Cognitive dissonance

From Wikiversity

Can you predict the outcome of this research?

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Suppose you had volunteered to participate in a psychology experiment on campus. On arrival, you were seated at a table and asked to undertake a series of dull, meaningless tasks for about an hour. Afterward, the experimenter convinced you to extol the virtues of the tasks you had performed by describing them to other potential participants as highly worthwhile, interesting and educational. You were paid either $1 or $20 to do this. Suppose you were then asked to privately rate your enjoyment of the tasks on a questionnaire. After which amount do you believe your enjoyment rating of the tasks would be higher - $1 or $20?

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Students can provide their answers either by a show of hands or writing them down. Give the collective results in class before disclosing the research answer. Osberg reports that almost all students will intuitively indicate the $20 payment.

Finally, report that Festinger and Carlsmith found that those receiving $1 rated the tasks as more enjoyable than those paid $20. Ask the students why this might be. The authors explained it in terms of cognitive dissonance – those who received only $1 presumably had insufficient justification for their behaviour (doing the experiments) which led to dissonance, which in turn produced a change in attitude about the tasks to relieve the cognitive dissonance.

Ask students to think about ways they have overcome their own cognitive dissonance, e.g., I tell myself it would be rude to refuse a piece of chocolate cake I’m offered. This allows me to overcome the dissonance I feel between wanting to eat the cake and believing I’d be healthier if I didn’t.

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