Description:
- When you find contradiction in your beliefs, ideals, values, and behaviours, you look for justification to make it make sense
Forced compliance theory:
- Leon Festinger’s experiment
- About forced-compliance paradigm, in which the subject performed a series of repetitive and boring menial tasks
- then was asked to lie to the “next subject” (actually an experimental accomplice) and say that the tasks were interesting and enjoyable.
- Some subjects were paid 1forlying,whileotherswerepaid20.
- Subjects who were paid 1forlyinglaterevaluatedthetasksasmoreenjoyablethanthosewhowerepaid20.
- The subjects who were paid $20 should not have experienced dissonance,
- because they were well rewarded and had ample justification for lying,
- whereas those paid $1 had little justification for lying and should have experienced cognitive dissonance.
- They did not receive sufficient compensation for the lie they were asked to tell.
- Because of this insufficiency, the participants convinced themselves to believe that what they were doing was exciting.
- This way, they felt better about telling the next group of participants that it was exciting because, technically, they weren’t lying.
Effort justification: