The Return of the Repressed: Dissonance Theory Makes a Comeback

In 1957, Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance burst on the scene and revitalized social psychology with its deft blend of cognition and motivation. For the next two decades, the theory inspired an extraordinary amount of exciting research leading to a burgeoning of knowledge about human social behavior. The theory has been referred to as "the most important single development in social psychology to date" (Jones, 1976, p. x). But, by the mid-1970s the allure of the theory began to wane as interest in the entire topic of motivation faded and the journals were all but overwhelmed by the incredible popularity of purely cognitive approaches to social psychology. Recently, social psychologists seem to have rediscovered motivation and several mini- theories have emerged blending cognition with motivation-in much the same way that Festinger did some 35 years ago. This article traces the history of these developments and attempts a synthesis of some of the newer theories with the dissonance research of the late 1950s and early 1960s.