Dissonance Reduction and Psychological Reactance

Dissonance Reduction and Reactance

The dissonance researchers (Festinger, 1957; see also Aronson, 1969; Brehm & Cohen, 1962) showed unparalleled ingenuity in demonstrating the ways in which people rationalize their actions and reduce discrepancies in their belief systems. These social psychologists were not the first, of course, to appreciate the human capacity for rationalization. Students of the psychoanalytic tradition, and other canny observers who have noted correlations between political beliefs and individual or group interests, long ago recognized that capacity. What dissonance research highlighted is the barriers to rational judgment and dispute resolution that are created by prior commitment, personal sacrifice, and perseverance in the face of earlier temptations to abandon a cause. The authors illustrate the point with injured or imprisoned Vietnam veterans and draft resisters who left the country or went to jail. Revising their views about events described at the time of writing as 30 years earlier could carry a heavy psychological cost, given their sacrifices and prior commitments. Our further contention is that such practitioners of dissonance reduction and rationalization are apt to make unwarranted inferences about each other’s objectivity and honesty in facing the past and drawing lessons for the future – and to feel wronged and misunderstood by the rest of us who seem content to “move on” and adopt a more conciliatory view.

The veterans, moreover, are apt to think draft evaders were cowards and traitors who even today are unwilling or unable to face that “truth” about themselves. The draft evaders, conversely, are apt to believe that it is the veterans who persist in their delusions because they cannot bear the pain of “facing reality” by recognizing that their personal sacrifices, and the even greater sacrifices of their fallen comrades, were pointless. Both groups agree only that the rest of us have too readily forgotten that unhappy chapter in American history. This characterization of Vietnam veterans and draft resisters, illustrates a broader claim about opposing partisans. We argue that people readily recognize biases in others that they do not recognize in themselves, and as a result, they make overly negative attributions about others whose views and self-interested motives seem “conveniently” congruent.

Although less well known, and perhaps less intuitive, than dissonance reduction, the process of psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Wicklund, 1974) also belongs on our list of biases that create barriers to dispute resolution. Of particular relevance is the phenomenon we call reactive devaluation, whereby potential compromise offers or concessions become less attractive to the recipient as a consequence of the fact that they have been offered. In one study (Maoz, Ward, Katz, & Ross, 2000), Arab and Israeli university students evaluated peace proposals actually offered by the two sides in the latest round of Middle East negotiations. The participants all read exactly the same proposals, which were necessarily vague about exactly what kind of Palestinian state would emerge after the negotiation process was complete. What varied was purported authorship; that is, some respondents were told that the proposal under examination had been offered by the Israelis whereas others were told that it had been offered by the Palestinians. The results were dramatic. Purported authorship mattered more than the actual authorship and content of the proposal, so that when the proposals’ purported authorships were reversed, partisans preferred the other side’s proposal to their own.

In earlier studies of the relevant phenomenon (see Ross, 1995; Ross & Stillinger, 1991; Ross & Ward, 1995, 1996), the investigators manipulated not the authorship but the status (i.e., “on the table” versus “merely hypothetical” or “not yet offered”) of proposals to end a conflict or disagreement. The result was a consistent one. Proposed concessions that seemed relatively attractive before they had been offered became significantly less attractive once put on the table. The attributional consequences that ensue from such devaluation are familiar, and unfortunate. The party receiving the proposal responds coolly, complaining that the proposed terms offer too little or came too late – a response that induces distrust and denunciation from the party offering it, thus further heightening the cycle of ill-will and intransigence.