Using Cognitive Dissonance to Explore Attitudinal Hypocrisy

Having Your Cake and Eating It Too: Using Cognitive Dissonance to Explore Attitudinal Hypocrisy. Timothy P. Collins. Chapter 6 of Hypocrisy in American Political Attitudes: A Defense of Attitudinal Incongruence, pp 247-288. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-54012-2_6. ISBN: 978-3-319-54011-5 (Print) 978-3-319-54012-2 (Online)

Abstract: The extent to which a person has attitudes that contradict other attitudes is simply cognitive dissonance by another name. I review cognitive dissonance literature and design a survey experiment in which Midwestern university students’ personal perceptions of and distastes for being accused of being hypocritical are tested in an induced compliance research procedure. The results suggest that, in contrast to previous research and the well-established expectations, the participants were only minimally troubled by the idea that they may be hypocritical. For those who were troubled, political ideology and identity had only marginal predictive effects; instead, the traits of dogmatism and openness to experience appeared to supplant the expected roles of ideological orientations.

Obviously they [conservatives] are hypocrites in that they want small government but then want to ban gay marriage and increase spending on national defense. You simply can’t have the best of both worlds.—Liberal experimental participant

Liberals are hypocrites because like Obama he wants equality but then he is exempt from Obamacare.—Conservative experimental participant