Information that Support: Consumer Dissonance

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Consumer dissonance and the consistency theories

Selected Exposure can be explained with the help of consistency theory. Leon Festinger states that human beings at times, act in such a way which is against their wishes & knowledge.  They know that their actions have certain advantages and disadvantages even though they keep the balance between knowledge & action, which are quite against each other.

In other words, dissonance exists and an individual will try to have a balance by changing behaviour or if behaviour cannot be changed, opinions will be changed. After making the decision, persons tend to expose themselves to information that they perceive as likely to support the choice and to avoid information that may favor the reject alternatives.

Process of dissonance reduction explains why few justify the action of others. It implies that people are quite receptive to message that help reduce dissonance and resistant to one that might increase it.