Dissonance leads to action
Do you know the Fox and The Grapes, one of the Aesop’s fables? It is often used for explanation of cognitive dissonance in psychology.
One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. “Just the things to quench my thirst,” quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour.”
People tend to reduce dissonance that is discomfort for two inconsistent cognitions. The dissonance of the fox is the conflict between the desire to get the grapes and the fact he could not do that.
Dissonance is incorporated into design. Let me give you two examples.
AOL Free Trial
The AOL free-hours campaign deliverred on CD-ROM is interesting. In order to try the service, users needed to define e-mail addresses, screen names, and so on. They invested a lot of time and enery for that. When the trial was expired, they had dissonance which leads to positive feelings. There was good reason for them to paid subscriptions.
BLINKSALE Advertisement
“Tired of PayPal?” This phrase evokes a feeling of dissonance among those who use PayPal. Even though they satisfy PayPal, Blinksale might be a more useful service for sending online invoices. Some of them have a conflict with the words, and they seek futher information about Blinksale in order to resolve their dissonance.
