Previewing Content: How can cognitive dissonance help you as a communicator?

According to The Essentials of Mass Communication Theory cognitive dissonance is, "the psychological conflict that results within a person when he or she holds clashing beliefs or or when his or her actions and beliefs are opposed to each other." (Berger 171). For communicators working in the mass media industry, cognitive dissonance can actually be helpful. This is due to the fact that consumers will not want to seek out content that already know will offend their sensibilities. In other words, if you already know a certain subject is not your cup of tea, you will not seek it out, be shock by the content, and then write an angry letter which is fortunate for mass media communicators.Therefore, if communicators provide brief descriptions of the content, people can decide if it will either appeal to them or potentially anger them. For example, movie trailers help allow the audience learn what a film about and then they can decide if it sounds like something they would be interested in seeing. If someone doesn't like horror movies, chances are that they will not go see the next Resident Evil movie and be outraged by the content. Since it is general knowledge that those films are pretty violent and gory, viewers know what they are getting into when they enter the theater.

Berger, Arthur Asa. Essentials of Mass Communication Theory. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1995. Print.