External Essay (NM1101E)

Cognitive Dissonance Theory proposed that individuals are “dissonance-intolerant”, therefore they strive to pursue consistencies within themselves (Festinger, 1962). Efforts are made by individuals to avoid the dissonance before proceeding to solve it. The process of reducing dissonance and achieving consonance would then result in an attitude change (Festinger, 1962).

On February 26^th, 2015, a photo of a dress ignited a worldwide debate after being circulated on various social platforms. Some people insisted that the dress is blue and black in colour while the other party asserts that it is white and gold instead (refer Appendix 1). The idea of writing this essay arose while observing how people reacted towards this perplexing debate. This phenomena will be presented using the Cognitive Dissonance Theory.

During the early phases of the debate, people tend to have their own stands regarding the colour of the dress. However, when they encounter the other group with a contradicting point of view, dissonance emerged when they fail to reach an agreement. Before they are forced to solve the inconsistencies, people will tend to avoid the face to face debate about the issue of the dress.

According to the Cognitive Dissonance Theory, the first stage of avoidance would be the process of selective exposure whereby people would choose to see or to listen to certain messages or only parts of them. In this case, when search engines such as Google display diversified messages about the rationale behind the mystery of the dress (refer Appendix 2), people who think that the dress is white and gold will tend to look out for scientific evidences that support their stand, for example, “This May Be Why You’re Seeing the Dress as White and Gold”.

Following selective exposure, selective attention would be use when people have no choice but to read through messages that contains multiple explanations about this phenomena. For example, in the article written by Ryall (2015), those advocating white and gold would tend to focus on the line which Dr. Robert Freedman of Swampscott, an ophthalmologist told Mashable that, “It is yellow and gold in this lighting," instead of the remaining parts of the articles that suggested other theories in explaining the different point of view.

The third stage would be selective perception where people tend to judge the contradicting evidences in order to further strengthen their stand. For example, in the same article written by Ryall (2015), she quoted a post from the forum named Neogaf that claimed that it is the individual’s “high functioning” or “don’t work well” retina cones that caused a different view of blue-black and white-gold respectively. Those advocating white-gold might judge this kind of explanation as a fake and unreasonable message thus choose not to believe it.        

The last stage of avoidance would be selective retention. When individuals are unable to come up with a judgement against the credibility of the opposing evidences, the last resort would be to just forget it. Even though Ryall (2015) included alternative explanations such as the evidence of colour perception (refer Appendix 3) which is practically inarguable, one might only remember the information that is in line with their belief after browsing through the whole article. In this case, the takeaway for those white-golds might only be the words of Dr. Robert Freedman.

There might be a point when individuals were put into a debating situation that was basically unavoidable, thus they have no choice but to make an effort to solve the inconsistencies. Representatives from both sides would start to voice out their own stands and supporting evidences in order to win over their opponents. The colour debate might end up with one side being persuaded and change their beliefs.

The advantages of using the Cognitive Dissonance Theory in explaining this phenomena is because it provides a general view in understanding individual’s decision making process while encountering contradicting beliefs. Persuasion efforts could be modified by including rewards that surpasses the psychological discomfort, thus reducing individual’s motivation to avoid the message. Rewards such as celebrity testimonials on the colour debate might reduce their fans’ motivation to avoid the contradicting message. In Ryall (2015)’s article, she also quoted Taylor Swift’s Instagram reply on this issue.

Nevertheless, the Cognitive Dissonance Theory has its own discrepancies that omits the possibility of no attitude change (Cooper, 2007). In this case, individuals might not even attain the state which persuasion occurs due to the lack of scientific knowledge. The theories used to explain the phenomena might be too complicated for the public to absorb. For instance, in Roger (2015)’s article, the complex operation of human’s visual system was used to justify the occurrence of this colour difference. However, not all individuals are well-equipped with the knowledge to understand the justifications. Thus, the utmost decision that could be made by individuals is to avoid the intricate situation without changing their attitude.

All in all, this theory doesn’t take into account individuals’ differences in terms of ability to achieve the state of consonance. By assuming that individuals are passive and vulnerable towards dissonance, it also disregards the active roles of individuals in resisting the state of dissonance. Therefore, there are still space for improvement to make this theory more generalizable to the society.