Dissonance and abstraction: Cognitive conflict leads to higher level of construal

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of cognitive conflict on abstract thinking. According to action-identification theory, an ambiguous and unfamiliar situation might propel an individual to a more abstract mindset. Based on this premise, cognitive conflict was hypothesized to put people in an abstract mindset. The induced compliance paradigm, in which participants are asked to write a counter-attitudinal essay under either low choice (producing little dissonance) or high choice (producing more dissonance), was employed. Results showed that an abstract mindset was in fact activated in the induced compliance paradigm, and this effect was more pronounced for participants having a more concrete mindset to begin with. The results suggest that the experience of cognitive conflict is closely related to increased abstraction.

Pandemic, Perceived Risk, and Cognitive Dissonance as Antecedents to Need for Cognitive Closure

“…Perceived risk, pandemic environment, and cognitive dissonance accounted for 59.0 per cent of the need for cognitive closure (R 2 = .590). The results support earlier studies (McGarth, 2017;Martinez, 2018;Montecinos et al, 2018) where when a consumer has a high dissonance it results in a high need for cognitive closure and consumers try to reduce this mental discomfort as much as possible. Dissonance impacts every stage of a consumer decision-making process and this psychological tension acts as a motivational force for resolving the dissonance by changing one's behaviour, one's attitude, or in engaging in cognitive strategies to minimize the perceived discordance (Martinez, 2018).…”

Dissonance reduction as emotion regulation: Attitude change is related to positive emotions in the induced compliance paradigm

“…The remaining one-third ($407) is a grant administrated by the National Board of Student Aid (Centrala Studiestödsnämnden). This particular version of the induced compliance paradigm has been used, successfully, in a previous study (see Cancino-Montecinos et al, [18]). Several days before, and several days after the actual experiment, we measured participants’ attitudes and their baseline positive and negative emotions.…”

“…In this experimental procedure, individuals are typically given a perception of having low choice or high choice to engage in the action that is counter to an attitude they hold. Individuals who engage in the action with high choice have little justification for doing so (few consonant cognitions), and consequently, they typically experience dissonance [17–18]. In the current research, we only employ the high-choice condition, since we were interested in the emotional reaction when participants are experiencing dissonance.…”

The role of psychological distance in organizational responses to modern slavery risk in supply chains

“…(Steinbach et al, 2019). In this way, mis‐alignment can act as a driver of more evolutionary construal shifts that ultimately help the organization to reduce its psychological distance (Wood et al, 2013; Cancino‐Montecinos, Björklund and Lindholm, 2018).…”