Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior by Nick Kolenda Page A

by reassuring yourself that it’s your senior year so you need to enjoy it.
    Next time you perform an action that’s inconsistent with one of your attitudes, pay attention to the little voice inside your head that tries to justify your behavior. That little voice is your attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance.
    WHY IS (IN)CONSISTENCY SO POWERFUL?
    The important takeaway from the previous section is that whenever our attitudes and behavior are inconsistent, we become motivated to resolve that inconsistency. This section will explain why that occurs and why behavior, in addition to body language, can trigger congruent attitudes to resolve that inconsistency.
    Now, why on earth did those cult members experience such tremendous pressure to maintain their belief about the end of the world? You can start to see the underlying reason when you look at how they acted before the flying saucer failed to arrive. Upon their initial discovery that the world would supposedly end, many cult member displayed behavior consistent with a belief in the end of the world (e.g., many had quit their jobs, sold their possessions, etc.).
    On December 21, when cult members realized that the flying saucer didn’t arrive as predicted, their belief was challenged. However, to accept the idea that the world wasn’t ending would be profoundly inconsistent with their original behavior. In order to overcome that dissonance and discomfort, they needed to do something. And because they couldn’t alter their past behavior, they changed the one thing that they could change: their attitude. Upon discovering that the flying saucer didn’t arrive, most cult members developed stronger beliefs in the end of the world so that they could justify their original behavior.
    When the undercover researchers witnessed that surprising outcome, they tested that principle by conducting the experiment described in the beginning of the chapter (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). In their experiment, they paid people who just completed a boring experiment either $1 or $20 to lie to new participants and claim that it was fun. Thus, people were asked to perform a behavior that was inconsistent with their inner attitude.
    The researchers wanted to examine how that inconsistency would influence their actual attitude toward the experiment, and the results revolutionized beliefs about human behavior. During that era, psychologists believed that greater rewards always led to greater attitude changes, but Festinger and Carlsmith’s study disputed that claim by demonstrating how a smaller reward can sometimes lead to a greater attitude change.
    Now that you’re more aware about cognitive dissonance, you can probably start to guess why people developed a more positive attitude toward the experiment when they were paid $1 to lie to the new participants. When people were asked to lie by claiming that the experiment was fun, they performed a behavior that was inconsistent with their attitude, and thus they experienced dissonance and became motivated to resolve that discomfort. How did they resolve it? Much like the cult members, people in the experiment couldn’t change their behavior (i.e., their participation in the experiment), so they changed the only thing that they could change: their attitude toward the experiment.
    People who were paid $1 regained consistency and resolved their dissonance by genuinely developing a more positive attitude toward the experiment. If they held a positive attitude toward it, then their behavior of telling the new participant that the experiment was “fun” would be consistent with that attitude.
    But wait! What about the $20 group? In that study, people who were paid $20 to lie to new participants didn’t develop any positive attitudes toward the experiment. What gives! Why did the $1 group find the experiment enjoyable, while the $20 group still thought the experiment was painfully boring?
    That difference occurred because people who were paid $20