Dissonance and discomfort: Does a simple cognitive inconsistency evoke a negative affective state?

Leon Festinger (1957) described cognitive dissonance as psychological discomfort that resulted from a cognitive inconsistency.Discussion of dissonance for the past 60 years has focused on the classic paradigms and the motivation to reduce dissonance, but some have noted that this represents a narrow application of Festinger's ideas (Gawronski & Brannon, in press).Recent research has suggested, but not demonstrated, that simple cognitive inconsistencies may also evoke the affective and motivational state of dissonance (e.g., Harmon-Jones, Harmon-Jones, & Levy, 2015).In the current experiments, participants read sentences that ended with incongruent or congruent final words.In Study 1, sentences with incongruent endings led to more negative implicit affect than did sentences with congruent endings.Study 2 replicated this finding, with the addition of self-report and facial electromyography.These findings indicate that simple inconsistencies can evoke dissonance.