Abstract—Cognitive Dissonance can be conceived both as a concept related to the tendency to avoid internal contradictions in certain situations, and as a higher order theory about information processing in the human mind. In the last decades, this last sense has been strongly surpassed by the former, as nearly all experiment on the matter discuss cognitive dissonance as an output of motivational contradictions. In that sense, the question remains: is cognitive dissonance a process intrinsically associated with the way that the mind processes information, or is it caused by such specific contradictions? Objective: To evaluate the effects of cognitive dissonance in the absence of rewards or any mechanisms to manipulate motivation. Method: To solve this question, we introduce a new task, the hypothetical social arrays paradigm, which was applied to 50 undergraduate students. Results: Our findings support the perspective that the human mind shows a tendency to avoid internal dissonance even when there are no rewards or punishment involved. Moreover, our findings also suggest that this principle works outside the conscious level. Keywords—Cognitive Dissonance, Cognitive Psychology, Information Processing. I.INTRODUCTION HE concept of cognitive dissonance was developed by Leon Festinger [1] to describe internal contradictions which most people tend to avoid. According to the author, the beholding of two dissonant mental representations either lead to the reevaluation of one of them or to the emergence of a third cognition to amend the internal conflict. The most famous experiment supporting this hypothesis was conducted half a century ago by the author and Carlsmith [2]. A cohort of volunteers (psychology students) participated in a boring task and then was divided in three groups and a control group: group one was offered one dollar to report to an unknown person (in fact, an experimenter) that the task was in fact exciting; group two received twenty dollars to do the same; and the third group was not asked to do that. Afterwards, the participants were asked to evaluate how boring they thought that the task was. The main finding was A. M. Dias: University of São Paulo, Institute of Psychology, Dept. of Neuroscience and Behavior (IP-NEC-USP), email: alvaromd@usp.br. E. Oda: University of São Paulo, Mathematics and Statistics Institute (IME- USP), email: edu.oda@gmail.com. H. T. Akiba: University of São Paulo, Psychology Institute (IP-USP), email: henrique.akiba@usp.br. Arruda, L.: University of São Paulo, Psychology Institute (IP-USP). Bruder, L.F.: University of São Paulo, Psychology Institute (IP-USP). that the participants receiving only one dollar rated the task as less boring then did the participants that received twenty dollars. According to the authors, doing something unpleasant for a modest payment leads to an internal conflict, which is amended by the reevaluation of the task (attributional bias). The Festinger-Carlsmith experiment became a prototypical framework in the study of cognitive dissonance and was reproduced many times up to the current days. As this task reveals, cognitive dissonance has a ‘dialectic structure’: it relies on the assumption that mental objects associated with conflicting attributional values converge to a economical cognitive output. Extending the philosophical perspectives that can be associated with this idea, one may note that in the behavioral level, the participants that rated the task as ‘not so boring’ may be considered irrational; while in the cognitive level, these participants present a tendency towards consistency, simplicity and cognitive parsimony, all of which can be assumed as rational principles. In conclusion, cognitive dissonance assumes that the mind is internally consistent and, for that reason, generates biased behaviors. In that sense, cognitive dissonance represents more than just a hypothesis about a specific type of cognitive phenomenon; it is a ‘higher order theory’ regarding information and behavioral output, based on two axioms: 1. We treat information according to the tendency to diminish contradiction and increase organization, and this can lead to irrational behaviors; 2. This phenomenon takes place outside the conscious sight. Within the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance disavowal the behaviorist assumption that rewards are always associated with the tendency to increase a target-behavior. As revealed in the aforementioned experiment, rewards are inversely correlated with positive evaluations of the rewarded behaviors, thus suggesting that, in the long run, the former could in fact diminish the occurrence of the latter. From that standpoint, rewards should be conceived in terms of their relations with mental representations –and that is precisely what behaviorism tries to avoid. For that reason, it did not take long before the emergence of several behaviorist alternatives to explain Festinger and collaborators’ findings. Among these, the most influent is Bem’s ‘self-perception theory’ [4, 5] which states that the attributional bias is not related to the tendency to amend internal contradiction, but T Is Cognitive Dissonance an Intrinsic Property of the Human Mind? An Experimental Solution to a Half-Century Debate Álvaro Machado Dias, Eduardo Oda, Henrique Teruo Akiba, Leo Arruda, Luiz Felipe Bruder World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences Vol:3, No:6, 2009 711 International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 3(6) 2009 ISNI:0000000091950263 Open Science Index, Psychological and Behavioral Sciences Vol:3, No:6, 2009 publications.waset.org/9305/pdf