Why people act out of line with their beliefs

Ever been forced to defend a particular position and ended up believing it? You’ve succumbed to one of the most famous theories in social psychology.

If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards. And if you find yourself acting out of line with your beliefs, change them. This sounds like motivational advice from one of the more cynical self-help books, or perhaps a Groucho Marx line (“Those are myprinciples, and if you don't like them... well, I have others…”), but in factit is a caricature of one of the most famous theories in social psychology.

Leon Festinger's Dissonance Theory is an account of how our beliefs rub up against each other,an attempt at a sort of ecology of mind. Dissonance Theory offers anexplanation of topics as diverse as why oil company executives might notbelieve in climate change, why army units have brutal initiation ceremonies,and why famous books might actually be boring.

The classic study ondissonance theory was published by Festinger and James Carlsmith in 1959. Youcan find a copy thanks to the

History of Psychology archive. I really recommend reading the full thing.Not only is it short, but it is full of enjoyable asides. Back in the daypsychology research was a lot more fun to write up.

Festinger and Carlsmithwere interested in testing what happened when people acted out of line withtheir beliefs. To do this, they made their participants spend an hour doing twoexcruciatingly boring tasks. The first task was filling a tray with spools,emptying it, then filling it again (and so on). The second was turning 48 smallpegs a quarter-turn clockwise; and then once that was finished, going back tothe beginning and doing another quarter-turn for each peg (and so on). Onlyafter this tedium, and at the point which the participants believed theexperiment was over, did the real study get going. The experimenter said thatthey needed someone to fill in at the last minute and explain the tasks to thenext subject. Would they mind? And also, could they make the points that"It was very enjoyable”, “I had a lot of fun”, “I enjoyed myself”, “It wasvery interesting”, “It was intriguing”, and “It was exciting"?

Of course the“experiment” was none of these things. But, being good people, with somepleading if necessary, they all agreed to explain the experiment to the nextparticipant and make these points. The next participant was, of course, aconfederate of the experimenter. We're not told much about her, except that shewas an undergraduate specifically hired for the role. The fact that all 71participants in the experiment were male, and, that one of the 71 had to beexcluded from the final analysis because he demanded her phone number so hecould explain things further, suggests that Festinger and Carlsmith weren'tabove ensuring that there were some extra motivational factors in the mix.

Money trap

For their trouble, theparticipants were paid $1, $20, or nothing. After explaining the task theoriginal participants answered some questions about how they really felt aboutthe experiment. At the time, many psychologists would have predicted that thegroup paid the most would be affected the most – if our feelings are shaped byrewards, the people paid $20 should be the ones who said they enjoyed it themost.

In fact, people paid $20tended to feel the same about the experiment as the people paid nothing. Butsomething strange happened with the people paid $1. These participants weremore likely to say they really did find the experiment enjoyable. They judgedthe experiment as more important scientifically, and had the highest desire toparticipate in future similar experiments. Which is weird, since nobody shouldreally want to spend another hour doing mundane, repetitive tasks.

Festinger's Dissonancetheory explains the result. The “Dissonance” is between the actions of theparticipants and their beliefs about themselves. Here they are, nice guys,lying to an innocent woman. Admittedly there are lots of other social forces atwork – obligation, authority, even attraction. Festinger's interpretation isthat these things may play a role in how the participants act, but they can'tbe explicitly relied upon as reasons for acting. So there is a tension betweentheir belief that they are a nice person and the knowledge of how they acted.This is where the cash payment comes in. People paid $20 have an easyrationalisation to hand. "Sure, I lied", they can say to themselves,"but I did it for $20". The men who got paid the smaller amount, $1,can't do this. Giving the money as a reason would make them look cheap, as wellas mean. Instead, the story goes, they adjust their beliefs to be in line withhow they acted. "Sure, the experiment was kind of interesting, just like Itold that girl", "It was fun, I wouldn't mind being in herposition" and so on.

So this is cognitivedissonance at work. Normally it should be a totally healthy process – afterall, who could object to people being motivated to reduce contradictions intheir beliefs (philosophers even make a profession of out this), but incircumstances where some of our actions or our beliefs exist for reasons whichare too complex, too shameful, or too nebulous to articulate, it can lead to uschanging perfectly valid beliefs, such as how boring and pointless a task was.

Fans of cognitivedissonance will tell you that this is why people forced to defend a particularposition – say because it is their job – are likely to end up believing it. Itcan also suggest a reason for why military services, high school sports teamsand college societies have bizarre and punishing initiation rituals. If you'vebeen through the ritual, dissonance theory predicts, you're much more likely tobelieve the group is a valuable one to be a part of (the initiation hurt, andyou're not a fool, so it must have been worth it right?).

For me, I thinkdissonance theory explains why some really long books have such goodreputations, despite the fact that they may be as repetitive and pointless asFestinger's peg task. Get to the end of a three-volume, several thousand page,conceptual novel and you're faced with a choice: either you wasted your timeand money, and you feel a bit of a fool; or the novel is brilliant and you arean insightful consumer of literature. Dissonance theory pushes you towards thelatter interpretation, and so swells the crowd of people praising a novel thatwould be panned if it was 150 pages long.

Changing your beliefs to bein line with how you acted may not be the most principled approach. But it iscertainly easier than changing how you acted.