@videolibraryofalexandria: In 1959, Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith had Stanford students spend an hour on deliberately boring tasks: putting spools on a tray and turning 48 pegs a quarter turn. Then they paid them either $20 or $1 to tell the next participant it was fun. Afterwards, on a scale from -5 to +5, the control group rated the task -0.45, the $20 group -0.05, and the $1 group +1.35. With no good outside reason for the lie, they adjusted the belief. In 1966, Freedman and Fraser asked homeowners to put a large "Drive Carefully" sign in their front yard. Only 17% agreed when asked directly, but 76% of those who had first agreed to a small "Be a safe driver" sign two weeks earlier. Sartre wrote that man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Dissonance shows the other side of it: we also become what we have already done. Sources 1. Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2), 203-210. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0041593 2. Freedman, J. L., & Fraser, S. C. (1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(2), 195-202. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0023552 3. Sartre, J.-P. (1946). L'existentialisme est un humanisme. Paris: Nagel. (English: Existentialism Is a Humanism, Yale University Press, 2007) #psychology #humannature #cognitivedissonance #philosophy #sartre #persuasion #libraryofalexandria #research

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