Consumer pre-decision conflict and post-decision dissonance

Dissonance theory and Lewinian theory offer conflicting predictions regarding an individual's psychological state after being exposed to discrepant information, and a classroom experiment was conducted to test those two theories.

Abstract

Dissonance theory and Lewinian theory offer conflicting predictions regarding an individual's psychological state after being exposed to discrepant information, and a classroom experiment was conducted to test those two theories. One hundred and twenty-eight subjects expressed their preference for essay and objective tests, were exposed to either supporting, discrepant or neutral information concerning their initial preference, and subsequently were asked to express their preference once again. Sixty seven subjects were also told that they were committed to their initial preference regardless of their subsequent preference while the remaining 61 subjects were told that their subsequent preference would bind them. Dissonance theory predicts that, when exposed to discrepant information, an individual becomes more convinced that his original preference was correct and expresses a greater preference for the original choice. This prediction was not upheld for both committed and not-committed groups. Both groups were influenced in the direction of the communication, as Lewinian theory predicts. Both theories do not specify the functional relationships among the variables under some circumstances, and did not predict outcomes under those circumstances.