The One with Monica's Boots: Cognitive Dissonance in Friends

Since we talked about justification as one of the ways in which we resolve cognitive dissonance, I started thinking about which behaviors we often feel the need to justify. One of the ones that I related to was shopping—what we buy, why we buy it, and how much we spend on it are things that we feel need a reason behind them. Logically, it makes more sense to spend money on things we need rather than items with more hedonic value. When we spend more on things we want, rather than need, we experience cognitive dissonance. Thinking about this, I was reminded of an episode of Friends where Monica buys a very expensive pair of boots, specifically the following scene: 

You can hear the slight guilt and discomfort in Monica’s voice as she says, “They’re a little more than I usually spend on boots, or rent.” As Chandler responds, he voices more of the dissonance that Monica is feeling, asking whether Monica purchased boots or boats, and sarcastically stating, “I’m going to miss being able to afford food.” To resolve dissonance, we need to either change our behavior to be consistent with our beliefs, change our beliefs to match our behavior, or add new cognitions or thoughts. Chandler suggests that Monica return the boots, which would reconcile her behavior with her beliefs, but instead she adds a new cognition instead: “I know they cost a lot, but I’m gonna wear them all the time, you’ll see!”

Based on the study, “The Effect of Effort and Expectation on Perceptual Contrast and Dissonance Reduction,” in which participants completed a shopping task in high expectation, low expectation, high effort, and low effort conditions, Monica’s response is not the most common way to resolve dissonance, but makes sense for the circumstances. Spending more money on the boots can be likened to high effort because if the price of the boots is outside of Monica’s budget, which, considering Chandler’s reaction, it is, more effort does have to be used to obtain the boots. The study showed that inflating the value of the object received, which was a pen, “was not the preferred means of dissonance reduction, even though such inflation did occur slightly more often among high effort than low effort subjects” (Cardozo & Bramel, 1969, 61) Because Monica put more effort into buying the shoes, their perceived value was increased, especially in terms of their utility (wearing them all the time). In Cardozo and Bramel’s study, high effort was believed to increase high expectations in the high expectation condition, leading to the prediction that this condition would cause increased distortion of the value of the pen. Though the pen was rated higher by the higher effort group than the low effort group, the results were not statistically significant. This may be somewhat due to the item being a pen; maybe the phenomenon would happen at a greater rate within the study if a different object was used, since the value of a pen seems to be something that would fluctuate very little. Monica can be assumed to be in the high expectation category because she is in love with the boots, so she expects to be very satisfied with them, which in combination with the effort put in to get them causes her to rate their utility value more highly. She exhibits both effort justification and addition of a cognition in resolving her dissonance. 

The best part of the episode is that after Monica has resolved her dissonance, she is confronted with another issue: the shoes are incredibly painful to wear!

[Submitted by Shannon Kay] 

References

Cardozo, R., & Bramel, D. (1969). The Effect of Effort and Expectation on Perceptual Contrast and             Dissonance Reduction. The Journal of Social Psychology, 79, 55-62.