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Cognitive Dissonance Resolution Strategies After Exposure to Corporate Violence Scenarios

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Abstract

This study uses cognitive dissonance as a theoretical avenue to identify factors that might hinder the public’s acceptance of incontrovertible facts about corporate violence (i.e., the calculated endangerment of civilians, workers, and customers). Three hundred and twenty-seven participants answered a survey that measured their (1) support for capitalism, (2) level of nationalism, (3) socio-demographic characteristics, and (3) attitudes toward three scenarios describing corporate violence cases. These attitudes comprised participants’ (a) acceptance of the scenarios as true, (b) perceived seriousness of the cases presented to them, and (c) support for several statements made to justify the companies’ actions. Results of statistical analyses suggest that subjects who scored higher on the nationalism and pro-capitalism scales were less likely to rate the cases as serious, and more inclined to rationalize the corporations’ actions. These findings imply that myth adherence might lead business supporters and nationalists to reject inconvenient truths relative to crimes of the powerful, which would then undermine the effect of increased awareness on prosecutorial efforts against corporate crime in the U.S.

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Notes

  1. Ironically, less pressure is placed on U.S. corporations that benefit from job outsourcing and demand generous tax breaks in exchange for hiring American workers.

  2. Subjects who identified as Protestant were also invited to indicate their denomination.

  3. The fact that the victims’ nationality was not mentioned could explain this unexpected finding. Perhaps subjects assumed that the foreign condition in the Johns Manville scenario applied to the company and the employees, leading them to justify the endangerment of foreign workers. This potential methodological limitation is addressed in the discussion section.

  4. A reviewer was rightfully concerned about the risk of collinearity given the conceptual overlap between nationalism and support for capitalism. Nevertheless, the correlation coefficient between these two constructs (r = .56) indicates only a moderate relationship. In addition, multicollinearity diagnostics yielded no VIF greater than 2.

  5. A table was deemed unnecessary to report these associations but is nonetheless available upon request.

  6. Without overstating results found with a non-probability sample of undergraduate students, it could be that those subjects who reported belonging to faiths less common in the U.S. were more jejune about the issue of corporate violence and did not echo the cynicism displayed by their Protestant, Catholic, and secular counterparts.

  7. An earlier draft of this study included a fourth corporate violence scenario inspired by the notorious Love Canal tragedy. This vignette was subsequently jettisoned at the suggestion of a reviewer given its poor logical fit with the study’s aim. Nevertheless, statistical analyses yielded support for the third hypothesis in regard to this particular case. An extension of this paper—with a focus on state-corporate crime—should therefore explore the distinctiveness of environmental crimes (as opposed to victimizing workers and consumers).

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr. Kathleen Heide for helping him with the data collection procedure and for her invaluable feedback.

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  1. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Tampa, 401, W. Kennedy Blvd, Tampa, FL, 33606-1490, USA

    Cedric Michel

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Michel, C. Cognitive Dissonance Resolution Strategies After Exposure to Corporate Violence Scenarios. Crit Crim 26, 1–28 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-017-9381-8

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