harder to recognize a time when your opinion shifted to align with contradictory information. Arguably this is the most interesting aspect of cognitive dissonance theory and also the aspect Festinger started to investigate in detail in 1957. Expanding on Kelman’s 1953 research, Festinger postulated that the effect of cognitive dissonance would be maximized if the reward offered or the punishment threatened was barely enough to prompt
dissonance is a very devious mechanism, as it operates on a subconscious level and any contributing factors, such as a generous reward, push it into the conscious mind and negates it’s effect. Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) put this theory to the test, aiming to discover that if the larger the reward offered the smaller the subsequent private opinion change would be. This experiment, with many cunning deceptions, would
the person their private opinion with the opinion presented. The more obvious or greater the reward or punishment was, the less an effect it had. If this were to be true it would demonstrate that cognitive 20
go on to become one of the cornerstones of cognitive dissonance theory. Students at Stanford, as in most psychology departments at universities, were required to spend a certain number of hours