Dissonance and Meaning Maintenance running head: Dissonance causes compensatory affirmation

Additional Analyses Across Combined Studies

As all 4 studies investigated measures of fluid compensation following manipulations of dissonance, additional analyses were conducted with the combined sample.

Meta-summary of effect size for fluid compensation following dissonance

We employed a fixed-effects meta-analysis model to obtain the weighted average effect size of fluid compensation following dissonance; 6 effects across the 4 studies were included. For Study 3, we included the sensitivity index but not the overall score of the artificial grammar task, as the two are different measures of the same effect. For Study 4, we used the interaction term, representing the increase in polarized attitudes when moving from the control to the dissonance condition. We conducted the meta-analysis both for the main effect when non-compliers included and the effect for compliers from the moderated analysis (effect for study 4 was re-estimated with non-compliers excluded). When non-compliers are included, the average estimated effect size across the 4 studies is d = .20 CI_.975[.09, .30]; see Figure 2. Looking at the effect only for compliers, the estimated effect size is d = .31 CI_.975[.19, .44].

In Study 1, non-compliers in the control condition showed a significant increase on the affirmation measure. In studies 2-3 this same trend emerged, although none of the following effects were significant. We analyzed these effects as a group using the same meta-analytic strategy and found that the combined statistic was situated close to an effect of 0, d = .11 CI_.975[-.13, .35]. The most sensible conclusion to the Study 1 effect is that it was a type I error.

Secondary analysis of cultural moderation

Given that the samples in Studies 2 and 3 contained a diverse range of ethnicities, we tested whether cultural differences in responding to dissonance might be present. To boost power, the samples were merged after participants’ dependent variable scores were Z-transformed within their own sample. Using Hofstede’s (2001) regional scores of individualism/collectivism as a guide, we assigned participants into either group in a binary manner. Participants who reported mixed ethnicity were only included if both identities were coded the same way. We then re-ran the analysis including collectivism status as both a covariate and moderating term. The result was a non-significant interaction term between condition and collectivist/individualist grouping, p = .654, while the main effect for condition reflected the effects in studies 2 and 3, p = .064. This suggests that our effects were largely invariant across cultural backgrounds, at least in terms of ethnicities associated with collectivism, living within North America (cf., Heine & Lehman, 1997; Kitayama, Snibbe, Markus, & Suzuki, 2004).

General Discussion

Across 4 studies, induced-compliance dissonance manipulations led not only to classic dissonance reduction, but also to greater affirmation of committed, unrelated beliefs. Participants were more likely to punish a norm violator, espouse a stronger belief in God, and had increasingly polarized views of positive discrimination. Additionally, participants in Study 3 also showed an increased likelihood of perceiving congruent patterns in an implicit grammar task, which is evidence for abstraction motivations. These results indicate that the process involved in dissonance reduction also leads to fluid compensation, just as with other meaning violations. However, our initial prediction that meaning maintenance and dissonance may be the same process, did not receive unequivocal support. Compensatory affirmation failed to prevent dissonance reduction (Study 3) or significantly attenuate it (Study 1). One interpretation of these findings is that dissonance may additionally lead to feelings of uncertainty, which is ultimately responsible for affirmation. Another possibility is that there may not be a unique “dissonance-reduction” psychological mechanism, but rather, dissonant cognitions lead to general arousal, and this arousal causes but is not fully resolved through compensatory affirmation. Our findings are somewhat in conflict with past work showing that self-affirmation does in fact eliminate the need to reduce dissonance. This may suggest that affirmations used in these other studies, such as writing about a cherished value or receiving positive personality feedback (Heine & Lehman, 1997;Matz & Wood, 2005; Steele & Liu, 1983; Steele, Spencer, & Lynch, 1993), are more palliative than affirming one’s attitudes towards the appropriate punishment for a law-breaker.

Regarding the broader concern of the dissonance paradigm, our estimated effects of dissonance reduction are considerably smaller when condition is not moderated by compliance (see Table 1), suggesting that selective attrition has influenced previously reported effect sizes in most dissonance studies. Inferring causality from an experiment requires random assignment, and as such the main effect including compliers is the most rigorous estimate. However, we suspect the true effect likely falls somewhere in between these two approaches. Those participants who chose not to comply would never have felt any dissonance, and thus had not received the manipulation, reducing the estimate of the dissonance effect. On the other hand, those who chose not to comply may have had more strongly opposed attitudes to begin with, which is why they opted to defy the experimenter’s instructions. Excluding this type of person would thus lead to a biased inclusion strategy and an inflated estimate of the effect.

In contrast to the estimates of the effect size of dissonance effects, the asymmetric attrition rate should not be as clearly related to the magnitude of fluid compensation effects. Refusing to comply with a request to say a boring task was interesting, or to argue in favor of a tuition increase, is not conceptually related with people’s attitudes towards God, prostitutes, positive discrimination, or pattern-detection. The non-compliers did not experience dissonance or any kind of meaning violation and we thus expect the “true” effect of our meta-analysis should be closer to the estimate based on those who complied (d = .31) than the main effect for both compliers and non-compliers (d= .20).

Although not a direct focus of our work, these results have implications for self-affirmation theory. It is reasonable to consider punishment of a law-breaker, belief in God, or support for positive discrimination as examples of self-affirmation, and these findings are thus consistent with both perspectives. However, the finding that dissonance leads to increased motivation to detect patterns is a harder fit with self-affirmation. Additionally, that watching a surreal video can lead to these same effects, calls into question the exclusivity of self-threats in triggering affirmation, a challenge that is further evident in looking at the broad range of meaning violations that do not implicate the self (e.g., Proulx & Heine, 2008; Proulx et al., 2010; Randles, et al., 2011, 2013).

There are a number of limitations in the findings across the studies. First, in the abstraction results in Study 3, dissonance only appeared to increase motivation to identify patterns, but not accuracy, as has been seen in other studies (Proulx & Heine, 2009; Randles et al., 2011). An additional limitation is that our participants, although varied in ethnic background, were largely from Western countries, although our analyses revealed no moderation effect based on individualistic leanings, suggesting that the results may generalize even more broadly. Finally, the results for dissonance in Study 2 were not clearly different from a null effect when non-compliers were included, although the results are sensible in the context of the other studies and our sample sizes. One apparent limitation is that our rates of non-compliance appear higher than much of the past literature. However, many dissonance studies do not report rates of compliance (e.g. Cooper et al. 1978; Croyle et al. 1983; Zanna et al., 1974) and those that do, report from 50% up to 100% compliance, spread somewhat evenly across the range (based on studies referenced in this article). Many past dissonance studies have also employed very small samples (e.g. N < 15 per condition; Harmon-Jones et al., 1996; Steele et al., 1983), making it difficult to assess whether differences in compliance were due to the paradigms or noisy estimates.

Although these results support our claim that dissonance and other threat-compensation theories are discussing similar phenomena, there are still a number of unaddressed questions. Most manipulations of uncertainty or expectancy violation show little or no change in self-reported affect, while dissonance is consistently associated with negative affect (Elliot & Devine, 1994; Harmon-Jones, 2000; Harmon-Jones et al., 2009) and has a detectable arousal component (Croyle & Cooper, 1983; van Veen et al., 2009), something that has not yet been shown in other meaning violation paradigms. However, studies conducted under the MMM have found that arousal is produced, insofar as participants are able to misattribute it (e.g., Proulx & Heine, 2008), and that the effects are reduced when people have taken acetaminophen, even though they are not able to consciously report a change in arousal via the PANAS (Proulx & Heine, 2008; Randles et al., 2013); dissonance reduction has also been shown to be eliminated through these same methods of misattributions of arousal (Zanna & Cooper, 1974) and acetaminophen (Dewall et al., 2014).

This lack of self-conscious affect has been discussed more broadly in the uncertainty literature (Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012; Tritt, Inzlicht, & Harmon-Jones, 2012), where it is noted that subjective experience, physiological arousal and behavioral expression often do not correlate as much as might be predicted following an affective trigger (Lang, 1968), and that the experience of anxiety may occur without conscious awareness (Winkielman & Berridge, 2004). In general though, there has been growing consensus that the PANAS is simply the wrong tool for the job (e.g. Jonas et al., 2014). Some recent work has explored other approaches to assess changes in affect, and is showing promising results (Lambert et al., 2014; Spunt et al., 2012). We are of the perspective that meaning violations are mediated by changes in some form of anxiety, and encourage continued work to directly assess measures that consistently identify changes following unexpected events.

An additional consideration is what types of opinions would fail to show compensatory affirmation. In contrast to theories of existential anxiety (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997), self-integrity (Sherman & Cohen, 2006) and control (Kay et al., 2010a), we do not believe that fluid compensation only solves a specific self-relevant concern. Rather, we submit that the experience of violated expectations is itself bothersome, irrespective of other concerns, and focusing on any meaningful belief that one has prior commitment to helps to down-regulate the anxiety and shift focus away from the problem at hand. Our results in Study 4 highlight this perspective, where participants more strongly endorsed their prior attitudes on affirmative action causing a polarization, rather than all shifting in one direction. Past research also finds that meaning threats only lead to affirmations of beliefs that our participants were committed to – they don’t lead to extreme responses on just any measure (e.g., Harmon-Jones et al., 1997; Heine, Harihara, & Niiya, 2002; Kosleff et al., 2010; Proulx & Major, 2013). That said, it is still possible that some topics may be more appealing as targets of affirmation. McGregor et al., (2011) suggest that abstract goals may have a distinct advantage, in that they are never satisfied but always perceived as progressing, and can be largely maintained within the confines of one’s own mind. Abstract goals also tend to involve illusions (unverifiable beliefs; Baumeister, 1991; Stace, 1948), which may be particularly appealing because they cannot be violated themselves. The question of whether certain classes of beliefs are more palliative than others has only recently emerged as a topic of central interest (McGregor et al., 2010, Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012), and will likely receive more attention, as many theorists are coming to general agreement regarding the basic processes of uncertainty detection and response (e.g. Jonas et al., 2014).

Conclusion

While cognitive dissonance theory and the MMM may be referring to a similar psychological process, the fact that they come from different perspectives creates a rich and likely fertile ground for advancing a more unified theory. Further attention to the overlap in both theories may help build a more complete understanding of human cognition and behavior in response to unexpected or dissonant cognitions.

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