The Need to Justify Our Actions The Costs and Benefits of Dissonance Reduction
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- Percentage of children who played with the forbidden toy
- Large reward or severe punishment
CHApTer 6
The Need to Justify Our Actions 17 behavior that was important to the children: their desire to play with some appeal- ing toys. The experimenter first asked each child to rate the attractiveness of several toys. He then pointed to a toy that the child considered among the most attractive and told the child that he or she was not allowed to play with it. Half of the children were threatened with mild punishment if they disobeyed; the other half were threat- ened with severe punishment. The experimenter left the room for a few minutes, giving the children the time and opportunity to play with the other toys and to resist the temptation to play with the forbidden toy. None of the children played with the forbidden toy. Next, the experimenter returned and asked each child to rate how much he or she liked each of the toys. Initially, everyone had wanted to play with the forbidden toy, but during the temptation period, when they had the chance, not one child played with it. Obviously, the children were experiencing dissonance. How did they respond to this uncomfortable feeling? The children who had received a severe threat had ample justi- fication for their restraint. They knew why they hadn’t played with the toy, and there- fore they had no reason to change their attitude about it. These children continued to rate the forbidden toy as highly desirable; indeed, some even found it more desirable than they had before the threat. But what about the others? Without much external justification for avoiding the toy—they had little to fear if they played with it—the children in the mild threat con- dition needed an internal justification to reduce their dissonance. Before long, they persuaded themselves that the reason they hadn’t played with the toy was that they didn’t like it. They rated the forbidden toy as less attractive than they had when the experiment began. The Lasting effects of Self-persuasion The forbidden-toy study was a good example of how self-justification leads to self-persuasion in the behavior of very young children. The children who were tempted to play with the forbidden toy but resisted came to believe that the toy wasn’t so wonderful after all: they persuaded themselves of this belief to justify the fact that by obeying the adults, they had given up something they wanted. Self- persuasion is more permanent than direct attempts at persuasion precisely because, with self- persuasion, the persuasion takes place internally and not because of external coaxing, threats, or pressure. Moreover, the effects of self-persuasion in young children can be lasting. In a replication of the forbidden-toy experiment, the overwhelming majority of the children who had been mildly threatened for playing with a terrific toy decided, on their own, not to play with it, even when given the chance several weeks later; the majority of the children who had been severely threatened played with the forbidden toy as soon as they could (Freedman, 1965). (See Figure 6.4.) Remember these findings when you become a parent! Parents who use punishment to encourage their children to adopt desirable values should keep the punishment mild—barely enough to produce a change in behavior—and the values will follow. Not Just Tangible rewards or punishments As we have seen, a sizable reward or a severe punishment provides strong external justification for an action. So if you want a person to do something or not to do something only once, the best strategy would be to promise a large reward or threaten a severe punishment. But if you want a person to become committed to an attitude or to a behavior, the smaller the reward or punish- ment that will lead to momentary compliance, the greater will be the eventual change in attitude and therefore the more permanent the effect. Large rewards and severe punishments, because they are strong external justifications, encourage compliance but prevent real attitude change (see Figure 6.5). Figure 6.4 The Forbidden Toy experiment Children who had received a threat of mild punishment were far less likely to play with a forbidden toy (orange bar) than children who had received a threat of severe pun- ishment (blue bar). Those given a mild threat had to provide their own justification by devaluing the attractiveness of the toy (“I didn’t want to play with it anyhow”). The resulting self-persuasion lasted for weeks. (Adapted from Freedman, 1965.) 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
with the forbidden toy After threat of severe punishment After threat of mild punishment ft th
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t f Self-Persuasion A long-lasting form of attitude change that results from attempts at self-justification. M06_ARON6625_08_SE_C06.indd 17 07/03/12 3:31 AM
18 CHApTer 6
The Need to Justify Our Actions This phenomenon is not limited to tangible rewards and punishments; justifications can also come in more subtle packages. Take friendship. We like our friends, we trust our friends, we do favors for our friends. Suppose you are at a party at the home of a close friend. Your friend is passing around a strange-looking appetizer. “What is it?” you ask. “Oh, it’s a fried grasshopper; I’d love you to try it.” She’s a good friend and you don’t want to embarrass her in front of the others, so you pick one up and eat it. How much do you think you will like this new snack food? Now suppose you are a guest at the home of a person you don’t know well, and he hands you, as an appetizer, a fried grasshopper and tells you that he’d really like you to try it. You comply. Now the crucial question: In which of these two situations will you like the taste of the grasshopper better? Common sense might suggest that the grasshopper would taste better when recommended by a friend. But think about it for a moment; which condition involves less external justification? Common sense notwith- standing, dissonance theory makes the opposite prediction. In the first case, when you ask yourself, “How come I ate that disgusting insect?” you have ample justification: you ate it because your good friend asked you to. In the second case, you don’t have this kind of outside justification, so you must create it. Namely, you must convince yourself that you liked the grasshopper. Although this may seem a rather bizarre example of dissonance-reducing behavior, it’s not as far-fetched as you might think. Indeed, in one experiment, army reservists were asked to eat fried grasshoppers as part of a research project on survival foods (Zimbardo et al., 1965). Reservists who ate grasshoppers at the request of a stern, un- pleasant officer increased their liking for grasshoppers far more than those who ate grasshoppers at the request of a well-liked, pleasant officer. Those who complied with the unfriendly officer’s request had little external justification for their actions. As a result, they adopted positive attitudes toward eating grasshoppers to justify their other- wise strange and dissonance-arousing behavior. People often behave in ways that run counter to their own beliefs and their best inter- ests. For example, although college students know that AIDS and other sexually trans- mitted diseases (STDs) are serious problems, only a small percentage use condoms. Not a surprise; condoms are inconvenient and unromantic, and they remind people of disease—the last thing they want to be thinking about in the heat of passion. No won- der that sexual behavior is often accompanied by denial: “Sure, STDs are a problem, but not for me.” How do you break through this wall of denial? In the 1990s, Elliot Aronson and his students set out to tackle this problem (Aronson, Fried, & Stone, 1991; Cooper, 2010; Stone et al., 1994). They asked two groups of college students to compose a speech Temporary change External justification (I do or think this because I have to)
Lasting change Internal justification (I do or think this because I have convinced myself that it's right)
Figure 6.5 external versus Internal Justification As this graphic summarizes, insufficient punishment or reward leads to self-justification, which in turn leads to self-persuasion and lasting change. Larger rewards or punishments may produce temporary compliance, which rarely lasts. M06_ARON6625_08_SE_C06.indd 18 07/03/12 3:31 AM Yüklə 2,11 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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