Question

According to the cognitive dissonance theory, making a statement contrary to one's actual attitude is most likely to lead to a change in a person's attitude under which of the following?

a. the statement is made in exchange for a small reward.

b. the statement is made under severe coercion.

c. the statement is made in exchange for a large reward.

d. all of the above situations are equally likely to lead to a change in attitude.

Answer 1

• The answer is option A
• According to Festinger (1957), people strive toward consistency within themselves and their lives. The problem arises,when a person's attitudes toward a specific behavior are inconsistent with his or her actual behaviors. For example, a person may have a strong negative attitude toward smoking, yet despite this belief continues to smoke regularly.
• When a person is asked to comply to a behavior that is inconsistent with his or her own opinion and is offered a small reward for complying with the behavior, greater dissonance is experienced,and if the reward is not equal to the task given,the individual might change his/her opinions to match the behaviour.
• The classic experiment conducted by Festinger and Carlsmith,focused on paying  $1 or $20 to mislead "next subject" and say the experiment was "enjoyable" and "interesting".$1 group actually reported that they enjoyed the experiment more when talking to the experimenter afterwards.$1 group was not able to easily justify lies,more dissonance lead to attitude change.