Recall that Aronson and his colleagues asked college students either to compose a persuasive message advocating the use of condo
ms or to compose and deliver their message in front of a video camera. In addition, half of the participants in each group were made mindful of the times that they didn't use condoms. After completing these tasks, participants were allowed to purchase condoms at a low price. What is the significance of their findings from this experiment? They demonstrated that..
They demonstrated that dissonance created by hypocrisy can change both attitudes and behaviors.
Explanation:
"As originally formulated (Festinger, 1957), cognitive dissonance is induced when a person holds two contradictory beliefs, or when a belief is incongruent with an action that the person had chosen freely to perform. Because this situation produces feelings of discomfort, the individual strives to change one of the beliefs or behaviors in order to avoid being inconsistent. Hypocrisy is a special case of cognitive dissonance, produced when a person freely chooses to promote a behavior that they do not themselves practice."
Reference: O'Leary, Ann. “Teaching Tip Sheet: Cognitive Dissonance.” American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, 2019
