Participants in a Study Freely Engage in a Behaviour That

Multiple Choice

Participants in a study freely engage in a behaviour that is contrary to their attitudes. This behaviour causes an increase in physiological arousal, but the experimenter tells the participants that this arousal is the product of a pill (actually a placebo) that they have taken. Under these conditions, we would not expect participants to change their attitudes to be more in line with their behaviour, a finding that is most consistent with ________.

A) self-perception theory
B) cognitive dissonance theory
C) the fundamental attribution error
D) social exchange theory