For all those who have taken psych or are taking it now. Im having extreme difficulty grasping this concept. I do get that it arrses when theres a disagreement between ones behaviour and attitude. I also understand that we relieve this by changing our behaviour or making exceptions. I have troubles answering some of the intropsych questions. I was wondering if anyone could provide any insight. I wouldve asked on the discussion board but its become rather useless.

Good 'ol Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

I remember that in lecture they gave a good example of an experiment where the person was told to do a boring task, and then told to tell the next subject that the task was really interesting. The subjects were either given 1 dollar or 20 dollars as payment for their tasks.

After this the subjects were asked if they thought the experiment was interesting or not. Which thought the experiment was interesting. Those who got paid a dollar, or those who got paid 20?

The answer is that the people who got paid 1 dollar said the experiment was interesting beucase of the cognative dissonance. They know they lied (action) but do not agreee with the ethics of lying (their thoughts). To align their action and thoughts they agree that the task was interesting.

Those paid 20 dollars can align thought and actions by saying they lied beucase they got paid a significant amount of money-so do not feel compelled to say the task was interesting

Hope that helps
Salima

In the quiz this week, there was a question on cognitive dissonance.
The question was:
A student wants to go out on school nights with friends, but also wants to get good grades. They regularly are persuaded to go out.

The answer is that the student begins to minimize the importance of good grades.

Good grades would be the attitude and going out would be the behavior.
Because in cognitive dissonance you change either the attitude or the behavior, the student changes their attitude about good grades (that good grades aren't important) to justify them going out on school nights.