Leon Festinger Research Paper
Leon Festinger was an amazing psychologist and his findings changed the world for the better. To me, the discoveries he made, made the world much clearer. Born on May 8, 1919. His was born to parents of Russian descent. The City College of New York is where he did his studying in the field of psychology. University of Iowa is where he ended up receiving a graduate degree from. While he went to school in Iowa, he was mentored by a very well-known psychologist, Kurt Lewin who was also German. They both ultimately went to MIT or Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1957 is when Festinger issued his best-known work, “A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance”, in which he writes, “the psychological opposition of irreconcilable ideas (cognitions) held
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In this experiment, Festinger and his partners “paid some people twenty dollars to lie and other people only one dollar to lie (Slater 116).” Let’s think about this for a minute. You are given twenty dollars to lie, would you do it and be over it or would you have to convince yourself that the lie you are telling might be true? Let’s say you get only one dollar to lie, would you be able to just lie about it or would you have to convince that it, again, might be true? This is want Festinger found out: the students that were given the twenty dollars didn’t have to convince themselves to believe the lie. Slater mentions, “The twenty-dollar subjects experienced less dissonance; they could find a compelling justification for their fibs, and that justification had double digits and a crisp snap.” The other students that were given the one dollar changed their beliefs to match their actions. I would think that the people given the higher amount of money would change their beliefs than the other people given less money. Slater states, “ therefore, because you can’t take back the lie, and you’ve already pocketed the measly money, you bring your beliefs into alignment with your actions, so as to reduce the dissonance between your self-concept and your questionable
In this experiment, Festinger and his partners “paid some people twenty dollars to lie and other people only one dollar to lie (Slater 116).” Let’s think about this for a minute. You are given twenty dollars to lie, would you do it and be over it or would you have to convince yourself that the lie you are telling might be true? Let’s say you get only one dollar to lie, would you be able to just lie about it or would you have to convince that it, again, might be true? This is want Festinger found out: the students that were given the twenty dollars didn’t have to convince themselves to believe the lie. Slater mentions, “The twenty-dollar subjects experienced less dissonance; they could find a compelling justification for their fibs, and that justification had double digits and a crisp snap.” The other students that were given the one dollar changed their beliefs to match their actions. I would think that the people given the higher amount of money would change their beliefs than the other people given less money. Slater states, “ therefore, because you can’t take back the lie, and you’ve already pocketed the measly money, you bring your beliefs into alignment with your actions, so as to reduce the dissonance between your self-concept and your questionable