Apart from its effect on the study of attitude change, describe how the advent of Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory impacted our understanding of conditioning. What type of conditioning is most impacted by cognitive dissonance findings?

Question

In which model (conditioning or dissonance) is cognition viewed as a non-observable cause of behavior (and why is that important)? Describe the differing predictions the two approaches would make for Festinger's experiment, referring in detail to aspects of the induced-compliance "$1/$20" paradigm.

Answer 1

Answer:
Festinger and Carlsmith's experiment demonstrated that people changed their attitudes more with less of an inducement ($1, compared to $20). Instrumental conditioning model would (incorrectly) predict that people would change their attitude more in the $20 condition of the experiment (than the $1 condition)--$20 is a bigger reward, after all! Instrumental conditioning would argue that there was no cognition and that people unthinkingly responded to rewards and punishments. Festinger's theory showed that complex cognitive operations were occurring on the way to attitude change, and that they were indeed observable.