Elsevier

Behavioural Processes

Volume 159, February 2019, Pages 42-54
Behavioural Processes

The principle of consistency and the cause and function of behaviour

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2018.12.013Get rights and content

Highlights

  • At all levels of information processing in the brain, neural and cognitive structures tend towards a state of consistency.

  • Models and theories consistent with the principle of consistency are numerous, have a long and continuing history, and come from many different scientific areas concerned with the behaviour of animal and man.

  • All behaviour involving cognitive processing is proposed to be caused by the activation of inconsistent cognitions and to function to increase perceived consistency.

Abstract

At all levels of information processing in the brain, neural and cognitive structures tend towards a state of consistency. When two or more simultaneously active cognitive structures are logically inconsistent, arousal is increased, which activates processes with the expected consequence of increasing consistency and decreasing arousal. Increased arousal is experienced as aversive, while the expected or actual decrease in arousal as a result of increased consistency is experienced as rewarding. Modes of resolution of inconsistency can be divided into purely cognitive solutions, such as changing an attitude or an associated motor plan, and behavioural solutions, such as exploration, aggression, fear, and feeding. Models and theories consistent with the principle of consistency are numerous, have a long and continuing history, and come from many different scientific fields, such as social psychology, perception, neurocognition, learning, motor control, system control, ethology, and stress. The present paper presents a brief overview of relevant information from these fields of research, while focusing mainly on the implications of the principle of consistency for the understanding of the cause and function of behaviour. Based on this overview, it is proposed that all behaviour involving cognitive processing is caused by the activation of inconsistent cognitions and functions to increase perceived consistency.

Introduction

The principle of consistency states that when two or more simultaneously active cognitive structures are logically inconsistent, arousal is increased, which activates processes with the expected consequence of increasing consistency and decreasing arousal. The function of a state of consistency is often assumed to be the avoidance of conflict in the production of behaviour and an increase in effectiveness of that behaviour (Berlyne, 1960; Collins, 1968; Gerard, 1968; Harmon-Jones, 2012; Ramachandran, 1996). A consistent cognitive system is a prerequisite to be able to accurately anticipate what is coming and to be able to adequately react to challenges and opportunities in the environment. In many fields of research concerned with the study of the behaviour of animal and man the principle of consistency has been applied in some form or another. The present paper presents a brief overview of relevant ideas and models from these fields in order to show that theory and research on cognitive consistency can be and have been fruitfully applied to advance our understanding of the cause and function of behaviour.

The term "cognitive consistency" was first used in the field of social psychology (McGuire, 1960) and the application of the principle of consistency has a long and continuing history within that field (e.g., Abelson et al., 1968; Gawronski and Strack, 2012a; Mower White, 1982). Balance theory (Heider, 1946, 1958) is often cited as the first consistency theory in social psychology. It proposes that in evaluations of other people, the valence of related attitudes should be balanced. If person P admires person O, then person P should also like person O. More often cited is the example that if person P likes person O and person P likes entity X, person O should also like entity X. In the original formulation, entity X was described as not being a person, but for instance an event, an idea, or an object. A state of imbalance between the valences of related attitudes was proposed to produce tension and to generate forces towards a state of balance. Although often referred to as the first consistency theory, balance theory was not without precedent and seems to have grown out of Gestalt theory, in particular the principle of closure (Koffka, 1935; Kruglanski and Webster, 1996). The principle of closure describes the tendency of the cognitive system to close open-ended structures and fill in gaps in cognitive representations. Other theories related to cognitive consistency that also predate balance theory are self-consistency theory (Lecky, 1945), which focuses on inconsistencies between the different elements that make up one’s personality, and symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1938; Robinson et al., 2006), which proposes that behaviour during social interactions is motivated by the desire to eliminate disequilibrium between actor and environment.

Balance theory was soon followed by other consistency theories, such as symmetry theory (Newcomb, 1953), congruity theory (Osgood and Tannenbaum, 1955), and, most notably, the theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). Investigations into cognitive dissonance often involve an inconsistency between existing attitudes and behaviour that is performed by the subject in a certain social context, which could be the presence of a peer group or an authority figure (Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959). Cognitive dissonance is proposed to be an aversive motivational state that activates processes to solve the inconsistency, for instance by altering the attitude so as to make it match behaviour. Since these early years, the principle of consistency has continued to be relevant for theorizing in social psychology, and has been applied to such topics as self-image, social interaction and interpersonal relationships, and decision making (see Cialdini, 2008; Gawronski and Strack, 2012a; Jonas et al., 2014).

Although the principle of consistency has been applied most prominently in social psychology, in many other fields of research concerned with the behaviour of animal and man a case can be and has been made for the involvement of mechanisms triggered by inconsistencies between cognitive structures at some level of processing. Most of these ideas and models use different terminology, not referring to cognitive consistency but to for instance "expectancy," "uncertainty," "prediction error," "feedback," or "feed-forward." In the present paper, I will combine relevant information from different fields of research to create an integrated view on the three components that make up the principle of consistency; namely, inconsistent cognitive structures, increased arousal, and processes solving inconsistency (see Proulx et al., 2012). In discussing each component, I will focus mainly on the implications for the understanding of the cause and function of behaviour. Models and ideas were selected from biological and psychological literature on the basis of their application of the principle of consistency in some form or another. They will only be introduced briefly, while more detailed information can be obtained from the references provided. The term "cognitive" will be used to refer to the involvement of mechanisms and processes that act on the level of internal representations of all kinds of concepts (e.g., "schemata," Rumelhart and Ortony, 1977; "scripts," Abelson, 1981) and which, in case of the production of behaviour, mediate between sensory input and the activation of a motor command sent to the musculoskeletal system (Lanz and McFarland, 1995; Zajonc, 1984). In using the term I do not wish to imply – or deny for that matter – the involvement of conscious processing in the detection and resolution of inconsistency. Furthermore, I will treat human and nonhuman subjects alike (Harmon-Jones et al., 2017; Topolinski, 2012), hoping that researchers concerned with the study of the behaviour of either category of subjects will benefit from the ideas and models put forward by those researchers studying the other category.

The first main section of the present paper focuses on the types of cognitive structures that are proposed to be inconsistent in models from a broad range of scientific fields. A brief overview is presented of relevant information from such fields as perception, neurocognition (predictive coding), learning, motor control, system control, and ethology. To exemplify the long and continuing history of these ideas, I will not shun referring to older literature besides including more recent references. In this section, I will pay special attention to the involvement of cognitive inconsistency in the causation of behaviour. The second main section investigates "arousal," which is said to be increased following the detection of cognitive inconsistency. The relation between inconsistency and arousal is described, while the subjective experience of increased arousal is discussed in some detail. As already mentioned, balance theory as well as cognitive dissonance theory refer to this experience as being aversive (Festinger, 1957; Heider, 1958; Proulx et al., 2012), but many other theorists maintain that only larger inconsistencies evoke aversion while smaller inconsistencies are experienced as being rewarding (e.g., Abelson, 1983; Zajonc, 1960). In this section, I will pay special attention to the involved of arousal in the performance of behaviour. The third and final main section briefly investigates some different modes of solving inconsistency. Traditionally, most attention has been paid to cognitive solutions, such as changing an attitude or an associated motor plan, but this section aims to show that behavioural solutions, such as exploration, aggression, fear, and feeding, are just as pertinent. Therefore, less attention will be paid to cognitive solutions and more to the function of behaviour in solving inconsistency. This section is roughly divided according to a categorization of the types of inconsistency based on how the cognitions that are inconsistent with each other were activated: either associatively or directly by an external or internal event. Finally, taking together all the ideas and models from the many different scientific fields reviewed, it is proposed in the discussion that all behaviour involving cognitive processing is caused by the activation of inconsistent cognitions and functions to increase perceived consistency.

Section snippets

Inconsistent cognitive structures

The first component in the principle of consistency, which will be investigated in the present section, is the existence of an inconsistency between two or more simultaneously activate cognitive structures. In cognitive dissonance research, this often involves an inconsistency between an existing attitude and behaviour. In relation to the latter it is important to realize that it is not the behaviour as such that is involved in creating dissonance, but rather a cognitive structure representing

Arousal

When two or more simultaneously active cognitive structures are inconsistent, arousal is increased. Generalized arousal (Moruzzi and Magoun, 1949) consists of cortical arousal (the release of neuromodulators in the brain), activation of peripheral endocrine systems (the release of peripheral hormones into the blood stream), and activation of the sympathetic autonomic nervous system (e.g., increased heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration; LeDoux, 2012, 2014). In general, increased arousal

Solving inconsistency

When arousal is increased as a result of an inconsistency between two or more simultaneously active cognitive structures, processes are activated with the expected consequence of increasing consistency and decreasing arousal. The present section briefly discusses some different modes of resolving inconsistency, paying special attention to the function of behaviour in increasing consistency, as opposed to the cognitive solutions that usually receive most attention. The section is roughly divided

Discussion

Each of the three main sections of the present paper investigated one of the three components that make up the principle of consistency; namely, the simultaneous activation of inconsistent cognitive structures, the resulting increase in arousal, and the subsequent activation of processes expected to increase consistency. Relevant ideas and models from many different fields of research concerned with the behaviour of animal and man were presented, including social psychology, perception,

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Johan Bolhuis for his support and Jerry Hogan for encouraging me to continue my theoretical research. I especially wish to thank Anne Merel van Kampen, for meticulously reading the manuscript and for making numerous helpful comments and suggestions.

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