Have you guys ever faced a situation that required you to do something utterly boring with no apparent rewards, but when the time came to tell others about the boring job that you were doing on a beautiful Sunday morning, you said that you actually loved the job? Many of us have done this even in important situations. We have lied that we loved doing the work that we were doing though internally, we could have died of boredom.
Psychologists say that this kind of a situation reflects the cognitive dissonance theory. Cognitive dissonance theory states that inconsistencies between behavior and attitudes produce psychological discomfort which leads people to either rationalize their behavior or to change their attitudes. Psychological research in the 1950s, focused on persuasion techniques and adherently believed in the operant conditioning theory. But in 1959, Leon Festinger and J. Merrill Carlsmith, published a classic experiment to demonstrate the presence of cognitive dissonance. According to them, the dissonance theory suggests that if a person is given a small reward in exchange of doing work that he/she dislikes, most attitude change will occur as compared to the traditional reinforcement theory which suggests that bigger the reward, more the attitude change in the person doing the job. In their experiment, Festinger and Carlsmith, asked participants to perform utterly boring jobs like (kind of like the ones that college students sometimes do to fend for pocket money.. lol) spending the first 30 minutes taking 12 little wooden spools off the tray, one at a time, putting back in the place and repeating the process over and over again. In the next 30 minutes, each participant had to turn 48 square pegs a quarter turn clockwise and again keep repeating it over and over again. The experimenter then said that the experiment was to actually motivate people to do such mundane tasks (this was false knowledge). The participants were informed that another previous participant (actually a confederate) who was supposed to tell other participants how cool the job was so that other participants would be motivated to do the job (this was in conjunction with the false knowledge) did not turn up and will they be willing to do the same job instead?
The participant was given either $1 or $20 to perform the task of telling other people how interesting the job was. This was obvious lieing, because the participants knew that the job was utterly boring. After they told another participant (another confederate) how enjoyable the task was, each participant was asked how much they enjoyed doing the task. As predicted by Festinger and Carlsmith, participants who received $20 to lie about the otherwise dull job, did not report enjoying doing the job. But those participants who received only $1 to lie that they liked doing the job, reported that they actually enjoyed doing the job. People who received $1 were in a state of cognitive dissonance. Since they did not receive a substantial amount to lie in the first place and since they knew that they would never lie about doing something (I mean common, even the criminal in the court says that he never lies, these are at least innocent, normal people! ), they changed their attitude towards the job. By attributing their behavior- saying to other participant that the job was enjoyable to actually liking the job they performed, they overcame the cognitive dissonance that they were undergoing.
So folks, cognitive dissonance can be a great tool if used properly to get people to change their attitude about something, without them even realizing it consciously! But I wonder sometimes that why this theory never seem to work with my papa when I give him lower results and still expect him to love me more! Somehow he stops talking to me :D
In a conscious state of dissonance,
Nupur
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