ABSTRACT

As originally posited, dissonance theory contained no specification of the temporal aspects of dissonance reduction. Dissonance-theory researchers have acted on this lack of specificity in that the possibility of sequential effects has been universally disregarded, save for a handful of exceptions to be discussed here. Throughout the history of research on cognitive dissonance there has been an implicit assumption that dissonance reduction ensues immediately after dissonance arousal, and is measurable at virtually any interval following that arousal, whether that interval be a few seconds or a couple of months. In fact the range of measurement times is approximately that—a few seconds in many experiments to approximately two months in a study by Freedman (1965c).