The Concepts of Balance, Congruity, and Dissonance

The concept of consistency in man, a special case of a concept of universal consistency, has in recent years been productive of systematic theories and programs of research. Attitude change has been a focal area in this theoretical development. Consistency doctrines, however, lack specification of the conditions under which their predictions will hold. People like to make sense of their world, but they also seek out the magician to be entertained by incongruity. Historically the concept of consistency resembles the concept of vacuum in physics—a useful doctrine for organizing knowledge, although full of exceptions and contradictions.