Cognitive dissonance may enhance sympathetic tonus, but attitudes are changed to reduce negative affect rather than arousal

An experiment was conducted using a novel misattribution source to investigate the motivational state underlying dissonance-induced attitude change. Misattribution sources associated in the past with negative experiences (e.g., a pill) have been criticized as negatively biasing subjects' interpretation of their dissonance arousal. However, prism goggles, which were used in place of an “experimental pill” as the misattribution source in the present research, were found in pilot testing to be novel, affectively neutral, and affectively malleable. Subjects wore prism goggles for 3 min and were informed that the goggles may have the delayed side-effect of making them feel pleasantly excited (positive hedonic state) or tense (negative hedonic state). Subsequently, subjects agreed to write a counterattitudinal essay under conditions of high or low choice. Results revealed that the frequency of nonspecific skin conductance responses was higher for subjects in the high-choice than low-choice conditions only during the critical postdecision period. In addition, dissonance arousal, as indexed by this physiological measure, was equal for subjects in the high-choice/positive-cue and high-choice/negativecue conditions. The analysis of attitude change revealed the predicted main effect for Choice and and the Cue × Choice interaction: Subjects in the high-choice/positive-cue condition exhibited greater attitude change than subjects in the remaining conditions. These data suggest that although cognitive dissonance may increase sympathetic activity, people in a dissonant state change their attitudes in order to reduce the unpleasant state rather than the “arousal” state induced by cognitive dissonance.