Jawn Lam

Leon Festinger

Thinkers1919 to 1989Social psychologist

Works

  • A Theory of Social Comparison Processes, Human Relations, 1954
  • A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, 1957
  • Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1959

In Tactics of Organizational Politics

Ideas

Cognitive dissonance. Holding two cognitions that do not fit together, such as a belief and an action that contradicts it, produces an uncomfortable state that people are motivated to reduce. Often the easiest way to reduce it is to change the belief to fit what one has already done.

Insufficient justification. Subjects paid one dollar to tell another person that a dull task was interesting later rated the task as more enjoyable than subjects paid twenty dollars. With little outside justification for the lie, they brought their attitude into line with their behavior. Caveat: Results in this paradigm have been mixed since the 1960s. A 2024 multilab replication of a related induced-compliance study (Vaidis, Sleegers, and colleagues, Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science) found attitude change regardless of whether participants had a choice, contrary to the dissonance prediction.

Social comparison. People evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing themselves with others, especially when no objective standard is available, and they tend to compare with people similar to themselves.

What it explains

Festinger explains why people who have taken part in a decision, endorsed it, or acted on it come to defend it, and why reversing a public position is so costly to the person who took it. Social comparison explains why people judge their standing by watching peers more than by any formal measure.

Tactics that draw on Leon Festinger (51)

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