Dissonance reduction and causal explanation in a forced compliance situation

In a free choice forced compliance situation, subjects had to perform a tedious task. Then, just before having to evaluate the task's interest, certain subjects were provided an arbitrary positive feedback regarding their performance, others a negative feedback and others no information at all...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of social psychology 1993-01, Vol.23 (1), p.103-107
Main Authors: Beauvois, Jean-Léon, Rainis, Natacha
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior. Attitude
Biological and medical sciences
Causal attributions
Causality
Coercion
Cognitive Dissonance
Compliance
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Radical dissonance theory
Self-perception
Social psychology
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Summary:In a free choice forced compliance situation, subjects had to perform a tedious task. Then, just before having to evaluate the task's interest, certain subjects were provided an arbitrary positive feedback regarding their performance, others a negative feedback and others no information at all concerning their performance. Afterwards, all subjects were administered a questionnaire concerning their theories of causal explanations, which enabled us to compute an externalization score. Evaluation of the task was affected by the feedback's nature: Subjects who received the negative feedback found the task more interesting. Causal theories, however, were only affected by actual performance: the most efficient subjects were those who presented the more external orientation of causal theories. These results are in agreement with the radical conception of dissonance theory.
ISSN:0046-2772
1099-0992
DOI:10.1002/ejsp.2420230110