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Cognitive Dissonance

Festinger & carlsmith's study, festinger & carlsmith's study.

Every individual has his or her own way of evaluating their own selves and usually this is done by comparing themselves to others. This is manifested in the phenomenon called cognitive dissonance. This is further explained in Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith's study in 1954.

This article is a part of the guide:

• Social Psychology Experiments
• Milgram Experiment
• Bobo Doll Experiment
• Stanford Prison Experiment
• Asch Experiment

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• 1 Social Psychology Experiments
• 2.1 Asch Figure
• 3 Bobo Doll Experiment
• 4 Good Samaritan Experiment
• 5 Stanford Prison Experiment
• 6.1 Milgram Experiment Ethics
• 7 Bystander Apathy
• 8 Sherif’s Robbers Cave
• 9 Social Judgment Experiment
• 10 Halo Effect
• 11 Thought-Rebound
• 12 Ross’ False Consensus Effect
• 13 Interpersonal Bargaining
• 14 Understanding and Belief
• 15 Hawthorne Effect
• 16 Self-Deception
• 17 Confirmation Bias
• 18 Overjustification Effect
• 19 Choice Blindness
• 20.1 Cognitive Dissonance
• 21.1 Social Group Prejudice
• 21.2 Intergroup Discrimination
• 21.3 Selective Group Perception

Cognitive dissonance is one form of social comparison. The Social Comparison Theory was originally proposed by Leon Festinger in 1954. According to the social psychologist, the social comparison theory is the idea that there is a drive within individuals to search for outside images in order to evaluate their own opinions and abilities. The said images can be a reference to physical reality or in comparison to other people.

In the process, people look at the images portrayed by others as something obtainable and realistic, and subsequently, make comparisons among themselves, others and the idealized images.

Generally speaking, the social comparison theory explains how individuals evaluate their opinion and desires by comparing themselves to others.

Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith conducted a study on cognitive dissonance investigating on the cognitive consequences of forced compliance. In the study, undergraduate students of Introductory Psychology at Stanford University were asked to take part of a series of experiments.

It was explained to them that the Department of Psychology is conducting the study and they are therefore required to serve in the experiments. They were told that the study aims to evaluate these experiments to help them improve these in the future. The students will be interviewed after participating in the experiment and were encouraged to be completely honest in these interviews.

The participants were 71 male students in totality.

Methodology

The 71 subjects were informed that the experiment focuses on the "Measures of Performance." The participants were asked to carry out series of monotonous tasks that were meant to be boring and nonsensical. Specifically, subjects were asked to put spools onto and then off the try with the use of only one hand for half an hour, and then for the next half hour, turn square pegs clockwise in quarter turns, and then start all over again once the whole cycle's been finished for all 48 square pegs.

The subjects were divided into two groups, A and B, where Group A was provided no introduction regarding the tasks they will be performing and Group B was. Group B was given introduction by an experimenter, presenting the tasks in an interesting and enjoyable tone.

After performing the tasks, each of the subjects was then interviewed regarding how enjoyable the tasks were to him. Festinger and Carlsmith then investigated whether there's a standing evidence of cognitive dissonance where boring tasks were seen as enjoyable.

A fraction of the subjects were thanked and let go after being interviewed by another experimenter regarding ways on how the presentation of the boring tasks can be improved for future purposes. The said group served as the control group of the experiment.

The remaining subjects were asked to take the place of an experimenter, if they would want to. Their job is to give the next group of participants a delightful introduction of the tasks they have previously performed. Half of them were offered $1 to do the job, while the remaining half was offered $20.

The subjects were then again interviewed afterwards and were asked to rate four different areas of the experiment. The first area is whether the tasks were interesting and enjoyable at all. Subjects rated this using a scale of negative 5 to positive 5 (-5 to +5).

The second area is whether the experiment gave the participant an opportunity to discover their own skills, using the scale of 0 to 10. The third asks whether that subject finds the activity important, again using the scale of 0 to 10. And lastly, participants were asked whether they would want to participate again in the future in a study the same as this, using the scale -5 to +5.

Like in every other study, there are some responses that are deemed to be invalid. In Festinger and Carlsmith's experiment, 11 of the 71 responses were considered invalid for a couple of reasons.

Among the paid participants, 5 had suspicions about getting paid for the designated task. These made them question what the real purpose of the study is. In addition to these 5 exceptions, another 2 of the paid participants told the girl the truth that the tasks she will be performing are boring and uninteresting, and that they were just being paid to say otherwise. Three other participants declined the offer and another one, though he gave the girl a positive briefing, he asked for the girl's number afterwards so he can, according to him, explain to her further what the study is about.

Putting these 11 in exception, the 60 remaining responses are the following:

One of the questions that Festinger and Carlsmith were aiming to answer is how enjoyable were the tasks for the participants. Results of the experiment showed that even though the tasks were indeed boring and uninteresting, the unpaid control group rated the activity a negative 0.45 (-0.45). Those who were paid $1 rated the activity a positive 1.35 (+1.35), while those who were paid $20 gave it a rating of negative 0.5 (-0.5). The results, according to the researchers, display the cognitive dissonance phenomenon.

According to Festinger and Carlsmith, the participants experienced dissonance between the conflicting cognitions of telling someone that a particular task is interesting when the truth is, they found it rather uninteresting and boring. Those who were paid $1 were forced to rationalize their own judgments and convinced themselves that what they were doing is enjoyable because they had no other justification. On the other hand, the ones who were paid $20, apparently had the money as their primary justification for carrying out their task.

The researchers further concluded, with the help of the said results, that with $1, participants found no significant justification thus the occurrence of cognitive dissonance. When they were asked to lie about how they truly feel about the task, they force themselves to feel what they were induced to feel and express. This hypothetical stress brings the subject to intrinsically believe that the activity is indeed interesting and enjoyable.

In conclusion, people, when persuaded to lie without being given enough justification, will perform a task by convincing themselves of the falsehood, rather than telling a lie.

While it is true that the experiment took place in the 50s, the results are still being recognized up to this date. It has received widespread attention after recently being published in an academic journal.

Wikipedia: Social Comparison Theory

Festinger and Carlsmith - cognitive dissonance , Cognitive consequences of Forced Compliance

Festinger, L. and Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). "Cognitive consequences of forced compliance". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203-211.

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What Is Cognitive Dissonance Theory?

Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors.

This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.

For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by Leon Festinger, arising out of a participant observation study of a cult that believed that the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood, and what happened to its members — particularly the really committed ones who had given up their homes and jobs to work for the cult — when the flood did not happen.

While fringe members were more inclined to recognize that they had made fools of themselves and to “put it down to experience,” committed members were more likely to re-interpret the evidence to show that they were right all along (the earth was not destroyed because of the faithfulness of the cult members).

How Attitude Change Takes Place

Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and behavior in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance). This is known as the principle of cognitive consistency.

When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance.

Notice that dissonance theory does not state that these modes of dissonance reduction will actually work, only that individuals who are in a state of cognitive dissonance will take steps to reduce the extent of their dissonance.

The theory of cognitive dissonance has been widely researched in a number of situations to develop the basic idea in more detail, and various factors have been identified which may be important in attitude change.

What Causes Cognitive Dissonance?

• Forced Compliance Behavior,
• Decision Making,

We will look at the main findings to have emerged from each area.

Forced Compliance Behavior

When someone is forced to do (publicly) something they (privately) really don’t want to do, dissonance is created between their cognition (I didn’t want to do this) and their behavior (I did it).

Forced compliance occurs when an individual performs an action that is inconsistent with his or her beliefs. The behavior can’t be changed since it was already in the past, so dissonance will need to be reduced by re-evaluating their attitude toward what they have done. This prediction has been tested experimentally:

In an intriguing experiment, Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) asked participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a peg board for an hour). As you can imagine, participant’s attitudes toward this task were highly negative.

Example of Cognitive Dissonance

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) investigated if making people perform a dull task would create cognitive dissonance through forced compliance behavior.

In their laboratory experiment, they used 71 male students as participants to perform a series of dull tasks (such as turning pegs in a peg board for an hour).

They were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell a waiting participant (a confederate) that the tasks were really interesting. Almost all of the participants agreed to walk into the waiting room and persuade the confederate that the boring experiment would be fun.

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.

Being paid only $1 is not sufficient incentive for lying and so those who were paid $1 experienced dissonance. They could only overcome that dissonance by coming to believe that the tasks really were interesting and enjoyable. Being paid $20 provides a reason for turning pegs, and there is, therefore, no dissonance.

Decision Making

Life is filled with decisions, and decisions (as a general rule) arouse dissonance.

For example, suppose you had to decide whether to accept a job in an absolutely beautiful area of the country or turn down the job so you could be near your friends and family.

Either way, you would experience dissonance. If you took the job you would miss your loved ones; if you turned the job down, you would pine for the beautiful streams, mountains, and valleys.

Both alternatives have their good points and bad points. The rub is that making a decision cuts off the possibility that you can enjoy the advantages of the unchosen alternative, yet it assures you that you must accept the disadvantages of the chosen alternative.

Brehm (1956) was the first to investigate the relationship between dissonance and decision-making.

Female participants were informed they would be helping out in a study funded by several manufacturers. Participants were also told that they would receive one of the products at the end of the experiment to compensate for their time and effort.

The women then rated the desirability of eight household products that ranged in price from $15 to $30. The products included an automatic coffee maker, an electric sandwich grill, an automatic toaster, and a portable radio.

Participants in the control group were simply given one of the products. Because these participants did not make a decision, they did not have any dissonance to reduce. Individuals in the low-dissonance group chose between a desirable product and one rated 3 points lower on an 8-point scale.

Participants in the high-dissonance condition chose between a highly desirable product and one rated just 1 point lower on the 8-point scale. After reading the reports about the various products, individuals rated the products again.

Participants in the high-dissonance condition spread apart the alternatives significantly more than the participants in the other two conditions.

In other words, they were more likely than participants in the other two conditions to increase the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and to decrease the attractiveness of the unchosen alternative.

It also seems to be the case that we value most highly those goals or items which have required considerable effort to achieve.

This is probably because dissonance would be caused if we spent a great effort to achieve something and then evaluated it negatively.

We could, of course, spend years of effort into achieving something which turns out to be a load of rubbish and then, in order to avoid the dissonance that produces, try to convince ourselves that we didn’t really spend years of effort or that the effort was really quite enjoyable, or that it wasn’t really a lot of effort.

In fact, though, it seems we find it easier to persuade ourselves that what we have achieved is worthwhile, and that’s what most of us do, evaluating highly something whose achievement has cost us dear – whether other people think it’s much cop or not!

This method of reducing dissonance is known as “effort justification.”

If we put effort into a task that we have chosen to carry out, and the task turns out badly, we experience dissonance. To reduce this dissonance, we are motivated to try to think that the task turned out well.

A classic dissonance experiment by Aronson and Mills (1959) demonstrates the basic idea.

To investigate the relationship between dissonance and effort.

Female students volunteered to take part in a discussion on the psychology of sex. In the “mild embarrassment” condition, participants read aloud to a male experimenter a list of sex-related words like “virgin” and “prostitute.”

In the “severe embarrassment” condition, they had to read aloud obscene words and a very explicit sexual passage.

In the control condition, they went straight into the main study. In all conditions, they then heard a very boring discussion about sex in lower animals. They were asked to rate how interesting they had found the discussion and how interesting they had found the people involved in it.

Participants in the “severe embarrassment” condition gave the most positive rating.

If a voluntary experience that has cost a lot of effort turns out badly, the dissonance is reduced by redefining the experience as interesting. This justifies the effort made.

How To Reduce Cognitive Dissonance

Dissonance can be reduced in one of three ways: a) changing existing beliefs, b) adding new beliefs, or c) reducing the importance of the beliefs.

Change one or more of the attitudes, behavior, beliefs, etc., to make the relationship between the two elements a consonant one.

When one of the dissonant elements is a behavior, the individual can change or eliminate the behavior.

However, this mode of dissonance reduction frequently presents problems for people, as it is often difficult for people to change well-learned behavioral responses (e.g., giving up smoking).

This is often very difficult, as people frequently employ a variety of mental maneuvers.

Acquire new information that outweighs the dissonant beliefs.

For example, thinking smoking causes lung cancer will cause dissonance if a person smokes.

However, new information such as “research has not proved definitely that smoking causes lung cancer” may reduce the dissonance.

Reduce the importance of the cognitions (i.e., beliefs, attitudes).

A common way to reduce dissonance is to increase the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and decrease the attractiveness of the rejected alternative. This is referred to as “spreading apart the alternatives.”

A person could convince themself that it is better to “live for today” than to “save for tomorrow.”

In other words, he could tell himself that a short life filled with smoking and sensual pleasures is better than a long life devoid of such joys. In this way, he would be decreasing the importance of dissonant cognition (smoking is bad for one’s health).

Critical Evaluation

There has been a great deal of research into cognitive dissonance, providing some interesting and sometimes unexpected findings.

It is a theory with very broad applications, showing that we aim for consistency between attitudes and behaviors and may not use very rational methods to achieve it. It has the advantage of being testable by scientific means (i.e., experiments).

However, there is a problem from a scientific point of view because we cannot physically observe cognitive dissonance, and therefore we cannot objectively measure it (re: behaviorism). Consequently, the term cognitive dissonance is somewhat subjective.

There is also some ambiguity (i.e., vagueness) about the term “dissonance” itself. Is it a perception (as “cognitive” suggests), a feeling, or a feeling about a perception? Aronson’s Revision of the idea of dissonance as an inconsistency between a person’s self-concept and a cognition about their behavior makes it seem likely that dissonance is really nothing more than guilt.

There are also individual differences in whether or not people act as this theory predicts. Highly anxious people are more likely to do so. Many people seem able to cope with considerable dissonance and not experience the tensions the theory predicts.

Finally, many of the studies supporting the theory of cognitive dissonance have low ecological validity. For example, turning pegs (as in Festinger’s experiment) is an artificial task that doesn’t happen in everyday life.

Also, the majority of experiments used students as participants, which raises issues of a biased sample . Could we generalize the results from such experiments?

What is the difference between cognitive dissonance theory and balance theory?

Cognitive dissonance theory, proposed by Festinger, focuses on the discomfort felt when holding conflicting beliefs or attitudes, leading individuals to seek consistency.

Heider’s Balance Theory , on the other hand, emphasizes the desire for balanced relations among triads of entities (like people and attitudes), with imbalances prompting changes in attitudes to restore balance. Both theories address cognitive consistency, but in different contexts.

Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2) , 177.

Brehm, J. W. (1956). Postdecision changes in the desirability of alternatives. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52(3) , 384.

Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of cognitive dissonance . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Festinger, L. (1959). Some attitudinal consequences of forced decisions . Acta Psychologica , 15, 389-390.

Festinger, L. (Ed.). (1964). Conflict, decision, and dissonance (Vol. 3) . Stanford University Press.

Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2) , 203.

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Leon Festinger and Cognitive Dissonance