In: Psychology
Describe the Aronson and mills (1959) study. what was the research question? what were the methods? what were the results? define cognitive dissonance and explain how this study relates to cognitive dissonance. Answer in paragraph form (1-2)
The central question of Aronson & Mills (1959) study was to
find if people's liking for a group is influenced by the severity
of initiation. They hypothesized that when people willingly undergo
a severe initiation in order to become a member of a group, they
are motivated to think that the group membership must be
worthwhile. For this, they conducted an experiment in which
participants were randomly assigned to one of three treatment
groups. Group 1 had no initiation, Group 2 had a mildly
embarrassing initiation and Group 3 had a severely embarrassing
initiation. After the initiation, each participant was made to
listen to a boring tape-recorded discussion.
The researchers found that participants who had undergone the most
embarrassing initiation evaluated the tape-recorded discussion most
positively. They reasoned that this was due to the effect of
cognitive dissonance. Participants were motivated to justify
putting up with severe initiation for the sake of a group
membership that wanted to perceive as worthwhile.