When Exemplification Fails: Hypocrisy and the Motive for Self-Integrity

Abstract

Two experiments investigated how the dissonance that follows a hypocritical behavior is reduced when 2 alternatives are available: a direct strategy (changing behavior to make it less hypocritical) or an indirect strategy (the affirmation of an unrelated positive aspect of the self). In Experiment 1, after dissonance was aroused by hypocrisy, significantly more participants chose to reduce dissonance directly, despite the clear availability of a self-affirmation strategy. In Experiment 2, participants again chose direct resolution of their hypocritical discrepancy, even when the opportunity to affirm the self held more importance for their global self-worth. The discussion focuses on the mechanisms that influence how people select among readily available strategies for dissonance reduction.

Full text

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
1997,
Vol. 72. No. 1. 54-65Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0O22-3514/97/S3.O0
When Exemplification Fails: Hypocrisy and the Motive for Self-Integrity
Jeff Stone
Princeton University
Andrew W. Wiegand
University
of
California, Santa Cruz
Joel Cooper
Princeton University
Elliot Aronson
University
of
California, Santa Cruz
Two experiments investigated how the dissonance that follows a hypocritical behavior is reduced
when 2 alternatives are available: a direct strategy (changing behavior to make it less hypocritical)
or an indirect strategy (the affirmation of an unrelated positive aspect of the self). In Experiment 1,
after dissonance was aroused by hypocrisy, significantly more participants chose to reduce dissonance
directly, despite the clear availability of a self-affirmation strategy. In Experiment 2, participants
again chose direct resolution of their hypocritical discrepancy, even when the opportunity to affirm
the self held more importance for their global self-worth. The discussion focuses on the mechanisms
that influence how people select among readily available strategies for dissonance reduction.
How
do
people choose
to
reduce
the
discomfort that arises
from
a
discrepancy between behavior
and
important attitudes
or self-beliefs?
In
this article
we
investigate
the
reduction
of
psychological discomfort from
the
dissonance theory tradition
(Festinger, 1957;
see
E. Aronson, 1992; Cooper
&
Fazio,
1984;
Steele, 1988). Dissonance theorists maintain that discrepancies
between behavior and belief arouse dissonance (i.e., psychologi-
cal discomfort), which
in
turn motivates activities designed
to
reduce
the
arousal. Dissonance reduction occurs through
a
vari-
ety
of
strategies that,
for our
purposes,
can be
classified into
one
of
two general categories.
First, psychological discomfort
can be
reduced through
a di-
rect strategy—one that involves altering elements
of the dis-
crepant cognitions. For example, people can change
the
discrep-
ant attitude
or
self-belief
(J.
Aronson, Blanton,
&
Cooper,
1995),
make compensation
for the
unwanted behavior (e.g.,
Sherman
&
Gorkin, 1980), reduce
the
importance
of
either
discrepant cognition (i.e., trivialization,
see
Simon, Green-
berg,
&
Brehm, 1995),
or
distort perceptions
of the
circum-
stances that
led to the
discrepancy (i.e., claim unforeseeability
of or low volition
for
the behavior;
see
Cooper & Fazio, 1984).
Jeff Stone and Joel Cooper, Department of Psychology, Princeton
University; Andrew W. Wiegand and Elliot Aronson, Department of
Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz.
This research was partially supported by a grant from the University
of California Universitywide AIDS Research Program and by a National
Science Foundation predoctoral fellowship award to Andrew W. Wie-
gand, who conducted Experiment I for partial satisfaction of the Master
of Science degree awarded by the University of California, Santa Cruz.
We wish to express our sincere appreciation to Mike Nurse and Nathan
Effron for acting as the experimenters in Study 1 and to Stephen Wright
for his help in collecting the self-concept measures at the University of
California, Santa Cruz. We also extend our thanks to Hart Blanton, Beth
Bennett, Adam Galinsky, Claude Steele, Eddie Harmon-Jones, and Peter
Gollwitzer for their comments on the research presented in this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeff
Stone, Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New
Jersey 08544.
Direct strategies
for
dissonance reduction
can be
distinguished
from
a
second general class
of
strategies we call indirect, which
involve activities that reduce dissonance without altering
ele-
ments
of the
discrepancy. These include mis attributing
the dis-
comfort to something other than the discrepancy (Zanna & Coo-
per,
1974) or
reflecting
on
other valued aspects
of the
self
{Steele
& Lui,
1983; Tesser
&
Cornell, 1991).
The
fact that
direct
and
indirect strategies have been shown
to be
effective
for dissonance reduction suggests that people have tremendous
flexibility when
it
comes
to
selecting
a
strategy
for
dissonance
reduction.
Or
do
they?
The
mere fact that
a
multitude
of
strategies will
reduce dissonance
may not
indicate that
any one
strategy
for
reduction
is
just
as
good
as
another. Indeed, there
is
evidence
indicating that when several options
are
available, people show
preferences
for
using some strategies over others (e.g., Gotz-
Marchand, Gotz, & Irle, 1974; Olson & Zanna, 1979; Scheier
&
Carver, 1980). Festinger (1957) noted that selection
of a
mode
of dissonance reduction
may
depend
on a
number
of
factors,
such as the importance
of
the cognitions underlying
the
discrep-
ancy or the circumstances that
led
to
the
discrepant act.
It
seems
likely that even when multiple alternatives
for
dissonance reduc-
tion
are
available, factors related
to the
discrepancy
and its
antecedent conditions might constrain
the
choice people make
for
how to
reduce their psychological discomfort.
The research
in
this article focuses
on how
people reduce
the
dissonance that follows
a
specific type
of
discrepancy—an
act
of hypocrisy
(E.
Aronson, Fried,
&
Stone,
1991;
Dickerson,
Thibodeau, Aronson,
&
Miller,
1992;
Stone, Aronson, Crain,
Winslow,
&
Fried, 1994).
Our
goal
was to
investigate
how
much flexibility
a
person
who
commits
a
hypocritical
act has
for reducing dissonance when multiple strategies
are
available.
Clues
to
understanding dissonance reduction
in
this case
may
lie
in the
antecedents that lead
to a
hypocritical discrepancy.
Hypocrisy
and the
Failed Exemplifier
A bout with hypocrisy begins when, perhaps through
an act
of moral self-presentation, (i.e., exemplification;
see
Gilbert
&
54
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