Cognitive Disonance And Personal Example Of Cognitive Dissonance In Psychology

According to Green (1959), “Festinger proposed a theory concerning cognitive dissonance…the present experiment was to design this derivation under controlled, laboratory conditions.” In this experiment, students at Standford University that were in psychology classes were the subjects. The subjects were instructed to perform a boring tedious task. Afterword, they were asked to tell the next subject that the task they did was fun. Some subjects were paid a dollar, and the rest of the subjects were paid twenty dollars to lie to the next subject. In this paper, which subjects experienced cognitive dissonance, how they experience cognitive dissonance, and personal examples of cognitive dissonance will be discussed. First, how the subjects that got paid one dollar were the ones who experienced cognitive dissonance. They had to change how they thought about the experiment to convince the next subject that the task they did was fun. How they experienced cognitive dissonance is because they knew the task they completed was dull. The subjects had to change their thinking of the task to be able to talk to the next subject. The subjects that were paid twenty dollars did not experience cognitive dissonance, because they were paid more, they felt more comfortable lying to the next subject.

The people that were paid twenty dollars felt comfortable lying to the next subject since they were getting paid a better amount. The subjects that were paid a dollar had to convince themselves that it was ok to lie to the next subject in order to actually be able to; the subjects that got paid twenty dollars did not. Furthermore, the subjects that were paid one dollar talked to the next subject to be nice. The subjects that were paid twenty dollars talked to the next subject for the money without a