Cognitive Dissonance
It is important to note that the most significant finding from the Festinger and Carlsmith study is not that payment of just one dollar was enough to get most participants to tell someone that a dull task was actually interesting. The most important finding is that the act of telling someone else that the task was interesting had the potential to affect the participants’ own attitudes toward the task that they had already completed, such that those paid just $1 ended up with a more positive view of the task than did those who were paid $20.
The concepts of cognitive dissonance and dissonance reduction help explain a variety of features of human behavior and interesting findings regarding the way in which attitudes are formed and changed. For example, consider the case of two college students, Adam and Ben. Adam would like to join fraternity Alpha. Ben would like to join fraternity Beta. They each go through the process of joining their desired fraternity. For Adam, becoming an “Alpha” requires that he go through a long and sometimes difficult initiation process, involving a lot of work and effort, and culminating in an initiation ceremony that is physically and mentally demanding and which includes some rather unpleasant hazing experiences. The fraternity that Ben joins does not put pledges through any kind of hazing process at all. Instead, there is a short ceremony, and that is all.
Soon after joining, Adam and Ben are asked to rate how much they like the fraternity that they joined. According to a cognitive dissonance analysis, one would predict that, all other factors being equal, Adam would like fraternity Alpha more than Ben would like fraternity Beta. The reason for this difference is that Adam went through a very difficult process in order join Alpha. As a result, an attitude toward the fraternity other than strong liking would be expected to produce dissonance (it doesn’t make sense to have expended so much effort and to have gone through so much hazing in order to joining a fraternity that you don’t like a lot). In order to prevent experiencing dissonance, Adam would be motivated to hold a very positive attitude toward the fraternity. Ben, on the other hand, would not have as strong a dissonance-reduction motivation to hold a positive attitude toward his fraternity, because he did not go through as difficult an initiation as did Adam.
The validity of the above analysis has, in fact, been supported by a number of research studies. There is clear evidence that severe initiations (on average) increase positive group-focused attitudes by those who have gone through the initiation in order to join the group. There may be very good reasons for schools to ban hazing rituals, but such ordeals definitely do (on average) promote positive attitudes toward the fraternity, sports team, or other organization. Similarly, it is well known that people tend to value things more that they have worked hard to achieve or acquire (something that you have probably noticed in your own life). A cognitive dissonance analysis helps explain why this would be the case.
