Festinger (1957) discover that inconsistencies among a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions cause an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency.
Cognitive dissonance can be reduced by changing thoughts, feelings, or behavior in order to make them consistent: for instance, smoking may cause dissonance, because it is bad for health and most people want to be healthy. Dissonance can be reduced by quitting smoking.
But cognitive dissonance can also be reduced by adding thoughts, feelings, or behaviors to reduce apparent inconsistencies: for instance, many people may find it too difficult to quit smoking. Dissonance can be reduced by adding such thoughts as “My grandfather smoked every day and he lived to be 100 years old”.
Decision dissonance typically is resolved by emphasizing the positives and minimizing the negatives of the selected choice.
Festinger theory is even more important today, because it involves a psychological aspect of the human being that is even more exposed today that each individual is reached by millions of information every day through social media: the process of adjusting cognitive dissonance has become a daily exercise.
It’s not a case that each individual tends to create a “bubble” around him in the social networks, picking a choosing what type of information and people they like and which one the don’t.
It’s a great opportunity for the marketeers, as they can see the gap between people’s action and believes, and leverage it for greater opportunity. Most marketing strategies that employ cognitive dissonance in the service of selling a product rely on our desire to be perceived favorably – for example, as sophisticated, hip, knowledgeable or affluent.
Marketers have to decide what they want to change: the story, the behavior or adapt the behavior? Depending on this decision then they have to adapt their product development, brand narrative and any number of factors to beneficially leverage the dissonance for the consumers.
