Preference for consistency: The development of a valid measure and the discovery of surprising behavioral implications.

Abstract

A measure of preference for consistency (the PFC Scale) was developed. In three construct validation experiments, scores on the PFC successfully predicted individuals who would and would not be susceptible to a set of standard consistency-based effects: cognitive balance, foot in the door, and dissonance. The pattern of results in each of the experiments suggested the type of consistency that the PFC measures: a tendency to base one's responses to incoming stimuli on the implications of existing (prior entry) variables, such as previous expectancies, commitments, and choices. A surprisingly large percentage (at least half) of our participants showed no strong inherent preference for consistency—a finding that may explain the frequent failure to detect or replicate (a) traditional consistency effects and (b) a wide variety of other experimental phenomena. It is quite remarkable how many of the great, early theorists of social psychology developed or played an important role in developing consistency theories of human motivation (Brehm& Cohen, 1962;Festinger, 1957;Heider, 1946, 1958; McGuire, 1960; Newcomb, 1953; Osgood & Tannenbaum, 1955; Rokeach, 1960; Rosenberg & Abelson, 1960; Zajonc, 1960). It seems equally remarkable, then, that despite the counsel of so respected an array of minds and despite a decade-long cornucopia of supportive work (from the late 1950s to the late 1960s), consistency-based explanations are rarely invoked in present-day social psychological accounts of human functioning (Aronson, 1992; Berkowitz & Devine, 1989), even though several of the faithful have continued through the years to try to draw attention to the applicability of consistency motives to a wide array of behavior (Aronson, 1992; Cialdini & DeNicholas, 1989; McGuire, 1990; Wicklund & Brehm, 1976;Insko, 1984). To what are we to attribute this rather dramatic shift by social psychologists away from the explanatory utility of the consistency principle—that people are motivated toward cognitive consistency and will change their beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and actions to achieve it? On a general level, one could point to the often decried trendiness of scientific investigation and to the reward structure of the scientific enterprise, which make well-researched issues less