Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)Cognitive dissonance is when we experience conflicting thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes. Leon Festinger's 1957 cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we act to reduce the disharmony, or dissonance, of our conflicting feelings. In 1959, Festinger, along with James Carlsmith, tested this theory (Cognitive Dissonance).
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Procedure |
In this experiment, 71 male participants were given a series of nonsensical and boring tasks. They were instructed to put spools onto and off the try with only one hand for half an hour, and then turn 48 square pegs clockwise for the next half hour. A fraction of the participants (the control group) was thanked and let go after an interview. The other fraction was given the option to take the place of the experimenter, which required them to give an interesting explanation to the next group. Half of them were offered $1 to do it, and half of them were offered $20. The participants were interviewed afterwards and were asked to rate the experiment in four areas (Cognitive Dissonance).
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Results |
When the participants were asked to evaluate the experiment, the participants who were paid only $1 rated the tedious task as more fun and enjoyable than the participants who were paid $20 to lie.
The participants were experiencing cognitive dissonance because they were being asked to tell other people that the tasks were fun and interesting when, in reality, they were tedious and boring. The people who were paid $1 rated the task as more enjoyable because they had no ample justification for lying, so they convinced themselves that the task was fun and rated it as fun. They changed their attitudes to relieve the dissonance and fully believed that the activities were interesting. On the other hand, the people who were paid $20 had the monetary reason to lie. They did not have to change their attitudes to lie because the money served as ample justification (Cognitive Dissonance). |
Alternative Viewpoints on the Results |
Self-Perception Theory (link)
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