Effects Of Free Choice And Self-Harmony On Chinese College Students' Cognitive Dissonance

This paper studies the cognitive dissonance theory.The theoretical background contains three parts, which were the foreign research about the cognitive dissonance theory, the domestic research about the cognitive dissonance theory and the cross-cultural research.The experimental part consists of two parts. First, we selected 240 Chinese college students who have their questionnaires and tests in the forced compliance. Then we will study the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the cognitive dissonance affect scale under the Chinese college students in the context of the collectivism. The second part is based on experimental design to explore the effect of the free-choose factor, attitude change factor, the questionnaire in order factor, and self-Harmony factor on the cognitive dissonance affect. Finally, we get the following conclusions:(1)The reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the cognitive dissonance affect scale are good .And the Chinese version of the cognitive dissonance affect scale contains three parts, which are the positive affect scale,the General Negative Affect scale,the Self-Directed Negative Affect Scale。(2)The experimental operation is effective, which cause the level of the freedom to choice between high free-choice group and low free-choice group different. The experimental conditions are the situations of the cognitive dissonance of forced compliance. (3)In this survey, the difference between the sexes in the Self-Directed Negative Affect is significantly different. And the difference between the sexes in the part-time experience on the positive affect and the General Negative Affect are not significantly different.(4)The difference between the different group ,which was divided by the different order of the questionnaires, is not significant.(5)The difference between the different group ,which was divided by the freedom to choice, is not significant.(6)The difference between the different group ,which was divided by the difference between before-Experiment Operation and after- Experiment Operation, is not significant.(7)For Chinese college students ,self-harmony factor can predict their cognitive dissonance affect. With the increasing of self harmony and self-stereotyping , reduction of flexibility of self, we can predict Chinese college students will show lower levels of positive mood, higher levels of general negative affect and self-directed negative affect.