Cognitive Dissonance

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is felt between another person, it is more likely persuasion will
occur. Because if no tension was felt between the two parties, or there were no
conflicting opinions there would be no need to persuade each other. If you think
about it persuasion occurs only because there is tension between two facts,
ideas or people.
Charles Larson writes in his book, Persuasion, Reception and
Responsibility, “another approach to the consistency theory is congruency theory,
by Charles Osgood and Percy Tennenbaum (1955)” (p.82). This theory suggest that
we want to have balance in our lives and there is a systematic way to
numerically figure it out. When two attitudes collide we must strive to strike a
balance between the two attitudes. The balance varies depending on the intensity
we feel about each attitude and our pre-disposed positions concerning the
attitude. We either have a favorable , neutral or unfavorable opinion concerning
ideas. When two attitudes collide we will attempt to ...

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together they are considered
dissonant. Cognitive dissonance can be broken down into a number of elements. As
Brehm and Cohen (1962) write, “A dissonant relationship exist between two
cognitive elements when a person possesses one which follows the obverse of
another that he possesses. A person experiences dissonance, that is, a
motivational tension, when he (or she) has cognitions among which there are one
or more dissonant relationships” (p.4).Cognitive dissonance can occur
intrapersonally as well as between two or more people.
With individual cognitive dissonance the individual longs for
consistency within their own mind. Second, there exist dissonance between two or
more people. ...

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