The effect of cognitive dissonance on the selection of post-decision online reviews: Congeniality bias and refutational perspectives

Cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957; Festinger, 1964) posits that individuals may experience cognitive dissonance after they make a decision, and cognitive dissonance is heightened when the decision is important. Individuals may reduce their dissonance by (a) finding information that supports the original decision (i.e., expressing a congeniality bias) or (b) finding weak information that contradicts the decision and refutes that information. Online consumers may experience cognitive dissonance after making an important product decision. The first hypothesis proposes that when selecting online reviews, consumers prefer congenial reviews to address their cognitive dissonance. Alternative hypotheses propose that consumers may select uncongenial reviews using online message cues related to helpfulness ratings and credibility badges. Specifically, individuals may reduce cognitive dissonance by preferring reviews rated as unhelpful by other readers and reviews from authors without credibility badges. An original experiment induced decision importance as a means of producing cognitive dissonance. The induction elicited differences in only 2 of 5 measures assessing cognitive dissonance. Futhermore, results showed that participants did not differ in how they selected reviews between the unimportant and the important decision conditions. However, the results demonstrated an overall congeniality bias. In addition, participants preferred reviews rated as helpful and reviews written by authors with credibility badges to reviews rated as unhelpful and from authors without credibility badges. Future research proposes to examine the connection between cognitive dissonance and other sources of influence in participatory websites.