Cognitive Consistency

“Gawronski and Strack recruited a host of social psychologists whose research interests touch upon people's search for consistency and in doing so explore topics well beyond the traditional domain of attitude change....Practicing researchers will want to read this book as will practitioners who can apply and build on its observations and insights. Graduate students in social psychology may find opportunity herein to draw on consistency theories to enliven their own research agendas.”

—Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology


“Covers a wide range of topics in cognitive consistency, making it a useful book for graduate students in social psychology.”

—Doody's Reviews


“With chapter authors including central figures in attitudes and social cognition, this book's ambitious scope is evident from initial chapters on consciousness, social neuroscience, connectionism, and fluency, to concluding ones on stereotyping, social justice, and group processes. In between, chapters cover such diverse subjects as identity, motivational fit, implicit ambivalence, and regret, among many others, organized into major subareas of social cognition and social psychology. This volume joins a very small handful of worthy successors to Festinger’s A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. More important, it resurrects, modernizes, and expands cognitive consistency theories in a way that makes a valuable contribution. I intend to use this book in my graduate course on social cognition. It should be useful in training the next generation of graduate students, while providing a novel and heuristic perspective for more advanced professionals. Gawronski and Strack have created an instant classic.”

—Donal E. Carlston, PhD, Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University


“From stellar editors and contributors, this superb volume draws attention to the significance of cognitive consistency as a basic principle of social information processing. Chapters cover a remarkable range: the significance of cognitive consistency for neural processes; connectionist models; different types of cognitive, motivational, implicit, and interpersonal processes; and connections to thinking, reasoning, decision making, and choice. This book is an absolute 'must' for researchers and doctoral students in psychology. It presents an intriguing, inviting, integrated perspective that bridges traditional subdisciplinary boundaries in psychology.”

—Gün R. Semin, PhD, Academy Professor, Royal Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands


“Cognitive consistency has been an implicit if not explicit construct in social psychology for over 60 years, cutting across both motivated reasoning and automaticity and playing a role in all phases of information processing, including attention and comprehension, information retrieval, inference and judgment, and behavioral decision making. This volume—edited and written by well-known psychologists with perspectives ranging from cognitive neuroscience to interpersonal relations—testifies to the breadth of issues to which consistency principles are potentially relevant. In combination, the chapters provide a valuable resource for cognitive and social psychologists and graduate students.”

—Robert S. Wyer, Jr., PhD, Department of Marketing, Chinese University of Hong Kong