PSYC 170 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Doomsday Cult, Cognitive Dissonance
Document Summary
Dissonance for doomsday group: before prophecy about spaceship fails, they were secretive. People gave up their savings: after it fails, they start to be more public. Example: smoking causes cancer: resolve inconsistencies by . Discount the information (evidence not clear about smoking causing cancer) Forgotten root (trivialization root) decide you don"t care. Dissonance is intolerable when : it"s something important. Ex: giving up all possessions to join doomsday cult. Ex: smoking if threatening to your life: big discrepancy between attitude and behavior, public commitment can"t just ignore it. Ex: if said out loud why we should increase tuition, it might be more difficult to ignore the inconsistency than if you wrote it privately: illusion of choice. Have to believe you really chose the action, otherwise they have an excuse for their behavior dissonance. Ex: not being forced to write paragraph about tuition increase, but.
