Exploring Attitude Change in Difficult-Choice Situations

Both cognitive dissonance theory and self-perception theory suggest that people tend to change their attitudes to conform to their behavior. Following is an experiment you can do to test the extent of this attitude change in some of your friends.

Experimental Procedure

To do this experiment you will need to do the following: Make 10 photocopies of the Rating Form provided on page 362. Select five of your friends who have not studied psychology as subjects for this experiment. When you ask these friends to participate, you may tell them the following things about the experimental procedure. Do not tell them anything about the topics involved, or you may invalidate the results. You may tell the subject that this is a project for your introductory psychology course.

1. This experiment is voluntary. You may withdraw from the experiment at any time.

2. The experiment may involve some deception about its hidden intent. It will not, however, cause you any embarrassment or harm you in any way.

3. When the experiment is completed, in one week, you may ask any questions you have and they will be answered honestly.

4. The experiment will only take a few minutes of your time today and a few more minutes a week from today.

STEP 1 Give each subject a copy of the Rating Form. Read the instructions out loud to be sure the subject understands the task.

STEP 2 When the subject is finished filling out the form, look at it to see which brand of candy bars he or she has chosen as number 5 and as number 6.

STEP 3 Read or paraphrase the following paragraph to the subject: "Thank you for completing the first part of this experiment. I will get in touch with you again in one week so that you can complete the experiment. At that time, some of the subjects who volunteered for this experiment will receive a box of twenty-four candy bars as payment for their participation. Two kinds of candy bars will be given out, and ." (Fill in the blanks with the names of the candy bars this subject ranked as number 5 and number 6.) "If your name should be chosen to win a box of candy bars, which kind would you prefer?"

STEP 4 When the subject answers, write down the name of the candy bar in the blank provided at the bottom of his or her copy of the Rating Form.

STEP 5 Thank the subject for participating and arrange to see him or her again in one week.

STEP 6 One week after the subjects have ranked the candy bars, you should arrange a second meeting with them. At this time, you will need to deceive them about the true nature of the experiment. You should rehearse the information presented in the following section until you can communicate the message with sincerity. You need to convince the subject that:

A. You have lost the original form that they filled out.

B. You must have a completed sheet before you can go on to the second part of the experiment.

C. They should quickly fill out the candy bar rating form again so that you can then finish the experiment.

STEP 7 Give each subject another copy of the Rating Form. Have him or her fill it out immediately and give it back to you.

STEP 8 Once you have collected the second form from each subject, the experiment is over. Tell the subjects that, unfortunately, they will not receive a box of candy bars. Then explain to them the true nature of this study on attitude change.

Analyzing the Results

Both cognitive dissonance theory and self-perception theory specify that people will change their attitudes to conform to their actual behavior. In this experiment, subjects are asked to choose one kind of candy bar over another, and are led to believe that they might receive a box of the candy bar of their choice. One week later, they are asked to rank the same list of candy bars again. After they have made a choice, will their rankings be the same as before?

Both theories predict that they will not. According to cognitive dissonance theory, the subject will experience psychological tension as a result of being required to make the difficult choice between the candy bars that he or she has ranked number 5 and number 6. This tension is reduced by convincing oneself that one really does prefer the chosen bar-that is, of numbers 5 and 6, the bar the subject said he or she would like to receive a free box of. Thus, from this theory, we would predict that the second ranking of the chosen bar would be higher than it was originally. Conversely, the second ranking of the bar not chosen (the other bar in the pair ranked 5 and 6) should be less favorable, since the subject must justify not choosing it.

Self-perception theory predicts the same results: The second ranking for the chosen bar should become more positive and the second ranking of the unchosen bar should be more negative. Self-perception theory suggests that, although we are not constantly aware of our attitudes, we do attempt to use them to explain our behavior. Thus, when asked to rank the chosen bar a second time, the subject might think, "I chose it, therefore I must really like it," or "I didn't choose it, therefore I must not like it as much as the other bar."

Do your results support the predictions made by these theories? Use the Scoring Table provided here to analyze your data, as follows:

STEP 1 Fill in your subjects' rankings for their chosen and unchosen candy bars in the appropriate spaces in the table.

STEP 2 Subtract the value of their second ranking from that of their original ranking. This is the difference, or change, in their rankings before and after their choice of a free box of candy bars. Be sure to record whether the change is in the positive or negative direction.

STEP 3 Average the difference scores for the chosen bar by adding the difference score for each subject and dividing by the number of subjects (in this case, 5). Average the difference scores for the not-chosen bar according to the same procedure.

STEP 4 Compare the two averages. If the results of your experiment confirm the theoretical predictions, the average difference score for the chosen bar should be greater than the average difference score for the not-chosen bar.

SCORING TABLE

	Chosen bar			Not-chosen bar
	Original ranking	Second ranking	Difference (Original ranking minus second ranking)	Original ranking	Second ranking	Difference (Original ranking minus second ranking)
Example	5	4	5 - 4 = 1	6	7	6 - 7 = -1
Participant 1
Participant 2
Participant 3
Participant 4
Participant 5
			Total =			Total =
			Average =			Average =

Discussion

Do the results of your experiment support cognitive dissonance theory and self-perception theory? In other words, did your participants end up liking the candy bar they chose more than they originally did and liking the candy bar they didn't choose less than they originally did? If so, your results are similar to those of an experiment by Jack Brehm (1956). Brehm posed as a market researcher, showed women several kitchen appliances (an electric coffee pot, a toaster, and so on), and asked them to rate the attractiveness of each appliance. He then offered to give one of the appliances to each woman. A few minutes later, he asked the women to rate the appliances again. He found that women tended to increase their rating of the appliance they had chosen and to decrease their ratings of another appliance they had not chosen.

You may have noticed that these experiments are somewhat different in their approach from the cognitive-dissonance experiments discussed in Chapter 18 of the text. The text discusses dissonance as the result of doing something that is incompatible with one's values (for example, smoking cigarettes even though you know they are bad for your health). Your experiment and Brehm's, however, suggest that dissonance can also occur in free-choice situations, in which people are choosing between attractive options.

If your results in this experiment do not support these theories, do you have any idea why not? Is it possible that your participants did not take the experiment seriously? (Some research shows that dissonance is aroused in situations of free choice only if the choice is important and is taken seriously.) Did any of your participants suspect the true nature of the experiment?