Cognitive Dissonance

Sufficient External Justification

In their 1959 study, Festinger and Carlsmith tested the limits of external justification for performing tasks by first asking participants to either place spools in a tray, remove all the spools, refill the tray, and repeat; or turn screws a quarter turn in a board repeatedly—the ultimate goal being to present participants with a (guaranteed) boring task. Following the boring task, participants were asked to lie to the next incoming participant by saying how exciting the task was. The crucial caveat is that half of the participants were paid $1 to tell the lie, whereas the other half were paid $20 to tell the lie. Following all of this, every participant was asked how much he or she actually enjoyed the task. Interestingly, participants who were paid $1 to lie reported having actually enjoyed the task significantly more than those paid $20 to tell the same lie. What this suggests is that when there is insufficient justification for doing something that is contrary to one's beliefs (“I'm going against my immediate interests by doing this boring task and then lying about it for only $1”), the person will be highly motivated to reduce the extreme stress associated with this internal conflict.

The options for reducing this dissonance include stopping the behavior, i.e., no longer replacing the spools, or turning the screws; adding other attitudeconsistent behaviors, i.e., simultaneously doing something that is truly exciting; or changing the attitude toward the unpleasant behavior, i.e., deciding that the task of replacing spools or turning screws is really not that bad. In many cases, changing the attitude toward the unpleasant behavior is the best option because people often do not have an opportunity to completely stop the behavior, e.g., doing a job that you really do enjoy, or adding other attitude-consistent behaviors such as doing something else at your job that you enjoy much more.

There are countless examples of the above attitudebehavior struggle: sorority or fraternity hazing, excessive corporate training, and other rites of passage that organizations present to their members—all designed to ultimately maximize the person's commitment, as noted by Aronson and Mills in 1959.

Free Choice

Another component necessary for cognitive dissonance to exist is “perceived choice”; that is, when a person knows in advance that he or she will be engaging in behavior that contradicts his or her attitudes in some [Page 187]way, that person is then most susceptible to potential dissonance effects, as noted by Linder, Cooper, and Jones in 1967.

...