Jack Williams Brehm

Contemporary Topics in Social Psychology

Sharon S. Brehm

Arthur Robert Cohen

"This book first presents a brief description of the theoretical statement of cognitive dissonance as it appeared in Festinger's book Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. In so doing, we shall attempt to indicate what we consider the most valid sort of evidence for the theory and to indicate what we take to be the basis for its success in delineating nonobvious or paradoxical aspects of behavior. In Part II we review the evidence bearing on dissonance theory; in Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 7 we present the research published to date and raise a number of theoretical and methodological points in connection with the evidence discussed. In Chapter 6 we present a number of new and unpublished experiments bearing directly upon straightforward derivations from the theory. Part III is devoted to a presentation of a number of extensions of the theory into new problems and areas in psychology. Here, too, a number of new and unpublished experiments are given in detail: Chapter 8 discusses the implications of dissonance for theories of motivation and Chapter 11 deals specifically with new evidence relevant to basic problems and assumptions of the theory and presents this evidence within the context of speculations concerning the possible directions of theoretical reformulation. In Part IV we discuss the relationship of dissonance theory to other theoretical and empirical models in psychology; in Part V the theory is viewed in the light of its potential application to some important social issues, and we summarize our main points and indicate some future perspectives"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).

Jack Williams Brehm

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