App Building: Drawing on Cognitive Dissonance Theory of Leon Festinger to Understand the Subtleties of a Nudge
We can be blind to potential all around us, particularly in lives of students. Hidden in “plain view” are the dynamics behind the situations that can cause them harm. Hidden are the dynamics of the groups that can undermine their confidence and lead them astray. Hidden are the dynamics that govern the their inner struggles.
What is also hidden is the potential that resides in these negative dynamics. All we need to do is uncover it and release it.
About Systems. One of the major principles of social psychology is the notion of the tension system, the home to untapped potential. A tension system is defined as a “patterned series of interrelationships between individuals, groups, and institutions and forming a coherent whole.” It is fundamentally a “dynamic contest between opposing forces.” There are “restraining forces” that support the status quo, and there are “driving forces” that seek change. “Some forces support each other, some forces oppose each other.”
These invisible forces usually arrive at a stalemate—what the social entrepreneurs Roger Martin and Sally Osberg call “equilibria.” “Its forces are in balance and will remain so without intentional action to shift it.” They observe that no matter how unproductive or repressive such systems become, they can “feel natural and inevitable.”
The best way to assess the strength of a tension system is to gauge the strength of its channels—the pathways that connect our intentions with results. The elementary school playground is a situational channel. It’s a channel in place. The school’s daily schedule is a channel in time. The school’s schedule is especially powerful in that it’s “recursive,” that is, the days and the weeks are repeated on a routine basis.
There are powerful group channels that influence students. Consider the power of peer pressure to inhibit a teenager from doing the right thing. There are powerful channels in one’s mind and heart. Consider the power of a defeatist attitude to prevent a middle school student from even trying.
How systems become unproductive. It’s critical to understand how systems wear down, for in so doing we can gain insights into how to build them up. Consider again the school playground. Understand how it degenerates from a joyous place of play into a den of interpersonal conflict, and we can gain insight on how to turn it around. Understand how a group can degenerate into a gang, and we can start the journey of renewal. Understand how an individual can fall prey to unproductive attitudes and we can chart a different course. It all can be found by identifying the dynamic forces at work and the channels through with these forces travel.
Groups as systems that wear down. From researchers we understand that “groups should be thought of as being in a constant state of tension produced on the one hand by requirements of uniformity and on the other, by forces on individual group members that cause them to stray from the group standard. Individuals will have different sources of information about important topics and will construe this information in various ways. This will produce opinion deviance, which will be met with forces toward uniformity by the group.” (Ross and Nisbett, 1991). Another way of saying this is that this phenomenon is “group think” or more plainly, conformity (to the perceived norms of the group).
Leon Festinger, one of the most prominent and influential social psychologist of the last century, called this phenomenon “pressures to uniformity.” Groups, like the physical world and individuals, undergo entropy, and when it happens its effects can be “cascading.” In other words, group entropy has a tipping point.
Individuals as systems that wear down. In one of Festinger’s greatest insights, he discovered that “what plays out interpersonally in the dynamics of groups also takes place in the internal dynamics of our individual minds.” He “regarded attitudes within the head of the individual as existing in a state of tension. Some attitudes support each other; some contradict each other. Contradictory attitudes exist in a state of tension, called ‘dissonance,’ which must be resolved. One attitude or the other must be changed until the system is restored to a state of balance.” (Ross and Nisbett, p 16)
In other words, we are “motivated to reduce the dissonance in whatever ways we can.” (Gilovich and Ross, page 112. ) “You can change your beliefs. You can change your actions. Or you can rationalize the status quo. Alternatively, you can succumb to internal “pressures to uniformity” by just putting your head in the sand and checking out. Or you can drink or drug yourself into oblivion -- or just live with the ambiguity. In brief, more often than not, individuals can get worn down over time.
Reversing the drift toward entropy: the power of leverage. This brings us to the all-important issue of leverage, for it can be the key to reversing a group’s pent-up energy as it drifts toward uniformity or successfully redirecting the energy pent up in an individual’s bout with “cognitive dissonance.” And the key to leverage is in applying the right level of force along the right channels.
When it comes to individual students in our educational system, too overbearing a catalyst and the student will recoil in disbelief. Too weak a catalyst and the student will not notice. The most influential catalysis are those that find a sweet spot, which is often subtle and elusive. (See Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959). Like Goldilocks, it’s got to be “just right.”
As usual, Ross and Nisbett say it best, “ Providing people with small incentives for acting as if they hold a given belief promotes greater change in the “rewarded” direction than providing them with large incentives. This of course, is quite contrary to the spirit of conventional reinforcement theory, which leads us to expect that large rewards would be more effusive in leading actors to adopt privately the preferences or beliefs that they were expressing overtly.” (p. 66)
Mark Lepper, a professor emeritus at Stanford, was one of the first generation of social psychologists to apply the Goldilocks effect to the issue of student motivation. He demonstrated this phenomenon in his famous “magic marker” experiments from the 1970’s, calling into question a very popular but flawed behavioral modification tool at the time: handing out external rewards for “points earned.”
Lepper cited the limits of such an approach, concluding that students recoiled at external rewards when the reward, can be easily viewed as a “bribe.” Such effects are less likely to occur, by contrast, when any tangible rewards are based on quality of task performance, that is, when the rewards serve primarily to offer feedback and recognition of the competence in a task that is intrinsically motivated already” (pp. 231-232)
What Lepper, Festinger and others of their generation proved was what a subsequent generation of change makers undertake: the power of the right lever. Consider my experience with the playground. All it took was the right nudge. Consider the bystander dynamics that fuels bullying. All it took was to form a counter-group, a team of concerned students.
What is also hidden is the potential that resides in these negative dynamics. All we need to do is uncover it and release it.
About Systems. One of the major principles of social psychology is the notion of the tension system, the home to untapped potential. A tension system is defined as a “patterned series of interrelationships between individuals, groups, and institutions and forming a coherent whole.” It is fundamentally a “dynamic contest between opposing forces.” There are “restraining forces” that support the status quo, and there are “driving forces” that seek change. “Some forces support each other, some forces oppose each other.”
These invisible forces usually arrive at a stalemate—what the social entrepreneurs Roger Martin and Sally Osberg call “equilibria.” “Its forces are in balance and will remain so without intentional action to shift it.” They observe that no matter how unproductive or repressive such systems become, they can “feel natural and inevitable.”
The best way to assess the strength of a tension system is to gauge the strength of its channels—the pathways that connect our intentions with results. The elementary school playground is a situational channel. It’s a channel in place. The school’s daily schedule is a channel in time. The school’s schedule is especially powerful in that it’s “recursive,” that is, the days and the weeks are repeated on a routine basis.
There are powerful group channels that influence students. Consider the power of peer pressure to inhibit a teenager from doing the right thing. There are powerful channels in one’s mind and heart. Consider the power of a defeatist attitude to prevent a middle school student from even trying.
How systems become unproductive. It’s critical to understand how systems wear down, for in so doing we can gain insights into how to build them up. Consider again the school playground. Understand how it degenerates from a joyous place of play into a den of interpersonal conflict, and we can gain insight on how to turn it around. Understand how a group can degenerate into a gang, and we can start the journey of renewal. Understand how an individual can fall prey to unproductive attitudes and we can chart a different course. It all can be found by identifying the dynamic forces at work and the channels through with these forces travel.
Groups as systems that wear down. From researchers we understand that “groups should be thought of as being in a constant state of tension produced on the one hand by requirements of uniformity and on the other, by forces on individual group members that cause them to stray from the group standard. Individuals will have different sources of information about important topics and will construe this information in various ways. This will produce opinion deviance, which will be met with forces toward uniformity by the group.” (Ross and Nisbett, 1991). Another way of saying this is that this phenomenon is “group think” or more plainly, conformity (to the perceived norms of the group).
Leon Festinger, one of the most prominent and influential social psychologist of the last century, called this phenomenon “pressures to uniformity.” Groups, like the physical world and individuals, undergo entropy, and when it happens its effects can be “cascading.” In other words, group entropy has a tipping point.
Individuals as systems that wear down. In one of Festinger’s greatest insights, he discovered that “what plays out interpersonally in the dynamics of groups also takes place in the internal dynamics of our individual minds.” He “regarded attitudes within the head of the individual as existing in a state of tension. Some attitudes support each other; some contradict each other. Contradictory attitudes exist in a state of tension, called ‘dissonance,’ which must be resolved. One attitude or the other must be changed until the system is restored to a state of balance.” (Ross and Nisbett, p 16)
In other words, we are “motivated to reduce the dissonance in whatever ways we can.” (Gilovich and Ross, page 112. ) “You can change your beliefs. You can change your actions. Or you can rationalize the status quo. Alternatively, you can succumb to internal “pressures to uniformity” by just putting your head in the sand and checking out. Or you can drink or drug yourself into oblivion -- or just live with the ambiguity. In brief, more often than not, individuals can get worn down over time.
Reversing the drift toward entropy: the power of leverage. This brings us to the all-important issue of leverage, for it can be the key to reversing a group’s pent-up energy as it drifts toward uniformity or successfully redirecting the energy pent up in an individual’s bout with “cognitive dissonance.” And the key to leverage is in applying the right level of force along the right channels.
When it comes to individual students in our educational system, too overbearing a catalyst and the student will recoil in disbelief. Too weak a catalyst and the student will not notice. The most influential catalysis are those that find a sweet spot, which is often subtle and elusive. (See Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959). Like Goldilocks, it’s got to be “just right.”
As usual, Ross and Nisbett say it best, “ Providing people with small incentives for acting as if they hold a given belief promotes greater change in the “rewarded” direction than providing them with large incentives. This of course, is quite contrary to the spirit of conventional reinforcement theory, which leads us to expect that large rewards would be more effusive in leading actors to adopt privately the preferences or beliefs that they were expressing overtly.” (p. 66)
Mark Lepper, a professor emeritus at Stanford, was one of the first generation of social psychologists to apply the Goldilocks effect to the issue of student motivation. He demonstrated this phenomenon in his famous “magic marker” experiments from the 1970’s, calling into question a very popular but flawed behavioral modification tool at the time: handing out external rewards for “points earned.”
Lepper cited the limits of such an approach, concluding that students recoiled at external rewards when the reward, can be easily viewed as a “bribe.” Such effects are less likely to occur, by contrast, when any tangible rewards are based on quality of task performance, that is, when the rewards serve primarily to offer feedback and recognition of the competence in a task that is intrinsically motivated already” (pp. 231-232)
What Lepper, Festinger and others of their generation proved was what a subsequent generation of change makers undertake: the power of the right lever. Consider my experience with the playground. All it took was the right nudge. Consider the bystander dynamics that fuels bullying. All it took was to form a counter-group, a team of concerned students.