Ever wonder why people do what they do? This course—which includes more than $1,000 of video and reading materials—offers some answers based on the latest research from social psychology. Students taking the course for a Certificate will also receive free membership in Social Psychology Network (SocialPsychology.org). COURSE DESCRIPTION FROM PROFESSOR PLOUS: Each of us is dealt a different hand in life, but we all face similar questions when it comes to human behavior: What leads us to like one person and dislike another? How do conflicts and prejudices develop, and how can they be reduced? Can psychological research help protect the environment, and if so, how? This course offers a brief introduction to classic and contemporary social psychology, covering topics such as decision making, persuasion, group behavior, personal attraction, and factors that promote health and well-being. Our focus will be on surprising, entertaining, and intriguing research findings that are easy to apply in daily life. The course will also draw from the websites of Social Psychology Network, the world's largest online community devoted to social psychology. I hope you'll join me for this course, have fun, and learn some useful information that enriches your life.
Lecture 2.4: Cognitive Dissonance and Self-Perception
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From the course by Wesleyan University
Social Psychology
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WEEK 2: The Psychology of Self-Presentation and Persuasion
This week's goals are to: (1) learn how people explain their behavior and the behavior of others; (2) explore the link between attitudes and behavior; (3) understand what cognitive dissonance is and why it matters; and (4) gain some practical tips from the science of persuasion and social influence.
Meet the Instructors
Scott PlousProfessor of Psychology; Executive Director, Social Psychology Network; recipient of the American Psychological Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching
Department of Psychology
In the last video, we discussed the link between attitudes and behavior, but we
didn't discuss the issue of causation. Specifically, when attitudes and behavior
are related to each other, is it more often the case that attitudes shape
behavior, or that behavior shapes attitudes?
Until Leon Festinger developed the theory of cognitive dissonance, most people
assumed that attitudes shaped behavior much more than the other way around.
But with the arrival of dissonance theory, psychologists began to question
that assumption. Now, instead of me giving you a dry
definition of exactly what the theory is, let me first illustrate how it works with
a story that captures its essence. This story comes from a book on Jewish
folklore, and it's a very well known story in
social psychology. Once upon a time, there was a Jewish
tailor who set up his business on the main street of a town that had an
anti-Semitic gang—a bunch of kids who would visit the shop
each day shouting "Jew! Jew!" in an effort
to basically bother him and drive him out of town.
Well, the tailor was bothered, but after several sleepless nights,
he finally devised a plan. The next time that the kids came
to threaten him, the tailor announced that anyone who called him a Jew would
get a dime. He then handed out dimes to each member
of the gang. Pleased with their new incentive, the
kids come back the next day, they're shouting "Jew! Jew!"
and the tailor, smiling, gave each one a nickel, explaining that he could only
afford five cents that day. Well, the gang left satisfied because
after all, a nickel's a nickel. Then in the following day, the tailor
gave out only pennies to each gang member, again, explaining that he
couldn't afford more than that. Well, a penny wasn't much of an
incentive, and the kids began to protest. When the tailor replied that they could
take it or leave it, they decided to leave it, refusing to call him a Jew
for only one penny. Problem solved!
Now why would members of the gang harass the tailor for free, but not for a penny?
According to Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, people are
generally motivated to reduce or avoid psychological inconsistencies,
so when the tailor announced that he was happy to be called a Jew, and when he
changed the gang's motivation from anti-Semitism to monetary reward,
he made it inconsistent, or "dissonance-arousing" for the gang to
please him without financial compensation.
Without a sufficiently large payment, the kids could no longer justify behaving at
variance with their attitudes, which were, of course, to upset the tailor,
not to make him happy. Well, in 1959 the same principle was
demonstrated in what may well be the best known cognitive dissonance experiment
ever conducted—a senior thesis, as it turns out, carried
out by Leon Festinger's student, Merrill Carlsmith.
A personal aside: that talented undergraduate eventually became the
professor who taught me statistics when I was a graduate student over 20 years later.
He was an absolutely brilliant psychologist,
and this photo comes to us courtesy his son, Chris, who is now
himself a professor. Anyway, in the study, 60 undergraduate
students at Stanford were randomly assigned to one of three experimental
conditions. In the $20 condition, participants were
required to perform boring laboratory tasks for an hour, after which they were
paid $20 to tell a waiting student that the tasks
were interesting and enjoyable. The experimenter explained that a paid
assistant normally performed that duty as part of the experiment, but that the
assistant couldn't do it that day. In the $1 condition, students were paid
$1 to do the very same thing. And there was also a control condition
in which students simply engaged in the boring tasks.
What were the tasks? Well, first, students spent half an hour
using one hand to put 12 spools onto a tray,
unload the tray, load the tray again, unload the tray, refill the tray one more
time, and so on, with the experimenter simply sitting
there with a stopwatch carefully taking notes.
Then, just when the students were about to lose their minds, they spent another
30 minutes using one hand to turn 48 pegs on a peg board
one-quarter turn at a time—in other words, Boring with a capital B!
Once the poor student had finished his tasks, here's what the experimenter said:
>> Okay, that's fine. Let me tell you now what we're actually
studying here. It's the effect of preparatory mental set
on performance. The rest of the subjects are prepared by
being told that the experiment will be very interesting and enjoyable;
in fact, it's lots of fun. Now, I have a somewhat unusual request to
make of you. The next subject is waiting right
outside, but the fellow who ordinarily gives the spiel isn't here.
I wonder if you could possibly take his place.
As a matter of fact, we figure we'll be needing someone in the future,
so I'd like to offer you a $20 retainer and have you remain on call for us.
Would that be alright? >> $20?
That'd be fine. >> After the student agreed to be
hired—and by the way, all of the students did—the experimenter led the student to
a room where another person appeared to be waiting for the experiment to begin,
and that person—who was in fact a member of the research team (a confederate)—said
that a friend who had earlier participated in the experiment described
it as really miserable, as boring and tedious, and so on.
Let's listen in. >> He said it was pretty miserable
and that I should do everything I could to get out of it.
>> Well, I think maybe your friend was wrong.
Perhaps there's a different experiment, because this was a lot of fun.
It appeared to me as if it were, as if it were a puzzle.
We had to turn these knobs, and I tried to figure out what we were doing
it for, but I really couldn't figure it out.
Perhaps you'll have better luck. >> What were the results?
Participants in the $20 condition and in the control condition later evaluated the
experimental task as slightly negative, but participants in the $1 condition
actually thought the tasks were fairly positive.
Festinger and Carlsmith argued that students who were paid only a dollar to
lie to another person had experienced cognitive dissonance.
According to Festinger, people experience cognitive dissonance when they
simultaneously hold two thoughts that are psychologically incompatible—that are
inconsistent in some way.
In this particular instance, the dissonant cognitions were the following:
First, the tasks were extremely boring. And second, for only a dollar,
I (an honest person), just told someone the tasks were interesting and enjoyable.
When taken together these statements imply that people in the $1 condition had
lied for no good reason. People in the $20 condition, on the other hand,
had agreed to be hired for what they apparently considered to be a very
good reason: $20 (which was, in those days, a small fortune—
something like $150 today). Festinger proposed that people try
whenever possible to reduce cognitive dissonance.
He regarded dissonance as a negative drive state, as an unpleasant feeling or
condition, and he hypothesized that people in that
$1 condition would be motivated to reduce their feelings of dissonance.
Now, of course, there wasn't much the students could do about that second thought.
The fact is, they did tell another person
that the task was enjoyable, and they did it for only a dollar.
And they probably weren't going to change their view of themselves as honest
decent people. On the other hand, the dullness of the task
afforded students some wiggle room. Dullness, you might say, is in the eye of
the beholder. So, according to Festinger and Carlsmith,
people in the $1 condition later came to believe that the task was kind of fun
in order to reduce the dissonance caused by lying to another person for only a dollar.
In contrast, people in the $20 condition
saw the experimental tasks for exactly what they were:
crushingly dull. People in that experimental condition had
no need to reduce dissonance, because they already had a good explanation for
their behavior: they were paid $20. Here's some rare footage of Leon
Festinger himself explaining cognitive dissonance theory.
>> Other theories might predict that the man who is paid most would have the
highest motivation for enthusing over the dull task and would be most sold on it himself.
Cognitive dissonance theory leads to an
exactly opposite prediction. The man who is paid $20 knows that the
task is dull, but he also knows that he had sufficient justification for saying
that it wasn't. >> Did you enjoy working on the manual test?
>> Well, it really wasn't too enjoyable.
In fact, it was rather boring. >> How about the man who is paid $1?
He knows the task is dull, but he has two discrepant thoughts.
He also knows that he did not have sufficient justification for saying that
it wasn't. For him, there is dissonance.
Time after time, we have seen what follows.
He reduces the dissonance by changing his opinion about the dullness of the task.
>> The bottom line is that cognitive dissonance theory has two main prongs.
First, the act of holding two incompatible thoughts creates a sense of
internal discomfort, or "dissonance." And second, people try to reduce or
avoid these feelings of tension whenever possible.
But it turns out that the story doesn't end here,
because there's a whole other way to account for what Festinger and Carlsmith found.
In the mid-1960's, social psychologist
Daryl Bem proposed that cognitive dissonance findings could be explained by
what he called "self-perception theory." According to self-perception theory,
dissonance findings have nothing to do with a negative drive state called dissonance.
They have only to do with how people
infer their beliefs from their own behavior.
Like dissonance theory, Bem's self-perception theory has two main prongs:
First, individuals come to know their own attitudes and emotions and other internal
states partially by inferring them from observations of their own behavior and
the circumstances in which their behavior occurs.
And second, to the extent that internal cues are weak,
ambiguous, or uninterpretable, the individual is functionally in the same
position as an outside observer. It just so happens that the person you're
observing is yourself. The way Bem would explained Festinger and
Carlsmith's results is to argue that students who saw themselves tell another
person that the task was enjoyable for only a dollar inferred that they must
have enjoyed the task, just as an outside observer would infer.
On the other hand, students who saw themselves tell another person that the
task was enjoyable for $20 explained their behavior to
themselves as a result of being paid a large sum of money—again, as an outside
observer would. The difference between self-perception theory
and cognitive dissonance theory is that self-perception theory explains
classic dissonance findings in terms of how people infer
the causes of their behavior. It is essentially attributional in nature,
whereas cognitive dissonance theory explains findings in terms of a natural
tendency to reduce inner conflict, tension, dissonance.
According to Bem, participants in the Festinger and Carlsmith study could have
been cool as cucumbers and still given the same pattern of results.
A feeling of dissonance, according to Bem, isn't necessary.
Which of these two theories is more accurate
or more useful when it comes to explaining dissonance "phenomena"?
Well, for many years, researchers on each side of the issue attempted to design
a definitive experiment in support of their theory,
in effect dealing a friendly death blow to the other side.
But, in fact, each round of experimentation served only to provoke
more experiments by the other side, and after several years of this, Bem himself
withdrew from the debate. In the final analysis, I think it makes
sense to say that both theories operate in a wide variety of situations.
Clearly, there are many situations in which we do feel tension, and there are also
situations in which we closely watch our behavior and draw inferences from it.
Following psychology tradition, however, I'm going to use dissonance terminology
when discussing research findings that could be explained equally well
by self-perception theory. But let's pause now, just briefly, for a
quick comprehension check, and then I'll make a few closing remarks.
So, we've now covered the basics of cognitive dissonance theory and
self-perception theory, which sets you up for the most interesting part:
classic research findings that are filled with surprises, useful applications, and
thought provoking consequences. That will be our topic for next time.
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