To Practice What We Preach: The Use of Hypocrisy and Cognitive Dissonance to Motivate Behavior Change

When people fail to practice what they preach, their act of hypocrisy can induce cognitive dissonance and the motivation to change their behavior. The current paper examines the evidence for this assumption by reviewing and analyzing the research that has used the hypocrisy procedure to influence the performance of pro-social behaviors related to health, the environment, and interpersonal relations. The first section looks at the evidence for the claim that hypocrisy motivates behavior change as opposed to other forms of dissonance reduction such as attitude change. We then review studies that suggest that the induction of hypocrisy exerts its greatest effect on behavior change when people publicly advocate the importance of the target course of action and are then privately reminded of their own recent personal failures to perform the target behavior. A third section discusses the limitations to the current body of work and important directions for future research. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of how the hypocrisy procedure relates to other contemporary models of behavior change.

[1]  H. Markus,et al.  Is There Any “Free” Choice? , 2004, Psychological science.

[2]  Carrie B. Fried,et al.  Overcoming denial and increasing the intention to use condoms through the induction of hypocrisy. , 1991, American journal of public health.

[3]  David E. Sprott,et al.  Mass-Communicated Prediction Requests: Practical Application and a Cognitive Dissonance Explanation for Self-Prophecy , 2003 .

[4]  R. W. Rogers,et al.  Protection motivation and self-efficacy: A revised theory of fear appeals and attitude change , 1983 .

[5]  L. Festinger,et al.  Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. , 2011, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[6]  Seiji Takaku,et al.  The Effects of Apology and Perspective Taking on Interpersonal Forgiveness: A Dissonance-Attribution Model of Interpersonal Forgiveness , 2001, The Journal of social psychology.

[7]  M. Zanna,et al.  Dissonance motivation: Its nature, persistence, and reinstatement. , 1979 .

[8]  K. Emmons,et al.  Understanding the potential of teachable moments: the case of smoking cessation. , 2003, Health education research.

[9]  Richard P. Eibach,et al.  Looking back in time: self-concept change affects visual perspective in autobiographical memory. , 2002, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[10]  Mark P. Zanna,et al.  Inducing Hypocrisy to Reduce Prejudicial Responses among Aversive Racists , 2002 .

[11]  Shinobu Kitayama,et al.  On the cultural guises of cognitive dissonance: the case of easterners and westerners. , 2005, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[12]  Jeff Stone.  Self-Consistency for Low Self-Esteem in Dissonance Processes: The Role of Self-Standards , 2003, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[13]  J. Cooper.  Unlearning Cognitive Dissonance: Toward an Understanding of the Development of Dissonance☆☆☆ , 1998 .

[14]  Dale T. Miller,et al.  Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[15]  Matthew P. Winslow,et al.  Inducing Hypocrisy as a Means of Encouraging Young Adults to Use Condoms , 1994 .

[16]  S. J. Kantola,et al.  Cognitive dissonance and energy conservation. , 1984 .

[17]  David E. Sprott,et al.  Specificity of Prediction Requests: Evidence for the Differential Effects of Self-Prophecy on Commitment to a Health Assessment , 2004 .

[18]  Elliot Aronson,et al.  Dissonance, hypocrisy, and the self-concept. , 2019, Cognitive dissonance: Reexamining a pivotal theory in psychology (2nd ed.)..

[19]  J Cooper,et al.  Dissonance and the pill: an attribution approach to studying the arousal properties of dissonance. , 1974, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[20]  J. Bargh.  What have we been priming all these years? On the development, mechanisms, and ecology of nonconscious social behavior. , 2006, European journal of social psychology.

[21]  E. Tanke,et al.  Behavior and attitude: Some people are more consistent than others. , 1976 .

[22]  E. Aronson,et al.  When exemplification fails: hypocrisy and the motive for self-integrity. , 1997, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[23]  Joel Cooper,et al.  Vicarious dissonance: attitude change from the inconsistency of others. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[24]  Richard E Petty,et al.  “Saying One Thing and Doing Another”: Examining the Impact of Event Order on Hypocrisy Judgments of Others , 2005, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[25]  Elliot Aronson,et al.  Using Cognitive Dissonance to Encourage Water Conservation) , 1992 .

[26]  I. Ajzen.  The theory of planned behavior , 1991 .

[27]  Alexander J. Rothman,et al.  Toward a theory-based analysis of behavioral maintenance. , 2000, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[28]  Elliot Aronson,et al.  Hypocrisy, Misattribution, and Dissonance Reduction , 1995 .

[29]  I. Rosenstock,et al.  Social Learning Theory and the Health Belief Model , 1988, Health education quarterly.

[30]  Blake M. McKimmie,et al.  I'm a hypocrite, but so is everyone else: Group support and the reduction of cognitive dissonance , 2003 .

[31]  P. Gollwitzer.  Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. , 1999 .

[32]  J. Cooper,et al.  A Self-Standards Model of Cognitive Dissonance , 2001 .

[33]  Valérie Fointiat,et al.  "I know what I have to do, but..." When hypocrisy leads to behavioral change , 2004 .

[34]  T. Brandon,et al.  College-student smoking: an initial test of an experiential dissonance-enhancing intervention. , 2004, Addictive behaviors.

[35]  G. Seijts,et al.  Creativity Through Applying Ideas From Fields Other Than One's Own: Transferring Knowledge From Social Psychology to Industrial/Organizational Psychology. , 2003 .

[36]  Seiji Takaku.  Reducing Road Rage: An Application of the Dissonance-Attribution Model of Interpersonal Forgiveness. , 2006 .

[37]  Hypocrisy and Identification With Transgressions: A Case of Undetected Dissonance , 1998 .

[38]  Ken-ichi Ohbuchi,et al.  A Cross-Cultural Examination of the Effects of Apology and Perspective Taking on Forgiveness , 2001 .

[39]  It feels like yesterday: self-esteem, valence of personal past experiences, and judgments of subjective distance. , 2002 .

[40]  Thomas Gilovich,et al.  Here's looking at me: the effect of memory perspective on assessments of personal change. , 2005, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[41]  M. Zanna,et al.  Remembering the message: the use of a reminder cue to increase condom use following a safer sex intervention. , 2006, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[42]  J. Prochaska,et al.  In Search of How People Change: Applications to Addictive Behaviors , 1992, The American psychologist.

[43]  R. Cialdini,et al.  Preference for Consistency: The Development of a Valid Measure and the Discovery of Surprising Behavioral Implications , 1995 .