Is Cognitive Dissonance Universal?
Different cultural values can trigger different dissonance experiences.
by Lawrence T. White, Ph.D. and Steven Jackson
Web Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culture-conscious/201306/is-cognitive-dissonance-universal

Imagine yourself acting in a way that contradicts one of your most cherished inner beliefs. You get an abortion, even though you think abortion is immoral. Or you cheat on your spouse, even though you believe marital infidelity is a sin.

Psychological scientists have known for decades that we humans—and perhaps some primates—are motivated to maintain cognitive consistency. When we act in ways that are inconsistent with our attitudes and beliefs, we experience an aversive state of mental tension called cognitive dissonance.

Consider the teenager who starts smoking, even though she knows smoking causes cancer. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological consequence of that decision. Dissonance is uncomfortable; it makes us feel like a hypocrite. So we take steps to eliminate the dissonance. We can change our behavior (OK, I stopped smoking) or we can change our belief (hey, the claims about cigarettes causing cancer are overblown).

Dissonance phenomena were first investigated systematically in the late 1950s by Leon Festinger and his students. Without actually saying so, they assumed that cognitive dissonance was a universal phenomenon, that people everywhere experience dissonance when they act in ways that contradict their beliefs and values. Were they correct? Or might there be places in the world where people don’t experience dissonance?

In 1997, social psychologists Steven Heine and Darrin Lehman made a startling discovery. In their study, they asked Canadian and Japanese participants to choose between two music CDs that they had rated earlier as nearly identical in desirability. After choosing a CD to take home, the participants rated both CDs a second time. Like Americans in earlier studies, the Canadian participants typically changed their opinions of the CDs. They emphasized the positive features of the chosen CD and the negative features of the rejected CD. They needed to convince themselves that they had chosen the “better” CD so as to eradicate any feelings of dissonance.

Their startling discovery? The Japanese participants showed no evidence of dissonance! After choosing a CD, they continued to view both CDs as equally attractive and desirable. They apparently felt little need to justify the choice they had made.

Heine and Lehman’s discovery raised the real possibility that Festinger and his students had erred when they assumed that dissonance was universal. Researchers scrambled to design and conduct experiments, using American, Canadian, Japanese, and Korean participants. Their findings led to a deeper understanding of cognitive dissonance and the addition of an important new component to the theory.

According to dissonance expert Joel Cooper at Princeton University, dissonance isn’t restricted to a particular culture or region; it’s a general phenomenon experienced by people everywhere. But there’s an important qualification to this overarching conclusion: Different cultural values can trigger different dissonance experiences.

Generally speaking, people in independent societies experience dissonance when their behavior violates either a personal standard or a social standard. Both kinds of violations are psychologically problematic, and equally so.

People in interdependent societies, however, are much more concerned about violations of social standards. (Indeed, the very idea of a personal standard that differs from the normative standard may be alien to them.) For an interdependent person, disrupting social harmony and being rejected by others is one of the worst things that can happen to a person.

In everyday language, it seems European Americans are motivated equally by feelings of shame and feelings of guilt, while East Asians are motivated primarily by feelings of shame. Shame is, after all, the quintessential social emotion, whereas guilt is an intrapersonal phenomenon, something that’s between you and your conscience. You could literally be the last person on earth and still feel guilty about something, but shame is a feeling that requires the presence—actual or imagined—of other people. Maybe this explains why many cultures have a hand gesture for “shame on you” but lack a gesture for “feeling guilty.”

Lawrence T. White, Ph.D. and Steven Jackson

Lawrence T. White is a professor of psychology at Beloit College in Wisconsin. He received his Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1997-98, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Tartu in Estonia.

White's current research examines the sociocultural nature of punctuality and cultural variations in fatalistic thinking. He has published research reports in numerous journals, including the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, and has directed study abroad programs in Australia, Estonia, and Morocco. White is the author of Professor Tawney's Chronoscope, a history of psychology and psychologists at a small Midwestern college.

Steven Jackson is a journalist and producer based in Los Angeles, California. His educational background is in cross-cultural psychology, cognitive science, and journalism. Today, his work focuses on psychology, culture, and the arts. He is currently a staffer with National Public Radio and a freelance reporter.</span>