How attitudes change

Why do attitudes change? Three explanations, all based on our need for consistency.

1. Fritz Heider's balance theory: the P-O-X triangle. P is the person, O another person, X an attitude object. Each relation can be positive or negative.

• If all three relations are negative, or just one is negative, the triangle is imbalanced, and we feel uncomfortable.
• Two negatives and one positive, or all three positive, is balanced.

Example: P likes O (+); O likes smoking (+); P dislikes smoking (–). One negative: imbalanced. P will change something: start to dislike O, or start to accept smoking.

2. Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance: when two cognitions (thoughts) clash, we feel dissonance and change one of them. 'Pan masala causes cancer' and 'I eat pan masala' are dissonant. To reduce dissonance, one either stops eating it, or changes the first belief ('it is not that harmful').

The one-dollar experiment (Festinger and Carlsmith): students did a very boring task and were then paid to tell the next person it was interesting. Some were paid 1 dollar, others 20 dollars. Later, the 1 dollar group rated the task as more interesting! Why? The 20-dollar group had a good reason for lying (the money). The 1-dollar group did not, so to reduce dissonance they changed their attitude: 'maybe it really was interesting'.

Balance and dissonance are both examples of cognitive consistency: our need for thoughts that fit together.

3. S.M. Mohsin's two-step concept:

• Step 1: the target (the person to be changed) identifies with the source (a person they admire).
• Step 2: the source shows an attitude change, and the target follows, imitating the source.

Example: a student admires a doctor who stops smoking; the student then gives up smoking too.

Inconsistency drives change.