Connection between Self-Attribution and Cognitive Dissonance - Essay Example

? Connection between Self-Attribution and Cognitive Dissonance In an effort to understand why people act the way they do, the theories of self-attribution and cognitive dissonance were coined. It is believed that people try to understand the behavior of others by picking different pieces and bits of information about them and combining them until they arrived at a conclusion. Self attribution which is also referred to as self serving attribution seeks to explain how people justify their behaviors and those of others, with positive outcomes being linked to internal factors and negative outcome to external factors. In order to understand this, tests have been carried out whereby participants are asked questions or given a task then a feedback is given which can be either successful or failure and then the participants make internal or external attribution. Self attribution can be seen when the participants associate success with internal factors and failure with external causes for example, if an individual passes an exam, they attribute it to the fact that they are smart and hardworking but if they fail they will blame it on bad luck or bad teaching. As can be seen in another example, happily married couples attribute their partner’s positive behaviors as internal and negative behaviors as influenced by external causes, while those in unhappy marriages explain it in the opposite manner. Heider’s approach is bidirectional, it states that perception leads to evaluation, but evaluation can also lead to perception especially when making moral judgments. When a person judges another person as good or bad it affects how they relate to that person, the attributions to that person’s behavior and anything that has a relationship with the said person (Sinclair, Lowery, and Colangelo, 2005) Cognitive dissonance theory on the other side suggests we that tend to alter our beliefs, attitude and behaviors to restore balance and reduce discomfort therefore avoiding disharmony or dissonance. When an individual does something that is not in line with their beliefs they are forced to change their attitude towards what they have done because they cannot change the action as it is already in the past (DiClemente, 2006). An investigation was carried out by asking participants to study a cult by observation and what happened to specifically the serious followers of the cult who had gone to the extent of resigning from their jobs and giving up their homes for the sake of this cult. This cult believed that a flood was going to destroy the earth and as fate would have it, the floods did not destroy the earth and the cult members who were not so keen or serious members realized that they had made fools of themselves and termed it as a life experience, while the committed members comprehended that it was out of their faithfulness to the cult that the earth was still safe and not destroyed by the floods as earlier expected. In another example, seventy-one participants took part in boring repetitive tasks, whereby for a payment of either $1 or $20, they were told to tell other waiting participants that the tasks that even they thought negatively of were really interesting and fun. Each person was paid either $1 or $20 to tell a waiting party that the tasks would be interesting and they agreed to tell the waiting parties that so. The participants that had been paid a dollar agreed that the task was enjoyable as compared to those that had been paid 20 dollars, this was because for a payment of $1 it was not enough incentive for a lie so they experienced dissonance and could only make themselves feel better by persuading themselves that they enjoyed the task and it was really interesting. For the participants that were paid $20 did not experience dissonance and they felt they had a good enough reason for taking part. Success or failure influences the behaviors that one will most likely have in the future which also has an effect on their self esteem and expectations. In case one had a failure in the past and attributed it to their own inability or nurture, and will tend to give up often because they feel there is no point in trying anyway since they fall short. However, if they attributed it to external factors; nature, they will always tend to feel that they lack the power to control the outcome therefore rendering them helpless and powerless. Nevertheless, if an individual attributes his previous successes to his own personal ability, he then feels confident enough to attempt other tasks pertaining to that because he feels that his talent is sufficient and he can be able to produce the expected results. It is therefore important for care givers especially to children to create emphasis on the fact that success and failure all depend on an individual and they must learn to be hard working and persistent in order to be high achievers (Englander, 2010). Therefore, it is to this effect that we are motivated to resolve cognitive dissonance and thereby enabling ourselves feel better and at peace with ourselves. In order to bring back some self-preservation and order in our inner being is usually the motivation behind why we seek to resolve the conflict we are feeling. Cognitive dissonance can be changed in one of the three following ways: by changing our beliefs; one can simply decide that whatever wrong they are doing is okay, that would resolve it but if ones belief is very strong and what one is doing is simply unacceptable then this cannot work. There is a reason why we believe what we believe and changing a belief system is not easy therefore making this process uncommon. There is the second option of changing one’s actions by ensuring that one does not repeat the wrong action again and by saying that to one’s self, as it may help in resolving the dissonance. Changing the perception of an action is also another method, by rationalizing ones actions and making one to feel better about what he or she did or did not do will calm the turmoil that is brought about by cognitive disorder. The reason why people gravitate and move away from certain jobs is dependent on how they justify the values of their occupations. How one present himself is not just about feeling good about themself in a specific setting but valuing their decisions and choices in every cycle of life (Tracy and Trethewey, 2005). References DiClemente C. C. (2006) Addiction and Change: How Addictions Develop And Addicted People Recover, New York: Guilford Press. Englander, E.M., (2010). The Nature and Nurture of Learners, Indiana: AuthorHouse. Sinclair, S., Lowery, B. S., Hardin, C. D., & Colangelo, A. (2005). Social tuning of automatic racial attitudes: The role of affiliative orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(4), 583-592. Tracy, S. J., & Trethewey, A. (2005). Fracturing the real-self-fake-self dichotomy: Moving toward crystallized organizational identities. Communication Theory, 15(2), 168-195. Read More