Cognitive dissonance theory is most for understanding the impact of

Role playing on attitude change.

Explanation: In Psychology, cognitive dissonance is a psychological distress that people experience when they face situations or facts that contradict their beliefs, ideas or values. The cognitive dissonance theory was created by Leon Festinger and suggests that every person in a situation like this becomes uncomfortable and willing to make changes to justify or eliminate the dissonance. There are three ways by which people can reduce this dissonance: reducing the significance of the conflicting beliefs, acquiring new beliefs, or getting rid of the conflicting behavior.  

there are no options provided but you can choose among the following gender-neutral pronouns: zir, hir, eir, vis, tem, eir.

in the normal course of maintaining a pronoun-antecedent agreement, we could have used the words his or her but since we are also required to use gender-neutral language, we need to replace it with its equivalent gender-neutral pronoun.

answer; decreased;