Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to submit your manuscript to SPPS

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Starzyk, K. B.
Right arrow Articles by Fanning, J. J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Starzyk, K. B.
Right arrow Articles by Fanning, J. J.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

A Painful Reminder: The Role of Level and Salience of Attitude Importance in Cognitive Dissonance

Katherine B. Starzyk

University of Manitoba, starzyk{at}cc.umanitoba.ca

Leandre R. Fabrigar

Queen's University

Ashley S. Soryal

University of Toronto

Jessie J. Fanning

Queen's University

In his seminal book, L. Festinger (1957) emphasized the role of attitude importance in cognitive dissonance. This study (N = 308) explored whether people's use of dissonance reduction strategies differs as a function of level of attitude importance and whether the personal importance of an attitude is salient. Results showed that level and salience of attitude importance interacted to affect high-choice (HC) participants' tendency to use attitude change and trivialization to reduce dissonance. When HC participants were not reminded of the personal importance of their attitude (i.e., it was not salient), they changed their attitudes equally irrespective of attitude importance, but engaged in greater trivialization with increasing levels of importance. In contrast, when attitude importance was salient, HC participants changed their attitudes less with increasing attitude importance and showed no evidence of trivializing under any level of importance.

Key Words: cognitive dissonance • attitude importance • attitude importance salience • trivialization • attitude change

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 35, No. 1, 126-137 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167208325613
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?