Some empirical evidence for ecological dissonance theory

Using Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory as a model, the extension to Barker's ecological theory. referred to as ecological dissonance theory, wa s developed. Designed to examine the motivational dynamics involved when en vironmental systems are in conflict with each other or with cognitive syste ms, ecological dissonance theory yielded five propositions which were teste d in 10 studies. This summary of the studies suggests operationally defined measures of ecological dissonance may correlate with workers' satisfaction with their jobs, involvement with their jobs, alienation from their work, and to a lesser extent, workers' conflict resolution behavior and communica tion style.