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Congruity
Theory
Congruity
Theory - Overview
Heider's
Balance Theory
Osgood
and Tannenbaum's Congruity Theory
Strengths
and Weaknesses of the Congruity Theory
Glossary
References
Self-test
Figure 1
Osgood
and Tannenbaum's Congruity Theory
One
nice feature of Osgood and Tannenbaum’s (1955)
Congruity
Theory is that it is explicitly oriented to communication and
persuasion. Their refinement of Heider treated the Other
person (O) as a message Source. The attitude Object is a
Concept, and the P in Heider’s balance theory is essentially
the audience. They quantified two of the three relationships
in Heider’s triad: the degree of liking of the audience for
the Source (PO
in Heider’s triad) and the audience’s attitude toward the
Concept (PX in Heider’s theory). Both of these relationships
were represented by a number (1-7) as well as a direction
(plus or minus). Thus, Congruity Theory concerns situations in
which a Source makes an assertion about a Concept, and the
audience has attitudes toward the Source and the Concept. The
only relationship that remains the same is that the assertion
of the Source about the Concept is either positive
(associative) or negative (disassociative). This theory holds
that incongruity (like imbalance) is unpleasant and motivates
audiences to change their attitudes.
A second improvement is that Congruity Theory offers a formula
for predicting the direction and amount of attitude change
(those who are interested in the details of the formula should
consult the reading list). The main point here is that
Congruity Theory proposes a formula that predicts the amount
and direction of attitude change based on the audience’s
attitude toward the Source and the audience’s attitude
toward the Concept.
Congruity theory was tested using a variety of hypothetical
situations. Subjects were given a long list of people
(potential message sources, like President Eisenhower or
Soviet leader Kruchev) and concepts (communism, democracy) and
asked to report their attitude toward each one. Later,
subjects would be told that Eisenhower or Kruchev had made a
statement about a concept, like democracy or communism.
Researchers wanted to explore every option, so some of the
statements linked liked sources (Eisenhower) with liked
concepts (democracy) and disliked sources (Kruchev) with
disliked concepts: “Eisenhower says democracy is what made
this nation great,” “Kruchev said communism is the best
system of government.” Other
statements associated liked sources with disliked concepts
(“Eisenhower said the benefits of communism are not
appreciated”) and disliked sources with liked concepts (“Kruchev
declared that democracy was more efficient than communism”).
After reading these messages, the subjects’ attitudes toward
the sources and the concepts were measured again. The data for
their initial attitudes toward source and concept were put
into the formula and then their new attitudes (after reading
the message) were compared with the attitudes predicted by
Congruity Theory.
Research revealed that Congruity Theory’s predictions were
supported generally: attitudes did tend to change in the
predicted direction. However, precise amounts of attitude
change were often incorrect (Osgood,
Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957). These experimental results led the theorists to propose
two corrections to the formula. These corrections are called
post hoc hypotheses because they do not arise from the theory,
but from research conducted after the theory was stated. In a
sense they are “band-aids” trying to fix errors in the
theory’s predictions.
The first post hoc hypothesis is called the assertion
constant. It holds that when a source makes an assertion about
a concept, that assertion tells us more about the concept than
about the source (because, presumably, people are more complex
than things). Accordingly, it predicts that attitude toward
the source will not change as much as the formula predicts.
So, when Eisenhower makes a statement about democracy, our
attitude toward Eisenhower (as well as our attitude toward
democracy) is likely to change, but our attitude toward
Eisenhower will not change as much as the formula predicts.
Because this hypothesis was developed after looking at the
results of their research, it is of course supported by that
research. Attitudes toward the sources of messages change, but
less than attitudes toward concepts.
The second post hoc hypothesis is called the correction for
incredulity. The researchers noticed that when a source was
made to same something unreasonable -- like Eisenhower praised
communism or Kruchev denounced communism -- attitude change
predicted by Congruity Theory did not occur. So, the theory
was amended again to say that the predictions would not work
when a source says something that the audience does not
believe that source would really say.
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