5. CONSISTENCY THEORY OF MOTIVATION. The notion that motivational processes may be described as being homeostatic in nature has a long tradition and can be found in the writings of a number of different fields beside psychology. Summer (1906) wrote that a "strain toward consistency" in cultural norms and folkways can be a thesis describing man's motivation. Cannon (1939) originally coined the term, homeostasis, meaning the steady state the physiological processes were aimed at achieving. Cofer and Appley (1964) cited a number of studies to support this theory. Stagner (1951) noted that perceptual tendencies were a prime example of the human organism's desire to maintain a steady state. Korman (1971b) found that task and work behavior can be and often are kept at a steady level despite considerable variation in such environmental stimuli as noise and music. Festinger (1941) found that goal setting was positively influenced by task success thus supporting the homeostatic model. Some criticisms of the consistency theory abounded. Young (1949) proposed that the consistency theory cannot handle the observed data that organisms will sometimes seek non-nutritive substances resulting in an imbalance in the homeostatic state of the being. Another criticism was that the consistency theory could not account for creativity, suicide, or self-sacrificing behavior (Maddi, 1968). In terms of accounting for suicide and/or self-defeating behavior, there was nothing in the consistency theory that necessarily precluded predicting such behavior when the primary units under analysis were psychological in nature, rather than physiological. It was this concentration on psychological imbalance that marked the contemporary work in consistency motivation. Imbalances make the world more anxiety prone provoking frustration in humans. Since not knowing how others will react and behave makes it difficult to satisfy human desires and motives adequately, humans often behave and reward themselves in a consistent fashion so that they may know and understand the world better, and thus satisfy their needs (Brehm and Cohen, 1962; Baron, 1968). Humans engage in consistent behavior because it makes them more credible and understandable in the eyes of others. Having such status enables them to influence others in order to achieve particular goals (Tedeschi, Schlenker, and Bonoma, 1971). There was evidence to support the hypothesis that imbalance may be considered as a secondary source of drive in a Hullian sense. However, evidence both for and against this proposition existed (Pallak and Pittman, 1972; Seudfeld and Epstein, 1971). There was considerable evidence to support the basic assumption that psychological imbalance was under some conditions a sufficient condition for the arousal and direction of behavior aimed at reducing that imbalance. Jordan (1953) tested and supported the hypothesis that hypothetical imbalanced situations would be rated as more unpleasant than hypothetical balanced situations (Whitney, 1971). Zajonc and Burnstein (1965) found that triads about relevant issues were balanced and learned more rapidly than those that were imbalanced. For irrelevant issues, balance did not have an influence on learning. People who interact frequently were more apt to like one another according to Homans (1950) and Festinger, Schacter, and Back (1950). Knowledge that one had been assigned somebody else as a partner increased the attractiveness of the other person even before personal contact with the individual was made (Darley and Berscheid, 1967). Using the galvanic response (GSR) as a measure of emotionality in balanced and unbalanced situations, Burdick and Byrnes (1958) found that (a) GSR differed depending on whether the subjects agreed or disagreed with a well-liked experimenter, and (b) subjects who liked an experimenter tended to change their opinions toward greater agreement with him, while those who disliked him tended to change their opinions toward greater disagreement. Congruity, as developed by Osgood and Tannenbaum (1955) was in its basic orientation a special case of balance theory as developed by Heider, the identity was in some respects a misleading one. The reason it was misleading was that congruity theory, as opposed to consistency theory, was far more sophisticated in terms of its measurement aspects and its preciseness of its predictions. Its advance in measurement were limited. The cost of congruity theory was more limited in scope than most theories. First, it dealt with the problem of predicting the direction of attitude change as a function of the nature and characteristics of attitude-change messages. Second, it dealt with the prediction of how complex stimuli will be evaluated as a function of the simple stimuli out of which they are constructed (Tannenbaum, 1968). There were two basic assumptions of Osgood and Tannenbaum's congruity theory: 1. Evaluative judgements tend toward maximal simplicity. Since "black or white," "all or nothing," or "you're with us or against us" evaluative judgments are easier to make than more refined, differentiated ones, there is continuing pressure within the cognitive structure toward judgements of this nature, and therefore, toward the polarization of one's opinions. 2. Since seeing two things as being identical is less complex than seeing them as being finely discriminated from one another, related concepts will tend to be brought together within one's cognitive structure and related to one another in a similar manner (p. 162). Given these basic assumptions, the principle of congruity purported that attitude change will always occur in the direction of increased congruity with the prevailing frame of reference. It was the basic prediction of congruity theory that when sources of statements and objects of statements were linked by an assertion in an incongruous fashion, there will be a tendency to change attitudes toward both the source and the object in the direction of increased congruency. The change will take place dependent upon whether or not the assertion is positive or negative in terms of how it links the person making the assertion and the object of the assertion. It also depends on how the person feels about the source and object and the strength of these feelings. The degree of change will also depend on how discrepant these attitudes are to begin with. Along with consistency theory, congruity theory generated a great amount of research, a fact that was surprising considering its general sophistication and the preciseness of its predictions. While it did possess weaknesses by not providing a means for assessing the strength of assertions or for the fact that incongruity reduction may take place in ways not specified by the theory, these weaknesses were relatively common to all consistency theories. While the others did not have the strengths of the congruity approach, it was somewhat puzzling that the amount of research was generated was small when compared to other consistency theories. No discussion of consistency motivation would be complete without mention of cognitive dissonance, a theory generated a significant degree of research and controversy. The logic of dissonance theory was originally developed by Festinger (1957). It was quite simple at first glance. The basic postulates of the theory were: 1. Man has cognitions about the world and about himself (cognitions are bits of knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions). 2. These cognitions may have three forms of relationship with one another within the individual's cognitive apparatus. 3. One relationship is that any two cognitions may be consonant with one another. By consonant, Festinger meant that one cognition follows from the other. For example, when a person who enjoys watching a baseball game goes to one. 4. A second type of relationship between any two cognitions is that they may be irrelevant to one another. For example, a person who enjoys watching baseball games decides to have ham and eggs for supper. 5. A third type of relationship between any two cognitions may be that they are dissonant with one another in that considering the two cognitions alone, the observe of one would follow from the other. For example, a dissonant relationship would be that the person who likes watching baseball games goes to the opera even though there is a game being played that he could attend (Korman, 1974, p. 167). According to Festinger, dissonance was a negative motivational state that one wished to reduce when it occurred. The occurrence of dissonance was postulated to serve as an antecedent to condition leading to the arousal of behavior. Direction was a function of choosing those behavioral alternatives that will reduce the dissonance. It could be avoided through such processes as selective information seeking and the like. Festinger postulated that the total amount of dissonance a person felt was a function of the total number of units that were in a dissonant relationship with one another, weighted by the importance of the cognitive elements involved. The basic prediction was that the greater the amount of dissonance, the more likely behavior will be undertaken in order to reduce the dissonance. Thus, motivation to change was directly related to the dissonance a human being felt. One of the most intriguing derivations made by dissonance theory was its predictions concerning the problem of partial reinforcement. The problem was that clear behavioral regarding organisms reinforced the learning on a partial-reinforcement schedule and would persist in the learned behavior longer after reinforcement was totally withdrawn. In a series of experiments, Festinger and Lawrence (1962) proposed that the partial- reinforcement effect was nothing but a manifestation of the forced compliance predictions. The question the motivational researcher must ask is, if consistency is such an important motivational variable, why are there inconsistencies in human cognition? Bem (1970) suggested that consistency may not be important for some people. Those who are not intellectually oriented and who do not care particularly about the degree to which they present a logical, coherent, consistent picture of the world, express the limitations that are the essence of the consistency theory. Consistency motivation seemed to be an important influence on behavior. There are three reasons consistency theory remained a popular approach in interpreting motivational theory for a period of time. First, it generated frequently supported, subtle, non- obvious predictions. Second, consistency theory had great appeal to those psychologists who want to investigate questions of a more human, as opposed to animal, bent, but who still wanted to be relatively rigorous and experimentally oriented in their thinking and research. Finally, what was most significant, the consistency approach remained viable for the same reasons as the other theories presented above. If the consistency approach was to remain viable, attention would have to be paid to such questions as (a) the measured degree of inconsistency in a person at a give time, (b) individual differences in the type of inconsistency reduction preferred, and (c) the conditions under which it will not (i.e., the inconsistency is tolerated as a "fact of life").