Although researchers have been using and revising Festinger’s theory since 1957, and some scholars point to the theory as the primary achievement of social psychology (Aron & Aron, 1989), the theory does have weaknesses and detractors.

One weakness relates to critics’ complaints that dissonance may not be the most important concept to explain attitude change. For instance, some researchers believe that other theoretical frameworks can explain the attitude change Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) found in the one dollar/twenty dollars experiment.

Irving Janis and Robert Gilmore (1965) argue that when people participate in an inconsistency, such as arguing a position they do not believe in, they become motivated to think up all the arguments in favor of the position while suppressing all the arguments against it. Janis and Gilmore call this process biased scanning. This biased scanning process should increase the chances of accepting the new position-for example, changing one’s position from evaluating the spool-sorting task as dull to the position that it really was an interesting task.

Janis and Gilmore (1965) argue that when a person is overcompensated for engaging in biased scanning, suspicion and guilt are aroused. Thus, they are able to explain why the large incentive of twenty dollars does not cause the students in Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1959) experiment to have an increased attitude change.

Other researchers (Cooper & Fazio, 1984) argue that the original theory of cognitive dissonance contains a great deal of “conceptual fuzziness.” Some researchers note that the concept of dissonance is confounded by self-concept or impression management. Impression management refers to the activities people engage in to look good to themselves and others. For example, Elliot Aronson (1969) argues that people wish to appear reasonable to themselves and suggests that in Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1959) experiment, if “dissonance exists, it is because the individual’s behavior is inconsistent with his self-concept” (p. 27). Aronson asserts that the Stanford students’ dissonance resulted from seeing themselves as upright and truthful men contrasted with their behavior of deceiving someone else because they were being paid to do so.

In the study we discussed earlier by Patrice Buzzanell and Lynn Turner (2003) concerning family communication and job loss, we could conceive of the strategies the families adopted as employing impression management rather than reducing dissonance. When fathers reported that nothing had changed in their family despite the job loss, they may have been rationalizing to continue to seem reasonable to themselves, just as Aronson suggests.

In the preceding critiques, researchers disagree about what cognitive state is at work: dissonance, biased scanning, or impression management. Daryl Bem (1967) argues that the central concept of importance is not any type of cognition but, rather, is behavioral. Bem states that rather than dissonance in cognitions operating to change people, self-perception is at work. Self-perception simply means that people make conclusions about their own attitudes the same way others do-by observing their behavior. Bem’s alternative explanation allows more simplicity in the theory as well.

In Bem’s conceptualization, it is not necessary to speculate about the degree of cognitive dissonance that a person feels. People only need to observe what they are doing to calculate what their attitudes must be. For instance, if I am not working out regularly, but I believe fitness and health are important goals, I must not really believe working out is so important to good health. In our chapter opening story about Ali Torres, Bem would argue that the longer Ali works at the Alliance, the more likely she is to come to believe that she is doing something worthwhile. Bem’s argument suggests that if Ali’s mother asks her if she likes her job, she might reply, “I guess I do. I am still there.”

Claude Steele’s work (Steele, 1988; Steele, Spencer, & Lynch, 1993) also offers a behavioral explanation for dissonance effects: self-affirmation. However, unlike Bem, Steele and his colleagues argue in Self-Affirmation Theory that dissonance is the result of behaving in a manner that threatens one’s sense of moral integrity. You can see how this explanation might work quite well in Ali Torres’s situation. Her discomfort might not be because she holds two contradictory beliefs but because she doesn’t respect herself for staying in a job where she is not accomplishing anything of significance.

With reference to our criteria from Chapter 3, CDT has been critiqued on the grounds of utility and testability.

Utility

CDT has been critiqued for not having enough utility. These critics note that the theory does not provide a full explanation for how and when people will attempt to reduce dissonance. First, there is what has been called the “multiple mode” problem. This problem exists because, given a dissonance-producing situation, there are multiple ways to reduce the dissonance. As we discussed earlier in the chapter, there are several ways to bring about more consonance (such as changing your mind or engaging in selective exposure, attention, interpretation, or retention). The weakness in the theory is that it doesn’t allow precise predictions.

This prediction problem is also apparent in the fact that the theory does not speak to the issue of individual differences. People vary in their tolerance for dissonance, and the theory fails to specify how this factors in to its explanation.

Testability

Another weakness that scholars point out relates specifically to our criterion of testability. As you recall, testability refers to the theory’s likelihood of ever being proven false. Theories that have a seeming escape clause against being falsified are not as strong as those that do not. Researchers have pointed out that because Cognitive Dissonance Theory asserts that dissonance will motivate people to act, when people do not act, proponents of the theory can say that the dissonance must not have been strong enough, rather than concluding that the theory is wrong. In this way it is difficult to disprove the theory.

Other scholars believe that Cognitive Dissonance Theory is basically useful and explanatory but needs some refinements. For example, Wicklund and Brehm (1976) argue that Cognitive Dissonance Theory is not clear enough about the conditions under which dissonance leads to change in attitudes. They believe that choice is the missing concept in the theory. Wicklund and Brehm posit that when people believe they have a choice about the dissonant relationship, they will be motivated to change that relationship. If people think they are powerless, then they will not be bothered by the dissonance, and they probably will not change. Regarding our beginning scenario about Ali Torres, Wicklund and Brehm would argue that we could predict whether she will leave her job based on how much choice she believes she has in the matter. If, for instance, she is tied to Gary, Indiana, because of family responsibilities or if she believes she would have trouble locating a new job in the city, she may not be motivated to act on her dissonant cognitions. On the other hand, if nothing really ties her to Gary, or there are plenty of other job opportunities, she will be motivated to change based on those same cognitions.

Another refinement is suggested by the work of Joel Cooper and Jeff Stone (2000). Cooper and Stone point out that in the more than 1,000 studies using Cognitive Dissonance Theory, only rarely has the group membership of the person experiencing dissonance been considered. Cooper and Stone believe that group membership plays an important role in how people experience and reduce dissonance. For example, they found that social identity derived from religious and political groups had an impact on how people responded to dissonance.