Black Sheep or Golden Calf?: Target-Liking as a Product of Vicarious Cognitive Dissonance

Abstract

Vicarious cognitive dissonance (Norton, Monin, Cooper and Hogg, 2003) suggests that ingroup members who behave dissonant to a shared group-related attitude, thus violate a group-relevant norm, can change the attitudes of their fellow group-members in a cognitive dissonance-like manner. Marques, Yzerbyt and Leyens (1988) shows that target ingroup members who violate a group-specific norm has the tendency to be judged negatively in a more extreme way than outgroup members who violate the same norm. The present study sought to investigate the possibility of altered group member liking as a strategy for reducing one’s vicarious cognitive dissonance. Contrary to our hypothesis, the main trends from our results indicate that an ingroup member inducing vicarious cognitive dissonance is judged more positively, not negatively. The potential implications for this increased liking as a strategy for reducing vicarious dissonance are discussed.