Leon Festinger was an American social psychologist who is known for two theories; cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. He was born on May 8, 1919, in New York City to parents Alex and Sara Festinger. Festinger’s father left Russia an atheist and never changed when he settled. His father’s personality had some influence on him since many of Festinger peers would have described him as an aggressive yet a critic child (Gazzaniga, 2006). While in New York City, he attended Boys ' High School and then City College. He received his master’s and Ph.D. at the University of Iowa State University. Originally, Festinger had no interest in social psychology and his focus was on child behavior (Schachter, 1994).
While Festinger was at Iowa
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As humans, we are always judging ourselves and others. This theory is how someone will compare themselves to others on a regular basis; an example of this would be looking at someone’s photos and comparing your body to theirs.
Festinger (1954) believed that there are three hypotheses to his social comparison theory. The first hypothesis is “there exist, in the human organism, a drive to evaluate his opinions and abilities” (Festinger, 1954) which is described, as that an individual will compare themselves to another person in the room that they believe they are at the same level of self-worth. If the certain individual realizes that they do not match up, they will find another one and do the same thing over again. Once the individual feels satisfied with feeling good about them, they will move on completely.
The second hypotheses are “to the extent that objective and non-social means are not available, people evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing respectively, with opinions and abilities of others” (Festinger, 1954) which is described as is if the individual cannot compare themselves to someone and feel satisfied they will just form a subjective opinion. Regardless if the opinion is true or not, it cannot be proven in the real world because it is the individual opinion
This eventually leads her to challenge her self concepts to extreme levels, causing her to either liberate herself from the façade she created or sink into the role. Easy A describes many genuine psychological phenomena and I am going to focus on three of them; Cognitive dissonance theory, how societal and cultural norms dictate our attitudes and thoughts, and different ways of persuasion. The cognitive dissonance theory is the feeling of unease that is felt when we act in opposition to our attitudes, which causes a shift of attitude in order to be consistent with our behavior. Easy A depicts strongly the theory of cognitive dissonance on numerous occasions.
People judge based on looks, social
Everyday a person walks by someone and they look at the other person and judge them based on what they look like, what they are wearing, what they are doing; but the truth
The attribution theory is a theory that proposes that people attempt to understand the behaviour of others by associating it with either situational (external) or dispositional (internal) factors. While this an interesting and popular theory, it has been discovered that when attributing behaviour, we often make errors, as we are more biased and judgemental than we would like to think. The two attribution errors that I will bring up in this essay are The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) and the Self-Serving Bias (SSB). The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) implies that when we observe the behaviour of others, we tend to over-attribute their behaviour to dispositional factors and underestimate the influence that situational factors may have had.
We have a tendency to harshly judge other groups of people without reflecting on our own actions and how they may be similar or
In an article Menon stated, “We generally tend to judge people just by looking at their outward appearance” (Menon 1). This is true, but why is everyone so quick to judge? Nearly all the population finds it easier to establish groups before getting to know them because they don’t want to take the time to learn about a person. Outer appearance can say nothing of a person’s moral, looks can be deceiving. Menon later stated, “I find it thought provoking how someone could get so attached to another person and trust him or her so wholly after just knowing how he or she looks” (Menon 1).
12.1.17 An Unequitable Comparison In Phillis Wheatley’s poem, “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth”, the speaker compares England’s control over America to the enslavement of foreigners in America to emphasize her nation’s lack of freedom during the revolution. In particular, the speaker pays attention to word choice to illuminate the correspondence between the two sides. To show the intentional choice of diction, the speaker references the deliberate “Tyranny” (18) that England exercises “t’enslave the land” (19). The speaker had the ability to choose any word to convey England’s power over America; However, her selection of “enslave” (19) displays her conscious decision to correlate human subjugation with hierarchy.
In 1957, he wrote a book called Theory of Cognitive Dissonance where his research for this period was remarkable. His initial theory was introduced to the world in a paper called” Social Communication and Cognition: A Very Preliminary and Highly Tentative Draft" which only his University of Minnesota classmates read. This was the beginning of a social and psychological movement most of the world was un-ready for. (Harmon and Mills, 1999) About sixty years ago, Fetinger studied social psychology and how determinants of attitude, causes effects of disagreement among people and other important processes. Festinger proposed that cognitions of this theory can be relevant or irrelevant to one another.
Equality is farther than most people realize. In the article “The Social Construction of Difference” by Allan G. Johnson published on February 20th, 2005, the author tells the truth behind this day in ages society. The world and how it’s order between each set of people is organized. The main point written by the author is that the most privileged category in today’s society is the white race. The author also states that males have a big advantage in society as well.
On of the essential human abilities is the ability to judge. People judge other people by many factors such as race, gender, sexuality, political stance etc. People enjoy judging and, especially, they enjoy creating stereotypes. A psychological perquisite for forming stereotypes lies in the necessity of generalization of information about the people around. Following the stereotypes, one can simplify the whole picture of the world and make it more comprehensible.
Social media plays a big role in how society portrays body image. “Alternatively, an increased number of Facebook friends may provide girls with greater opportunity to rapidly make multiple social comparisons, itself shown to be associated with body image concern”(Tiggemann and Slater 82). According to the survey that was taken by Marika Tiggemann and Amy Slater, the more Facebook friends the girls had, the more likely it was that they had body image concerns. They were able to compare themselves to the other girls that they were friends with, which led to them to have an increase in their drive for thinness. “Further, these comparisons are likely to be with somewhat idealised images, in that girls mostly post photographs in which they look good or are doing something ‘cool’ (and can be digitally altered)”(Tiggemann and Slater 82).
Imogene King: Theory of Goal Attainment INTRODUCTION Imogene King has made a lasting impact on the profession of Nursing, but surprisingly Nursing was not her first passion. Her passion was in teaching, but fortunately for the nursing community, King’s uncle, the town surgeon, offered to pay for her Nursing degree, an opportunity that she could not pass up (Hanink). She went on to receive her diploma in Nursing, Bachelor of Science in Nursing Education, Master’s of Science in Nursing, and finally her Doctorate in Education. It is because of King’s passion for both teaching and nursing that her first job after receiving her doctorate, was a teaching position, where she was also part of a committee that developed one of the first master’s of
From Festinger’s minimal justification hypothesis to the theory of compliance, the two main characters experience every facet of cognitive dissonance theory to varying degrees. Applying cognitive dissonance theory to American History X has given me a lot of insight into the film. I have seen this movie several times but I am seeing it in an entirely different way now. The theory of compliance and how it applies to Danny really sticks out to me. When I had watched the movie previously I saw Danny’s increasing involvement in the neo-nazi movement as a voluntary thing for him.
In Mcleod’s article, it said that people “‘think about, evaluate, or perceive’ themselves” (Mcleod 1). Mcleod talks, in the article, about how people thinking, evaluating, and perceiving about themselves is call self-concept. Whenever people think about themselves, most of the time, people are confused about whether or not they are pursuing right actions for their future, especially people with low self-esteem . Furthermore, people get more confused if their actions dramatically differ from others. However, again, people’s actions determine who they are, so even if their actions are dramatically different from others, it may be a path for that person’s success.
Self-discrepancy Theory Looking back to 1987, Edward Tory Higgins established a “Self-Discrepancy Theory” that provides a foundation of how different kinds of selves associate with emotional vulnerabilities. When the real and ideal self are not aligning with each other, the imbalance can cause a self-discrepancy to rise, all of which, may lead to negative emotions or act as motivator for one to pursuit the ideal appearance. This means that a self-discrepancy can influence a person to find a way to fix or change their physical appearance that will help them reach their goals. It can be recognized that the closer the gap between the actual and ideal self is, the more pride and positive feelings one can have about themselves.