Question

Explain what cognitive dissonance is. Now, guess the results of these experiments. Explain the cognitive dissonance in each example.   

1.) In one study, participants were asked to do a task. It turned out that the task was really, really boring. When they were asked to tell the next person it was a really interesting task, and, in fact, they would get paid for doing so. All agreed to do it. One half of the participants got paid $1 to tell the next person it was interesting; the other half got paid $20 to tell the next person it was interesting. Afterwards they all were asked, "Ok, really, how interesting did you find the task?" One group said they found the task more interesting than the other. Which one? Why?

2.) Researchers looked at recently-graduated college students who had been members of fraternities, some of which did hazing of new members and others that didn't. The former students were asked how committed they were to the fraternity. Did one group say they were more committed than the other? If so, which one? Explain.

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Thank you so much,

Answer 1

Cognitive dissonance is the dissonance in cognition, meaning that if a person hold two different attitudes or beliefs about the same situation the person may end up having confusions in his cognitive process. Which ranges in forming a stable attitude by pointing out more favourable outputs to any of the opinions and concluding it to attain cognitive consonance.

1. In the first case two groups were asked to report the same boring task to be interesting to the next individual. Being asked to report a boring task to be interesting produces a dissonance as it is against their actual belief. As the first group was given $1 they would neutralize their dissonance and attain cognitive consonance by thinking that, even though the task was boring i would not say a lie just for $ 1, so i would have actually enjoyed the task. In the second group they would have the dissonance that, the task actually being boring but as provided with $ 20 i could actually tell the other person that it is interesting.

So the people in the first $ 1 group will be the ones who reported the task to be more interesting.