Did you ever notice how people change what they say so that it doesn’t contradict what they do? Perhaps a friend of yours had consistently argued that American-manufactured cars were poorly built and that he’d never own anything but a foreign import. Then his parents gave him a late-model American-made car, and suddenly they weren’t so bad. Or when going through sorority rush, a new freshman believes that sororities are good and that pledging a sorority is important. If she’s not accepted by a sorority, however, she may say, “Sorority life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway.”

Research generally concludes that people seek consistency among their attitudes and between their attitudes and their behavior.13 Individuals try to reconcile differing attitudes and align their attitudes and behavior so that they appear rational and consistent. How? By altering their attitudes or their behavior or by developing a rationalization for the discrepancy.