The experimenter (E) then came in, introducing himself to the S and, together, they walked into the laboratory room where the E said: With no further introduction or explanation the S was shown the first task, which involved putting 12 spools onto a tray, emptying the tray, refilling it with spools, and so on. Half of them were offered $1 to do the job, while the remaining half was offered $20. The______explanation of prejudice assumes that the same processes that help form other attitudes form prejudiced attitudes. A woman argues that it is morally wrong to kill animals for food becomes upset when she is asked to explain why she is wearing a leather belt and leather shoes. And, indeed, in the Control condition the average rating was -.45, somewhat on the negative side of the neutral point. endobj Cognitive dissonance is at the heart of this insidious prejudice, write Berit Brogaard and Dimitria Gatzia. As long as people are not paid a lot of money or given some other obvious inducement to perform the behavior, they will convince themselves it is enjoyable. This is an example of, Vince has always believed children deserve the best prenatal care available. 0 /ImageC Stereotypes are governed by the recency effect. With everything else held constant, this total magnitude of dissonance would decrease as the number and importance of the pressures which induced him to say "not X" increased. %%EOF Furthermore, since the pressure to reduce dissonance will be a function of the magnitude of the dissonance, the observed opinion change should be greatest when the pressure used to elicit the overt behavior is just sufficient to do it. The stronger the S's positive statements about the tasks, and the more ways in which he said they were interesting and enjoyable, the higher the rating. Yet no one calls the police. The present experiment was listed as a two-hour experiment dealing with "Measures of Performance.". Recently Festinger (1957) proposed a theory concerning cognitive dissonance from which come a number of derivations about opinion change following forced compliance. Evanston, IL: Row & Peterson Our identity is in part created by identifying ourselves with the organization or the community for which the sacrifices have been made. When one person meets another person for the first time, ________ occurs. The observed opinion change is greater than for persons who only hear the speech or for persons who read a prepared speech with emphasis solely on execution and manner of delivery The authors of these two studies explain their results mainly in terms of mental rehearsal and thinking up new arguments. We will have more to say concerning this explanation in discussing the results of our experiment. Nicole thinks of herself as an honest, trustworthy person. This is manifested in the phenomenon called cognitive dissonance. xref Our identity is in part created by identifying ourselves with the organization or the community for which the sacrifices have been made. hXr8=fj*!US%mfy l8oIbR0Bn t7!g] %>))BI0` 98sUx GHM. They changed their attitudes to relieve the dissonance and fully believed that the activities were interesting. One would then expect no differences at all among the three conditions. Seventy-one male students in the introductory psychology course at Stanford University were used in the experiment. Which of the following is not one of the three things people do to reduce cognitive dissonance? Two studies reported by Janis and King (1954; 1956) clearly showed that, at least under some conditions, the private opinion changes so as to bring it into closer correspondence with the overt behavior the person was forced to perform. Would the subject be willing to do a small favor for the experimenter? gsKkaO\Cw`c L J=x8;zy\kd7vHzl=1~6}4=m_IQfKn[3Mqwp0uyM-P:. They asked the participants to execute boring tasks, such as repeatedly. Introducing Cram Folders! Alex, who is in the honors program, failed to do his share of the work on the group project with his four classmates. Carlsmith performed an experiment regarding cognitive dissonance in 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. (p.47) As a rule, cognitive dissonance theory predicts that attitudes and behaviors will remain in synchrony. Deception is the cornerstone of the experiment conceived by Leon Festinger in the year 1959. Because of the desirability of investigating this possible alternative explanation, we recorded on a tape recorder the conversation between each S and the girl. He reasoned that if the person is induced to make an overt statement contrary to his private opinion by the offer of some reward, then the greater the reward offered, the greater should be the subsequent opinion change. Festinger and Carlsmith's study now began to treat the 71 subjects in different ways such as to investigate the cognitive consequences of induced compliance to see whether there would be any evidence of Cognitive Dissonance, where the student concerned was psychologically di-stressed between his actual views and the role he found himself taking Most Ss responded by saying something like "Oh, no, it's really very interesting. If you need instructions for turning off common ad-blocking programs, click here. He did so in order to make it convincing that this was [p. 205] what thc E was interested in and that these tasks, and how the S worked on them, was the total experiment. Find out how you can intelligently organize your Flashcards. In the Milgram study and several similar studies, between _____ percent of the participants went all the way up to the 450-volt shock level. & KING, B.T. When opposites attract it is said that they have_____ characteristics. repeatedly turning pegs in a peg board for an hour. 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. All of the following are causes for groupthink EXCEPT. in order to reduce dissonance. They had not enjoyed the experiment, but now they were asked to lie and say they had enjoyed it. task faced a greater degree of dissonance than the ones who were paid $20, so The results from this question are shown in the last row of Table 1. $K{.-hC ;{l8S We wish to thank Leonard Hommel, Judson Mills, and Robert Terwilliger for their help in designing and carrying out the experiment. Changes in attitude toward a specific, context-dependent topic, such as enjoyment of the mundane task in the experiment described above (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959) Information seeking following a change in usual behavior (Engel, 1963) /Type/Page How would a social psychologist describe this situation? They were told that a sample of students would be interviewed after having served as Ss. 2. Festinger and Carlsmith had cleverly set up an opposition between behavioral theory, which was dominant in the 1950s, and Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory. Before the subjects left the experiment, the experimenter commented that his research assistant would be unavailable to help the following day. In order to teach her second grade students about ______, teacher Jane Elliot created in-groups and out-groups based on the superficial characteristic of eye color. bystander effect and diffusion of responsibly. C. She knew she had to find something that she was interested in. >> Festinger observed that the subjects were put in a psychologically uncomfortable position. Ben Franklin gave some peculiar advice that makes sense in the context of cognitive dissonance theory. $20 in the 1950s was equivalent to over $100 now. Actually, the result, as may be seen in the table, are in exactly the same direction, and the magnitude of the mean differences is fully as large as on the first question. Sandy loves to play pool and has become quite good at the game. Festinger explained it this way in A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957): The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance. The results, according to the researchers, display the cognitive dissonance phenomenon. Abused children grow up to become abusers about one third of the time. We weren't able to detect the audio language on your flashcards. Subjects who received $20 had no problem explaining their behavior to themselves. In Sternberg's model, intimacy, passion, and commitment are all present in, The area of the brain that controls aggressive responses is the, Zimbardo's prison experiment lasted only five days because, of the extreme effect it was having on the participants, Ryan sees a woman collapse in the mall. 0000000848 00000 n endstream endobj startxref This is an example of_______ cause. I'm sure you'll enjoy it." 59 0 obj Would the subject have any desire to participate in another similar experiment? There is perhaps no surer way of infecting ourselves with virulent hatred toward a person than by doing him a grave injustice. Franklin said if you want someone to like you, get that person to do you a favor. If you have a negative attitude toward something, but you behave like you enjoy it, this causes dissonance. 1. anything important? The girl, after this listened quietly, accepting and agreeing to everything the S told her. Most of our subjects tell us afterward that they found it quite interesting You get a chance to see how you react to the tasks and so forth." Doing so, they started to identify with the arguments and accept them as their own. 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. The dissonance could, consequently, be reduced by magnifying the importance of this cognition. Some have already been discussed. The three components of attitude are _____, thoughts, and actions. A rating of the amount of time in the discussion that the S spent discussing the tasks as opposed to going off into irrelevant things. 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. In this case, the One Dollar group should be motivated to believe that the experiment was enjoyable. Maria had fallen victim to the_______technique. This is a direct result 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. To reduce the feeling of discomfort about lying, they persuaded themselves they actually enjoyed the experiment. 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. One would consequently expect to observe such opinion change after a person has been forced or induced to say something contrary to his private opinion. The girl, an undergraduate hired for this role, said little until the S made some positive remarks about the experiment and then said that she was surprised because a friend of hers had taken the experiment the week before and had told her that it was boring and that she ought to try to get out of it. This was rated in the same way as for the content before the remark. Jane nonetheless takes what she learned seriously and begins to pay more attention to her safety. A person's conformity in a situation like the Asch line study is most likely to be strongest when________. 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. Thus, with self-selection of who did and who did not make the required overt statement and with varying percentages of subjects in the different conditions who did make the requsted statement, no interpretation of the data can be unequivocal. Jeff is assuming a, Cheryl got a bad grade on her test, which she attributes to the fact that she had to work overtime throughout the week and so could not study as much as usual. What is the reason for the lack of action, according to Darley and Latane? While the S was working on these tasks the E sat, with a stop watch in his hand, busily making notations on a sheet of paper. Psych Web has over 1,000 pages, so it may be elsewhere on the site. In a crowded mall parking lot, dozens of people hear a female voice yell, "He's killing me!" Participants were asked, "Would you please tell the next subject in line that the experiment was fun and enjoyable?" After completing the tasks, the participants were asked to persuade another student (who were already informed of the experiment confederates) into agreeing to participate. Typically the behavior is in the past, by the time the person feels dissonance, so the behavior cannot be changed. Two Ss (both in the One Dollar condition) told the girl that they had been hired, that the experiment was really boring but they were supposed to say it was fun. If you make people treat you with respect, they will respect you more, in order to reduce dissonance between their attitudes and their behaviors. Jane used ______ when receiving the officer's message. Festinger and Carlsmith further concluded, based off the the control group, that those who were only paid $1 felt that they were forcing themselves to explain how "enjoyable" of a task this was when in reality it was not. "Look, Officer, I didn't see the stop sign back there because the sun was in my eyes" The police officer responds, "You were not paying attention." Cindy formed her attitude about peas through the process of, A person tries to change the belief, opinion, or course of action of another person through, People can reduce cognitive dissonance by, forming new cognitions to justify their behavior, Justin walks into the morning meeting 15 minutes late. In 1959, Festinger, along with James Carlsmith, tested this theory (Cognitive Dissonance). The participants were experiencing cognitive dissonance because they were being asked to tell other people that the tasks were fun and interesting when, in reality, they were tedious and boring. Solomon Asch, a social psychologist conducted a series of experiments called Asch conformity to study how the behavior of a certain group influence the behav Normative conformity is most commonly referred to as peer pressure, and is prevalent in our present society. Researchers have found that a________ degree of fear in a message makes it more effective particularly when it it combined with __________. A. Nicole practiced diligently with her mom. Scott, W. A. How can you get someone to like you, according to Ben Franklin? Copyright 2007-2018 Russ Dewey To do otherwise would have been to create conflict or dissonance (lack of harmony) between their attitudes and their behavior. The 71 subjects were informed that the experiment focuses on the "Measures of Performance." The war in Iraq, the design of the ship Titanic, and the Challenger disaster are all given in the textbook as examples of, If your roommate asks you for a ride to campus and you agree, and then the next day asks if he can borrow your car, it is an example of the.