Psychology Commons^™

Reaching New Heights: An Examination Of Cognitive Dissonance And The Attitude Toward Height And Leadership, Emily Faith Harris

Senior Projects Spring 2014

Cognitive dissonance is the theory that when someone holds two conflicting cognitions they will feel internal discomfort and will be motivated to reduce this discomfort. They reduce the discomfort by changing one of the cognitions, either by intensifying the original cognition or by diminishing the original cognition, making the new cognition the dominant cognition. The present experiment examines the role that cognitive dissonance plays in intensifying or diminishing prejudices within the attitude domain of the association between height and leadership. I attempted to induce dissonance by showing 20 Bard College students the discrepancy between their explicit and implicit attitudes about …