ABSTRACT
Dissonance theory provided us with a powerful vehicle for challenging reinforcement theory on its own turf and led us to expose its limiting conditions and, on occasion, to discover that it was flat-out wrong in some of its predictions. For example, reinforcement theory would suggest that, if graduate students reward individuals for saying something, they might become infatuated with that statement. The value of dissonance theory is that it encourages a researcher to look at old problems with a different mind set. In a similar vein, dissonance theory challenged psychoanalytic theory – or more specifically, the notion of catharsis. One of the most powerful influence paradigms under the rubric of dissonance theory has been referred to as counterattitudinal advocacy – wherein people are induced to try to convince others of the rightness of a position that differs from their own privately held belief.
