Vicarious Dissonance: Impacts on Group Identification and Ingroup Member Likability

Vicarious dissonance is the experience of watching one’s ingroup member behave in a counterattitudinal way. When witnessing this misalignment in words and actions in a member of one’s social group, discomfort often arises. The unpleasantness of this experience regularly leads to a behavior change to cope with this dissonance. This study examines whether the experience of vicarious dissonance leads to thinking more highly of the inconsistent ingroup member, which would align with Dissonance Theory, or leads to thinking more negatively of this group member, which would align with the Black Sheep Effect. Also, this study examines whether the experience of vicarious dissonance leads to a change in how closely people identify with their ingroup