Vicarious and Personal Imagined Cognitive Dissonance in a French context

Across two studies, we examined the Imagined Cognitive Dissonance in a French context (ICD, Cooper et al., 2018). Specifically, Study 1 investigates the effect of vicarious ICD, the dissonance felt when the participant imagines an ingroup member acting counterattitudinally (Cooper et al., 2018). We failed to replicate the effect of vicarious ICD (N = 236) on behavioral intentions. In Study 2, we examined the personal ICD effect: can the mere act of imagining oneself acting counterattitudinally induce cognitive dissonance in subjects? The results are partially in line with the hypotheses of an effect of personal ICD on the subject’s pro-environmental behavioral intention (N = 252). We discuss these results, their implications, limits, and propose directions for future research on dissonance.