When Beliefs Follow Actions
Written by Studio AM.
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Cognitive dissonance is discomfort associated with a conflict between beliefs, or between a belief and an action. A person who values honesty may feel uneasy after saying something untrue. One response is to revise a belief, but people can also change later behavior, seek a justification, or acknowledge a mistake.
In a 1959 experiment, Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith asked participants to complete dull tasks. Some were then paid one dollar or twenty dollars to tell another person that the tasks were enjoyable. Those paid one dollar later rated the tasks more positively than those paid twenty dollars. The smaller payment seemed trivial compared with the larger one, yet it was associated with the larger change in reported enjoyment.
The researchers interpreted this as insufficient external justification. A large payment offered an obvious reason for the positive description. With a smaller payment, changing one's view of the task could help make that description easier to accept. This is an explanation of the group pattern, not a direct measurement of every participant's private reasoning.
The implication is that behavior can influence later beliefs, not only the other way around. When a view changes after an uncomfortable choice, it is worth asking what new evidence supports the view and what might instead be helping justify the choice.
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Questions
Choose an answer. The explanation appears after you answer.
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Question 1 of 4
Which statement best captures the main idea?
The answer is B: A conflict between action and belief can lead people to revise their beliefs, as one experiment illustrates.
The passage defines dissonance, describes the payment comparison, and presents belief change as one possible response.
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Question 2 of 4
Which volunteers later rated the dull task as more enjoyable?
The answer is C: Those paid a trivial sum.
The one-dollar group rated the dull tasks more positively than the twenty-dollar group.
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Question 3 of 4
Under the researchers' interpretation, why could a large payment reduce the need to change a belief?
The answer is C: The payment gave an external reason for describing the task positively.
The third paragraph presents payment as an external justification, without claiming that all discomfort vanished.
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Question 4 of 4
What does “trivial” mean here?
The answer is A: very small and hardly worth anything
The word describes the small one-dollar payment in comparison with twenty dollars.
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