Self-Attitude Consequences of Forced Compliance.

The concept of self has become a stimulus for a great deal of research in recent years. However, a theory is still lacking which adequately explains the processes by which changes in the self occur. Festinger's dissonance theory seems to offer a potential explanation of self-changes, although, in its present form, dissonance theory may be thought of as dealing primarily with changes in attitudes toward social objects other than the self. The basic assumptions of dissonance theory are that individuals tend to maintain an internal consistency among cognitions and that behavior tends to be consistent with existing cognitions. The literature is replete with evidence that these assumptions are met in the phenomenon of self-attitudes. Previous studies reveal a tendency for consistency among self-attitudes and a similar tendency for consistency between self-attitudes and relevant behavior. Therefore, on this level of reasoning, it may be concluded that the hypothesis of dissonance theory regarding changes in social attitudes may be applied to changes in self-attitudes. Furthermore, Bergin reports success in an empirical test of the application of Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory to self-attitudes in a study of the effects of dissonant communications upon changes in self-referring attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]