Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 401–405 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid Extraversion as a moderator of the cognitive dissonance associated with disagreement David C. Matz a,*, Petra M. Hofstedt b, Wendy Wood c a Department of Psychology, Augsburg College, 2211 Riverside Avenue, Campus Box 44, Minneapolis, MN 55454, USA b Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA c Duke University, Durham, NC, USA article info abstract Article history: A common finding in research on cognitive dissonance is that people vary in their reactions to dissonance Received 29 February 2008 arousing situations. To evaluate whether individual differences in extraversion explain this variation, the Received in revised form 12 May 2008 authors examined data from a study demonstrating that disagreement within a group creates cognitive Accepted 20 May 2008 dissonance. Participants believed that other members of their group either agreed or disagreed with their Available online 30 June 2008 own position on an issue of interest to the group. Although those exposed to disagreeing others generally experienced more dissonance discomfort than those exposed to agreeing others, introverts experienced Keywords: more discomfort than extraverts. As a likely consequence of the dissonance discomfort, introverts also Extraversion showed more attitude change in the direction of the majority than did extraverts. This study not only Introversion Personality demonstrates that extraversion can moderate feelings of cognitive dissonance, it also offers an explana- Individual differences tion for this moderation in terms of vulnerability to arousing experiences. Cognitive dissonance Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Attitudes Conflict Groups 1. Introduction is supposed that dissonance acts as a drive state, need, or tension. The presence of dissonance leads to actions to reduce it, just as, for Possibly no theory in psychology has received as much atten- example, the presence of hunger leads to action to reduce hunger tion as Festinger’s (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance. One of (Festinger, 1957, 1958). Classic theorists likened the dissonant pre- the more common findings to emerge from the research on cogni- dicament to a state of ‘‘botherment” (Berkowitz, 1968) or ‘‘arousal” tive dissonance is that people differ widely in their reactions to dis- (Brehm & Cohen, 1962). Subsequent research has supported the sonance arousing situations (see Brehm & Cohen, 1962). Among notion of dissonance as an arousal state that people are motivated the individual difference variables speculated to account for these to avoid or abolish (for reviews, see Fazio & Cooper, 1983; Kiesler & differences is the personality trait of extraversion. In this study, we Pallak, 1976). test the hypothesis that extraversion moderates the feelings of dis- In an attempt to further examine the motivating properties comfort associated with dissonance. Specifically, we hypothesize of dissonance, Elliot and Devine (1994) set out to show that disso- that, because extraverted people tend to be less easily aroused in nance led directly to aversive feelings (or psychological discom- general than introverted people, they are less likely to experience fort), and that these feelings could be alleviated by implementing dissonance brought on by exposure to attitudinally inconsistent a dissonance-reduction strategy. Within a counterattitudinal advo- information. cacy paradigm, participants who voluntarily supported positions opposing their own showed increased levels of psychological dis- 1.1. The nature of dissonance comfort on a self-report measure of emotions. However, discom- fort was reduced when participants were given the opportunity The state of cognitive dissonance has been described as a psy- to restore consistency by changing their attitude and stating a chological discomfort similar to the notion of hunger, frustration, new position. Suggesting that the advocacy manipulation gener- or disequilibrium (Festinger, 1957). Like hunger or frustration, it ated dissonance and not a general shift in affect, no differences emerged on self-reports of negative self-evaluations or positive emotions. This approach to investigating the psychological discom- * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 612 330 1155; fax: +1 612 330 1649. fort associated with dissonance is unique in that explicit emotions E-mail address: [email protected] (D.C. Matz). were identified to describe the experience of dissonance. 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2008.05.014 402 D.C. Matz et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 401–405 Although the concept of dissonance has often been studied in may find dissonance producing situations less unpleasant than the context of counterattitudinal advocacy, dissonance is not lim- introverts. In a preliminary test of this assumption, Norman and ited to this circumstance. Festinger (1957) maintained that disso- Watson (1976) conducted two studies in which extraverts and nance is commonly aroused by exposure to attitude-discrepant introverts were exposed to dissonance inducing manipulations. information. Exposure to such information may come, for example, In Study 1, participants rated the ‘‘pleasantness” of several hypo- from friends, family members, or coworkers who express attitudes thetical situations in which liked and disliked individuals held or different from one’s own. Thus, interpersonal disagreement is did not hold attitudes similar to participants’ own. Thus, both cog- hypothesized to create dissonance and motivate action designed nitively consistent (e.g., a liked person holding an attitude similar to restore consonance. Festinger reasoned that dissonance in this to one’s own) and cognitively inconsistent (e.g., a disliked person situation could be reduced by changing one’s own attitude, by try- holding an attitude similar to one’s own) scenarios were evaluated. ing to convince others to change their attitudes, by disassociating As expected, extraverts found the cognitively inconsistent scenar- oneself from the source of discrepant information, or by eliciting ios less unpleasant than introverts. In a second study, dissonance additional supportive information. was induced by having participants write counterattitudinal es- In an experiment designed to test the assumption that exposure says. To reduce the dissonance associated with this inconsistency, to interpersonal disagreement leads to dissonance, Matz and Wood participants altered their opinions to bring them more closely in (2005, Study 1) measured feelings of dissonance brought about by line with their recently stated positions. Introverts, however, expe- disagreement within a group. Members of four-person groups rienced more opinion change after choosing to write a counteratti- were presented with evidence suggesting that all other members tudinal essay than extraverts. Taken together, the results of these of the group either agreed or disagreed with their own position studies provide preliminary evidence that extraversion is capable on an issue of relevance to the group. Feelings of dissonance dis- of moderating psychological reactions to cognitive dissonance. comfort were assessed by participants completing the emotion measure developed by Elliot and Devine (1994). As anticipated, 1.3. Present research those who believed the other group members disagreed with their position experienced elevated levels of dissonance discomfort The present study expands on the small body of literature link- compared with those who believed the others agreed with their ing extraversion to dissonance moderation by directly assessing position. This study provides evidence to support Festinger’s levels of dissonance discomfort. In the past, research connecting (1957) contention that dissonance may arise from exposure to atti- extraversion to cognitive dissonance has done so through the use tude-discrepant information. of indirect measures of dissonance, such as attitude change (e.g., Norman & Watson, 1976). In the present study, we examine not 1.2. Individual differences only behavior indicative of dissonance (viz., attitude change), but also the psychological discomfort that accompanies dissonance. Previous research has helped to define circumstances that can By specifically examining the discomfort of dissonance, this study lead to dissonance and the emotional components associated with provides a direct test of Eysenck’s (1967) assertion that extraverts dissonance. However, not all individuals experience dissonance to are less apt than introverts to experience uncomfortably high lev- the same extent. In fact, people differ widely in their reactions to els of arousal. Thus, we attempt to demonstrate not only that situations designed to arouse cognitive dissonance (see Brehm & extraversion can moderate responses to dissonance but also to pro- Cohen, 1962). Over the years, researchers have attempted, with vide evidence from affect measures to explain why this occurs. mixed success, to pinpoint the individual difference factors respon- To accomplish these objectives, we analyzed data originally col- sible for moderating the effects of cognitive dissonance. For exam- lected by Matz and Wood (2005; Study 1, see above) to address ple, researchers have considered the moderating effects of dissonance disagreement, and used them to evaluate extraversion cognitive control (Bishop, 1967; Wolitsky,