Cognitive Dissonance Theory

                Festinger’s minimal justification hypothesis states that to change an attitude, just enough reward has to be offered to change a behavior (Griffin, Ledbetter & Sparks, 2015).  Festinger believes that a behavior and attitude have a cause and effect relationship, and it is more beneficial to change behavior first to change an attitude. 

                If you are trying to convince someone to do something, Festinger says it is more beneficial to change the behavior first through minimal reward to change an attitude.  Offer too much reward to change an attitude and the person will only change their behavior, not so much the actual attitude.  For example, with the political debates and environment being so high strung in the past few weeks, a lot of controversy was surrounding Bernie Sanders’ accepting donations.  Say a donor wanted Bernie to take money to change a political stance to the public.  Bernie could take this bribe to change his behavior by promoting a new stance in his campaign, but if the bribe is generous, it probably won’t change his attitude of his current platforms and he may feel guilty about accepting the bribe, creating dissonance.  This is shown through the “Would I lie for a dollar?” experiment cited in the chapter; a counter-attitudinal advocacy, or trying to get others to accept a belief that the advocator himself doesn’t even agree with (Griffin, Ledbetter & Sparks, 2015).  If an influencer can get a behavior to change to cause an attitude shift, this is a better and stronger way of persuasion which will decrease the amount of cognitive dissonance present in the decision. 

References 

 Griffin, E. A., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. (2015). A first look at communication theory (9th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.