Describe how cognitive dissonance can be used to change employee attitudes.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Cognitive dissonance is the incompatibility between two or more attitudes or
between attitudes and behavior. This creates stress for an individual and the person will
be motivated to resolve the stress by making a change in one or both of the other
components. Very few people can completely avoid dissonance in their lives. For
example, you may be reminded of this when a child corrects you for swearing because
you have told them not to do this in the past. Festinger proposed that the degree to
which people are motivated to resolve dissonance is related to the importance of what
creates it and how much influence the person has over it. The final motivating element
is rewards. For example, one of the best ways to learn to stop swearing is to have your
children remind you because it is important to you and you do have influence over what
you say. The reward from swearing is not great, so you are probably willing to change it
to be a positive role model for your child which is more rewarding. (Students may
provide their own example but it needs to be checked for consistency with the definition
of cognitive dissonance.)