Exam 6: The Need to Justify Our Actions

According to information presented in this chapter, researchers provided participants with both plausible and silly persuasive arguments both in favor of and against racial segregation, and then tested participants' memory for those persuasive arguments. Their results suggested that

According to the authors, every time we make a decision, we experience some amount of dissonance. Why?

Recall that Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) paid participants either $1 or $20 to tell another person that a boring, tedious task was really fun and interesting. The results of their experiment demonstrated that

Because they provide the potential offender ________, threats of harsh punishment seldom produce positive attitude change.

People who had already placed their two-dollar bets were more confident than people who were waiting in line to place their bets (Knox & Inkster, 1968). These findings suggest that decisions that are _______ generate more cognitive dissonance than decisions that are not.

Your friend teaches preschool, and there is one little boy in her class who is giving her fits. He is constantly misbehaving, throwing toys, threatening other children, and sometimes even physically attacking them. So far, her stern punishment has stopped his destructive behavior when she's there, but when she leaves the room or when a substitute fills in, he's back to his old ways. You suggest that she use dissonance to change his behavior permanently. What would you tell her?

The Ben Franklin effect would predict that you would most like someone ________, whereas behaviorist theories would predict that you would most like someone ________.

Based on information provided by your text, external justification is to ________ as internal justification is to ________.

The fact that there is research demonstrating that other animals experience dissonance-and that it has a biological basis-suggests that cognitive dissonance may have (in part) a(n) ________ explanation

In a classic experiment, researchers (Aronson & Mettee, 1968) gave positive false feedback to some students, negative false feedback to some students, and no feedback to others. They were interested in seeing whether a boost to self-esteem would affect the likelihood of cheating. In this experiment, what is the independent variable?

People are unlikely to change their attitudes after saying something they don't truly believe if there is ________ for the lie.

Why would people be less likely to engage in dissonance-reducing behaviors in a collectivist culture?

Who is more likely to dehumanize the enemy in order to deal with cognitive dissonance they are experiencing?

If a person goes through a demanding process involving lots of effort and hard work to achieve a goal, what would cognitive dissonance suggest that person will think about the experience afterwards?

When people receive bad news-perhaps that they did not get a dream job they applied and interviewed for-what tends to happen?

According to the authors of your text, people experience dissonance

Yuriko, a Japanese student, and Jill, an American student, have both participated in an experiment in which they have been asked-and agreed-to write a counterattitudinal essay. According to findings on dissonance reduction across cultures by Sakai (1999), who is more likely to engage in dissonance reduction?

In which case is lowballing least likely to work?

Scott believes very strongly that saccharine is an unsafe sugar substitute that may even cause cancer. Even though Scott is diabetic, and thus should be using sugar substitutes, he often opts for sugar-laden foods and drinks to avoid saccharine. "I'll just exercise more later; the sugar isn't a big deal. I'm really being healthier by avoiding saccharine," he thinks to himself. Scott's behavior and thoughts are examples of ________ in the face of cognitive dissonance.

Maria is on a limited budget, and can only afford one compact disk (CD). She really likes two in particular: Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits and the soundtrack from the musical Wicked. When she gets home and listens to the Frank Sinatra CD, she cannot imagine why she ever considered the Wicked CD. This is because