Using cognitive dissonance to induce adolescents' escaping from the claw of online gaming: the roles of personal responsibility and justification of cost.

Full Abstract

The negative impact of the Internet on adolescents has received much attention. How to reduce their pathological use of online gaming is also a critical issue. Based on cognitive dissonance theory, two experiments were conducted to examine whether personal responsibility and justification of cost may play crucial factors in impacting adolescent players' attitude change and their willingness to engage in attitude-discrepant behavior. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that adolescent players who felt a strong sense of responsibility appeared to exhibit greater attitude change. In Experiment 2, the findings indicated that players tended to employ justification of cost in order to reduce or eliminate the dissonance between their attitude toward online gaming and invested cost. Adolescent players who perceived a higher cost in online gaming were less willing to engage in attitude-discrepant behavior. Reducing adolescents ' overuse of online gaming can be appreciated through the perspective of cognitive dissonance.

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Author information

Author/s: Chiou, Wen-Bin (WB); Wan, Chin-Sheng (CS);

Affiliation: Center for Teacher Education, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. wbchiou@mail.nsysu.edu.tw

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Cyberpsychology & behavior : the impact of the Internet, multimedia and virtual reality on behavior and society (Cyberpsychol Behav), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Oct; vol 10 (issue 5) : pp 663-70

Dates: Created 2007/10/11; Completed 2008/02/07;

PMID: 17927534, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Attitude
Behavior, Addictive - economics; psychology
Cognitive Dissonance
Female
Gambling - psychology

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