Question: Hi, I was wondering out of all important scientific discoveries in the past. If you could have been the person that discovered them what would you choose?

Bogdana Huma answered on 19 Jun 2019: last edited 19 Jun 2019 3:09 pm

Great question! I’ve always been fascinated by cognitive dissonance, a phenomenon described and theorised by a psychologist called Leon Festinger. He basically noticed that when people hold two conflicting attitudes (cognitions) they experience a tension which he calls cognitive dissonance. In order to minimise this unpleasant state, people will do one of two things: (1) reconcile the two attitudes, by finding an explanation (motivation) for how they’re not contradictory or (2) when no explanation is available they would change the weaker attitude to achieve balance (consonance).

Together with a colleague, Festinger designed a clever experiment through which to demonstrate his observation: he got two groups of people to perform a very boring task and then asked them to lie about it to a person who knew nothing about the task. People in the first group received $1 for this while people in the second group received $20. He then measured their attitudes toward the boring task. People from the first group said they found the task significantly more enjoyable than those from the second group. This would seem counter-intuitive given that the second group had received more money to lie, but if we take cognitive dissonance into consideration, this actually makes perfect sense: both groups probably experienced some tension based on the fact that (1) the task was boring (2) but they had lied about it and said it was fun. The people in the second group had a justification for that – they had been given $20 to lie – and thus were able to reconcile the two attitudes. But the first group could not use the $1 reward to justify having lied. So these people had to change their attitude towards the task (and they presumably started to believe it was more enjoyable) in order to achieve consonance.