French fries? No, this is candy! The fries are made of marshmallow, and the “ketchup” is strawberry sauce. I don’t think I could handle the cognitive dissonance of trying them out. Link -via Unique Daily
French fries? No, this is candy! The fries are made of marshmallow, and the “ketchup” is strawberry sauce. I don’t think I could handle the cognitive dissonance of trying them out. Link -via Unique Daily
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6436549/
However if there were some sort of external motivation (e.g. somebody paid you to eat them), you wouldn't experience that conflict and would still find them disgusting.
But I get what you were getting at - there's nothing worse than for example, when you take a swig of what you thought would be water when it's in fact milk. Milk isn't gross on its own (neither are marshmellows), but when you expected to taste something else then it totally is!
This comes from believing that something that looks like this will taste salty when you put it in your mouth, based on years of seeing something that looks like "this." Yet, it in fact tastes sweet. That would make me uncomfortable.
The very sight of this cheap-ass product made me want to hork.
Unlikely behaviour: eating something we think looks disgusting in the absence of any external motivation (e.g. being paid or dared to eat it).
Conflict: "Why the hell would I eat something that's so obviously disgusting. What was I thinking? I wouldn't normally do this."
Change of attitude to resolve conflict: "Perhaps it's not so bad after all."
Of course if you didn't know in advance that these "Fries" would actually be made of marshmellows (what we call them in Australia), and upon tasting them they were unexpectedly sweet, that would be a shock, and probably cause you to be disgusted, but "cognitive dissonance" is not an entirely accurate way to describe that experience. It would be more of an inconsistency between visual and taste/olfactory stimuli.
I'm not trying to correct you to be a snob. I just think it's a fascinating theory that can be applied to so many aspects of our lives and that can explain a lot.
Read the rest of the Wiki page for more information or further research it. I think you'll find the theory fascinating. I remember there was an post on Neatorama a while ago about it too - something about tribes and their unlikely ideas about what is attractive.
There's no need to critisise me just because you don't like psychologists (yes, I remember you).