Reference no: EM134027237
Question
What do a peg and a grasshopper have in common? Cognitive dissonance. The textbook discusses dissonance theory in regard to cognitive consistency and attitude change. Two classic studies will illuminate dissonance theory further.
Leon Festinger and James M. Carlsmith provided one of the first, and one of the best, demonstrations of the induced compliance paradigm for studying cognitive dissonance.
Seventy-one college men reported for a two-hour experiment on "measures of performance." With little fanfare the participants were asked to use one hand to remove 12 spools from a tray, and then refill it. This mundane task lasted about half an hour, only to be followed by an equally mundane task. Participants were presented with an array of 48 pegs sunk into a board, and asked to move each of them a quarter-turn at a time, until they were returned to their original position. After half an hour of this, all participants were quite bored, frustrated, and in a fairly negative mood; precisely the condition Festinger and Carlsmith wanted them in.
All participants were then told that there was a second part to the study. At this point, they were informed, a confederate usually came in to convince the next waiting subject of how fun,