’t quite add up. (I value my health. My cigarette habit damages my health.) That’s a claim about the A → B link in the figure. Festinger further asserted that the way to reduce dissonance is to remove the logical inconsistency (point D). The three revisions question these assumptions, and each provides a somewhat different account for why Obama finally kicked his smoking habit. 1. Self-Consistency: The Rationalizing Animal One of Festinger’s early graduate students, University of California social psychol- ogist Elliot Aronson, wasn’t convinced that logical inconsistency produces disso- nance. He noted that we sometimes find such inconsistencies curious or even amusing. For example, Andrew once received a university parking ticket in the mail dated several months after he’d graduated and moved out of the state. Two thoughts crossed his mind: (1) I was not parked at the University of Kansas in October and (2) I have a parking ticket that says I was. That’s a logical inconsistency, and it made him feel mildly annoyed—but that’s not the aversive discomfort Aronson claims is at the heart of dissonance. Instead, Aronson thinks what produces dissonance is an inconsistency between a cognition and our self-concept—how we perceive ourselves. He interprets the $1/$20 experiment as a study of self-presentation.17 The Stanford men were in a bind because they regarded themselves as decent, truthful human beings, in contrast to their deceptive behavior. In fact, the higher their opinion of their honesty, the more dissonance they would feel when they told the waiting woman that the study was fun. Conversely, if they had seen themselves as liars, cheats, or jerks, they would have felt no tension. As Aronson puts it, “If a person conceives of himself as a ‘schnook,’ he will be expected to behave like a ‘schnook.’”18 Andrew’s student Caitlin, a vegetarian, wrote about her feelings of guilt after eating meat. Clearly, she perceived that her choice was inconsistent with her self-concept:  CHAPTER 16: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY 201 When I ate meat for the first time in a year, I was at a hibachi grill where the chef gave each of us a sample of steak. At first I tried just one piece, but that provoked my decision to order fried rice and steak. This choice violated my vegetarian beliefs, but I justified it because it was only a small amount of meat. The day after, I experienced postdecision dissonance: I had strong doubts, a guilty conscience about my decision, and a very upset stomach. If Aronson is right, what’s the best way to persuade someone like President Obama to stop smoking? Showing him studies of tobacco’s negative health effects might not be the route to go. Even if Obama acknowledges that his cigarette use is inconsistent with that information, Aronson doesn’t think logical inconsistency is enough. The president will only feel dissonance if he sees smoking as inconsistent with his self-concept. Given the first lady’s explanation (“I think he didn’t want to look his girls in the eye...”), Aronson might suggest that the president perceived an inconsistency between his smoking and his fatherly image. Maybe Obama also thought that lighting up contradicted his appearance as a health-conscious person who regularly exercises through pickup basketball games. Throwing away his ciga- rettes reduced dissonance by removing those psychological inconsistencies. 2. Personal Responsibility for Bad Outcomes (the New Look) For Princeton psychologist Joel Cooper, both Festinger and Aronson miss the true cause of dissonance. He doesn’t think inconsistency—whether logical or psychological—is the main motivating factor. In his new look model of cognitive dissonance, Cooper argues that we experience dissonance when we believe our actions have unnecessarily hurt another person. For example, in the minimal justi- fication condition of the $1/$20 experiment, the Stanford men willingly “duped a fellow student to look forward to an exciting experience” while knowing “full well that the waiting participant was in for an immense letdown.”19 Cooper concludes that dissonance is “a state of arousal caused by behaving in such a way as to feel personally responsible for bringing about an aversive event.”20 DILBERT © 1992 Scott Adams. Used By permission of ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION. All rights reserved. 202 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION Note that the acceptance of personal responsibility requires that the person know ahead of time that his or her action will have negative consequences for someone else, and yet still choose to do the dirty deed. The reactions of participants in minimal justification experiments show that they often feel bad about the potential effects of their messages. Purdue University social psychologists Richard Heslin and Michael Amo tested the new look by inducing college students to say something that might harm others. The researchers encouraged public speaking students to deliver impromptu speeches to persuade uninformed and uncommitted seventh grade kids that smoking pot wouldn’t hurt them. The speakers saw their recorded speeches and were reminded that they’d be identified as actually having pro-marijuana sentiments. The speakers were quite aware that their message might harm kids. One speaker pleaded, “Please don’t use my speech. I don’t want the course credit; just don’t use my speech!”21 Clearly they felt dissonance, and new look theorists would argue that’s because they perceived their actions as harmful (rather than inconsistent). Nevertheless, the speakers actually changed their attitude in the direction of their advocacy—they reduced dissonance by concluding that their actions weren’t all that harmful. New look theorists don’t think inconsistency is enough to persuade someone like Obama to stop smoking. Sure, he may perceive that his actions are logically inconsistent with scientific research or psychologically inconsistent with his self-image. But if he only lights up in private—he never smoked publicly while president—he might believe his actions don’t hurt anyone else. For Cooper, the first lady’s explanation might suggest that the president thought his smoking could hurt their daughters. If Obama quit smoking because he was afraid Malia and Sasha would imitate him, or because he was concerned about their exposure to secondhand smoke, that’s the new look in action. 3. Self-Affirmation to Dissipate Dissonance While the revisions offered by Aronson (self-consistency) and Cooper (new look) address dissonance creation at the front end of Festinger’s model (the link from A to B in Figure 16 –1), Stanford psychologist Claude Steele’s self-affirmation approach speaks to the question of dissonance reduction at the back end of the model—point D of the figure. Steele doesn’t assume that dissonance always drives people to justify their actions by changing their attitudes. He thinks some fortunate people can call up a host of positive thoughts about themselves that will blot out a concern for restoring consistency. If he’s right, high self-esteem is a resource for dissonance reduction. According to Steele, most people are greatly motivated to maintain an overall self-image of moral adequacy. For a participant in the $1/$20 experiment, there’s no question that lying to a fellow student makes it harder to preserve that favorable self-concept. But if the guy ignores the ethical slip and focuses instead on his good grades, athletic ability, social skills, and helpfulness to friends who are hurting, the dissonance will only be a blip on the radar screen of his mind and will quickly fade away. Thus, Steele believes that denial, forgetfulness, and trivialization of the inci- dent are alternatives to attitude change, but only for the person who already has high self-esteem. According to Steele’s self-affirmation approach, Obama might have excused his smoking by reminding himself of his esteem-raising qualities, which include “gifted orator, award winning author, and proven intellect who was the first black president  CHAPTER 16: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY 203 of the Harvard Law Review,”22 not to mention president of the United States, winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, and the commander in chief who stopped Osama bin Laden for good. In light of these accomplishments, Obama might regard relapse as a minor inconsistency rather than a major contradiction. In Steele’s view, the first lady’s comment suggests that the president eventually couldn’t rationalize that way any- more. As the son of a man who ignored his family obligations, perhaps Obama came to believe that smoking is a parenting flaw for which career success can’t compensate. Aronson, Cooper, and Steele offer their respective revisions as more accurate accounts of what goes on in people’s heads than Festinger’s original theory pro- vided. But we don’t have to pick one and trash the others. Self-consistency, personal responsibility for bad outcomes, and self-affirmation aren’t mutually exclusive expla- nations. As Cooper suggests, “They each describe a distinct and important piece of the overall dissonance process and, in doing so, make a unique contribution to our understanding of how cognitions about the self [cause] cognitive dissonance and arousal and reduction.”23 THEORY INTO PRACTICE: PERSUASION THROUGH DISSONANCE We’ve placed this chapter in the section on interpersonal influence because Festinger and his followers focused on attitude change as an end product of dissonance. Suppose you know have a friend who holds an opinion that you’re convinced is harmful or wrong. What practical advice does the theory offer that might help you alter your friend’s conviction? For openers, don’t promise lavish benefits if your friend abandons that attitude or warn of dire consequences if she or he doesn’t. A massive reward–punishment strategy may gain behavioral compliance, but the hard sell seldom wins the heart or mind of the person being bribed or pressured. Instead, cultivate your friendship. That way, your own position will tend to bypass the selective exposure screen that people put up to avoid threatening ideas. And if your friend eventually adopts your viewpoint, an ongoing bond means you’ll be around to offer reassurance when postdecision dissonance kicks in. To be an effective agent of change, you should offer just enough encouragement (minimal justification) for your friend to try out novel behavior that departs from old habits. Avoid making an offer that the friend can’t refuse. As long as counterat- titudinal actions are freely chosen and