This document discusses cognitive dissonance theory and the bystander effect in politics. It explains that cognitive dissonance theory proposes that people seek to resolve inconsistent beliefs by changing their attitudes or limiting information. Politicians try to induce cognitive dissonance to change people's behaviors and attitudes. The bystander effect suggests that people are less likely to take responsibility in an emergency if others do not. This can lead to political disengagement if others seem indifferent to political issues. Both cognitive dissonance and the bystander effect can influence political attitudes and participation.

1. B Y. E H A B E L B A Z
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND
BYSTANDER EFFECT IN POLITICS

2. • proposed by Festinger , the theory seeks to explain how
people reduce psychological discomfort and achieve
emotional equilibrium in the face of inconsistent beliefs
or behaviors.
• It rests on the premise that people desire to view
themselves as rational and uniform in both thought and
action; therefore, they consciously choose how they
respond to information or behaviors that challenge their
way of thinking

3. • Cognitive Dissonance Theory contains two basic hypotheses.
• The first one states that people who experience psychological
discomfort arising from cognitive conflict will attempt to reduce
the discomfort and achieve consonance, or inner harmony.
• Festinger proposed three ways humans do this:
1. minimize the importance of the dissonant thought
2. outweigh the dissonant thought with consonant thoughts,
3. incorporate the dissonant thought into one’s current belief
system.

4. • The second hypothesis says that people who experience
dissonance will try to avoid it in the future by shunning
challenging situations and limiting information to that
which affirms their current beliefs.
• This hypothesis explains, in part, why many national
news outlets frame events along a political view.
• People want to see reality in a way that supports their
cognitions, and many organizations have found ways to
capitalize on this desire.

5. • the richer a society becomes in knowledge, the more
people limit their sources of information. Scientists refer
to this phenomenon as “selective exposure.”
• So why do politicians, try to create, rather than help
people avoid, cognitive dissonance? It’s because
cognitive dissonance has the potential to change
people’s behavior and attitudes.

6. • The power of cognitive dissonance:
• Belief Disconfirmation – dissonance that fails to change a
person’s belief causes that person to spread her belief to
others to gain support for her position.
• Induced Compliance – behaviors that offer little or no reward
for compliance cause people to seek internal justification for
their participation, which makes them more likely to
permanently adopt said behaviors.
• Effort Justification – people who are persuaded to put more
effort toward achieving a goal exaggerate the attractiveness
of the goal to justify their effort.

7. • Cognitive dissonance is a large part of why hazing builds
loyalty - if you go through a rough initiation to get into a cult,
you'll go to great lengths to convince yourself that the
organization is awesome enough to have been worth it.
• Similarly, end of the world cultists often give away everything
they own shortly before the appointed date, and will go to
great lengths to avoid thinking that it was for nothing.

8. • changing political attitudes can be understood in the context
of "cognitive dissonance," that asserts that people experience
uneasiness after acting in a way that appears to conflict with
their beliefs and preferences about themselves or others.
• To minimize that mental discomfort, the theory posits, a
person will adapt his or her attitude to better fit with or justify
previous actions.

9. THE BYSTANDER EFFECT
• posits that a significant number of individuals will
display a diffusion of responsibility in emergency
situations when there are other individuals
present.
• diffusion of responsibility derives from the
bystander’s response to other observers’
indifference to an emergency situation.
• Similarly, political disengagement, that is, lack
of participation in political or civic
responsibilities, when due to perceived
indifference in others may also be seen as

10. • In fact, the emergency situation experienced at the individual
level is similar to the experience of a political atmosphere in
crisis at the national level.
• Therefore, a diffusion of political responsibility will generally
include abstention from activities such as voting, becoming
politically active in one’s community, and becoming educated
on civil rights, political systems, and government functionality .

11. factors contribute to political disengagement:
• individual factors may include personal apathy, political
frustration, or a parroting of a collective political
indifference
• societal factors include: a nation’s overall political
structure , the historical models of education within the
nation , and the general economic state of the nation .

12. • The Political Bystander Effect
• Although there are several different
reasons why an individual or group would
diffuse any form of responsibility, based on
the results of studies conducted
concerning the bystander effect, it is
reasonable to understand tendencies to
diffuse responsibility in emergency
situations in response to others’
indifference.