told to say. The larger the reward offered the smaller the effect was. We can conclude from this that cognitive dissonance works best when the reward offered is the minimum necessary to cause the change in behaviour. With their experiment Festinger and Carlsmith laid the foundations of cognitive dissonance theory.
So just how active is cognitive dissonance in our everyday experiences? The answer is, alarmingly, very active. Let’s look at some situations that maybe you have found yourself in, and after applying the cognitive dissonance theory, can you honestly say that you haven’t duped yourself into changing your own opinion? Let’s say you really want to enjoy a very exclusive gym, or any other type of membership club. You have high expectations, but being a high end club you have to do many arduous things to gain membership, such as produce evidence of your income, go to a couple of interviews and really prove that you are worth being allowed to join. All that effort and eventually you are allowed to join.. 24
only to discover that the club, is in fact, rather dull and boring, hardly worth all the time and effort you put in. However, this creates two contradictory thoughts, your opinion that the club is a waste of time, and the opinion presented to you that the club, with all its prerequisites to join, must be amazing. So, we shift our opinion to be more in line with that of the opinion presented, in effect changing our mind to really believe that the club is a great place to be. The harder it is to join the club, the more you value your membership, no matter how average the club is.