The experience of cognitive dissonance in important and trivial domains: A Construal-Level Theory approach

Although the role of issue-importance has been central to theorizing about dissonance, its impact on dissonance-related shifts in attitude is not clear. Drawing on recent distinctions between high-level construals, which capture an object's gist and lead people to focus on their more‐important concerns, and low-level construals, which emphasize secondary issues, the current paper explores the role of construal-level in moderating the effect of importance on dissonance-induced attitude change. Adopting a widely used induced‐compliance paradigm, participants in a high or low-level construal mindset wrote counter‐attitudinal essays about instituting a senior comprehensive exam under conditions of high or low choice. As expected, participants in a high-level construal mindset more strongly favored comprehensive exams under high choice than low‐choice conditions, but only when the issue was personally important. Participants in a low-level construal mindset showed a choice effect when the issue was unimportant. Implications and future directions are discussed.

► Issue‐importance has been posited as critical to dissonance intensity and attitude shifts.
► Construal-level moderates impact of issue‐importance on dissonance-related attitude shifts.
► High-level construals result in dissonance-related attitude shifts about important issues.
► Low-level construals result in dissonance-related attitude shifts about unimportant issues.