All About Cognitive Consistency: A Reply to Commentaries

A unique advantage of Psychological Inquiry’s format is that it encourages a free exchange of ideas allowing authors to “drill down” on points of disagreement and clarify possible misunderstandings. This is particularly helpful where an article asks its readers, as we do here, to revisit fundamental assumptions and reconsider widely accepted views. We are delighted at the opportunity to address the commentaries on our target article and explore the issues that they raise. Responses to our article differed appreciably in both attitude and substance. We were thrilled by commentators’ ideas that independently converged on our notions, were intrigued by the assimilation of our insights to other concerns, and welcomed the chance to respond to our critics. The reply that follows is organized by the major issues that the commentators raised and that illuminate fundamental facets of the cognitive consistency conundrum