How and Why We Lie to Ourselves: Cognitive Dissonance
A classic 1959 social psychology experiment demonstrates how and why we lie to ourselves. Understanding this experiment sheds a brilliant light on the dark world of our inner motivations.
The ground-breaking social psychological experiment of Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) provides a central insight into the stories we tell ourselves about why we think and behave the way we do. The experiment is filled with ingenious deception so the best way to understand it is to imagine you are taking part. So sit back, relax and travel back. The time is 1959 and you are an undergraduate student at Stanford University...
As part of your course you agree to take part in an experiment on 'measures of performance'. You are told the experiment will take two hours. As you are required to act as an experimental subject for a certain number of hours in a year - this will be two more of them out of the way.
Little do you know, the experiment will actually become a classic in social psychology. And what will seem to you like accidents by the experimenters are all part of a carefully controlled deception. For now though, you are innocent.
The set-up
Once in the lab you are told the experiment is about how your expectations affect the actual experience of a task. Apparently there are two groups and in the other group they have been given a particular expectation about the study. To instil the expectation subtly, the participants in the other groups are informally briefed by a student who has apparently just completed the task. In your group, though, you'll do the task with no expectations.
Perhaps you wonder why you're being told all this, but nevertheless it makes it seem a bit more exciting now that you know some of the mechanics behind the experiment.
So you settle down to the first task you are given, and quickly realise it is extremely boring. You are asked to move some spools around in a box for half an hour, then for the next half an hour you move pegs around a board. Frankly, watching paint dry would have been preferable.
At the end of the tasks the experimenter thanks you for taking part, then tells you that many other people find the task pretty interesting. This is a little confusing - the task was very boring. Whatever. You let it pass.
Experimental slip-up
Then the experimenter looks a little embarrassed and starts to explain haltingly that there's been a cock-up. He says they need your help. The participant coming in after you is in the other condition they mentioned before you did the task - the condition in which they have an expectation before carrying out the task. This expectation is that the task is actually really interesting. Unfortunately the person who usually sets up their expectation hasn't turned up.
So, they ask if you wouldn't mind doing it. Not only that but they offer to pay you $1. Because it's 1959 and you're a student this is not completely insignificant for only a few minutes work. And, they tell you that they can use you again in the future. It sounds like easy money so you agree to take part. This is great - what started out as a simple fulfilment of a course component has unearthed a little ready cash for you.
You are quickly introduced to the next participant who is about to do the same task you just completed. As instructed you tell her that the task she's about to do is really interesting. She smiles, thanks you and disappears off into the test room. You feel a pang of regret for getting her hopes up. Then the experimenter returns, thanks you again, and once again tells you that many people enjoy the task and hopes you found it interesting.
Then you are ushered through to another room where you are interviewed about the experiment you've just done. One of the questions asks you about how interesting the task was that you were given to do. This makes you pause for a minute and think.
Now it seems to you that the task wasn't as boring as you first thought. You start to see how even the repetitive movements of the spools and pegs had a certain symmetrical beauty. And it was all in the name of science after all. This was a worthwhile endeavour and you hope the experimenters get some interesting results out of it.
The task still couldn't be classified as great fun, but perhaps it wasn't that bad. You figure that, on reflection, it wasn't as bad as you first thought. You rate it moderately interesting.
After the experiment you go and talk to your friend who was also doing the experiment. Comparing notes you found that your experiences were almost identical except for one vital difference. She was offered way more than you to brief the next student: $20! This is when it first occurs to you that there's been some trickery at work here.
You ask her about the task with the spools and pegs:
"Oh," she replies. "That was sooooo boring, I gave it the lowest rating possible."
"No," you insist. "It wasn't that bad. Actually when you think about it, it was pretty interesting."
She looks at you incredulously.
What the hell is going on?
Cognitive dissonance
What you've just experienced is the power of cognitive dissonance. Social psychologists studying cognitive dissonance are interested in the way we deal with two thoughts that contradict each other - and how we deal with this contradiction.
In this case: you thought the task was boring to start off with then you were paid to tell someone else the task was interesting. But, you're not the kind of person to casually go around lying to people. So how can you resolve your view of yourself as an honest person with lying to the next participant? The amount of money you were paid hardly salves your conscience - it was nice but not that nice.
Your mind resolves this conundrum by deciding that actually the study was pretty interesting after all. You are helped to this conclusion by the experimenter who tells you other people also thought the study was pretty interesting.
Your friend, meanwhile, has no need of these mental machinations. She merely thinks to herself: I've been paid $20 to lie, that's a small fortune for a student like me, and more than justifies my fibbing. The task was boring and still is boring whatever the experimenter tells me.
A beautiful theory
Since this experiment numerous studies of cognitive dissonance have been carried out and the effect is well-established. Its beauty is that it explains so many of our everyday behaviours. Here are some examples provided by Morton Hunt in his classic work 'The Story of Psychology
- When trying to join a group, the harder they make the barriers to entry, the more you value your membership. To resolve the dissonance between the hoops you were forced to jump through, and the reality of what turns out to be a pretty average club, we convince ourselves the club is, in fact, fantastic.
- People will interpret the same information in radically different ways to support their own views of the world. When deciding our view on a contentious point, we conveniently forget what jars with our own theory and remember everything that fits.
- People quickly adjust their values to fit their behaviour, even when it is clearly immoral. Those stealing from their employer will claim that "Everyone does it" so they would be losing out if they didn't, or alternatively that "I'm underpaid so I deserve a little extra on the side."
Once you start to think about it, the list of situations in which people resolve cognitive dissonance through rationalisations becomes ever longer and longer. If you're honest with yourself, I'm sure you can think of many times when you've done it yourself. I know I can.
Being aware of this can help us avoid falling foul of the most dangerous consequences of cognitive dissonance: believing our own lies.
» You can read Festinger and Carlsmith's entire report at Classics in the History of Psychology.
» Read on for the best social psychology studies
Reference
Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 58, 203-10.
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Is this a behavior that passive agressive people use?
Anyone can admit to having traveled this mental path -to one degree or another. Denial of this is either prideful, self-ignorant or both. The very subtlety of the "circumstance" (low stakes, small reward, et cetera) is tailor made to invite CD response if its going to happen at all... and it does, strong internal frame of reference or otherwise. Live life, own up, and chill out.
Michael Amos
PS: Amen, Jeremy Dean. I'll look for that "inaccessibility" note of yours.
Interesting article with one glaring flaw: the title. Cognitive disonance does not begin to encompass the range of reasons we lie to ourselves. If any umbrella reason can be cited surely it is "to achieve the gratification of some desire".
I'll cite another famous study that I'm sure you will recognize and that is virtually a classic in the field. Yes, there was bound to be considerable cognitive dissonance among the subjects but the results clearly show that a wide range of mechanisms led to the lies.
The set-up: A group of people decided they wanted to invade Iraq. One day an attack was launched against them from the soil of Afghanistan and by people who were not citizens of Iraq. The subjects invaded Afghanistan. They also wanted to invade Iraq but their intelligence agencies kept reporting that Iraq had nothing to do with the attack against them. So they created a new intelligence agency which they would direct themselves: an agency created to "get it right" at long last....
Certainly explains why people believe the official version of 911 (among other lies). A lot of hard evidence exists that would shatter most people when it comes to what they believe is reality. There is always a lot more than what is on the surface, it takes the strength to break from your own self-induced ignorance. Do you have it? If so, look around you. Much of what you see is not what "actually is". Another good example would be the government of the USA taking away your freedoms. Ever wonder why 911 happened? The answer is all around you. It was not just the "muslims" that orchestrated it. It would be a "severe conflict" internally for those that were faced with the reality that some within this government had something to do with it. But then again, it is a lot easier to follow the crowd because it is that you have been conditioned for all of your life.
The human mind is intelligent enuogh to find interesting WHAT is actually interesting.
For example: you can do a very routine and boring job experimenting something, but you find it extremely interesting if it brings you toward a big discovery.
As much interesting as something very boring which can bring you a good money.
That is why the communist ideology fails.
Nobody likes working.
Unless he has some kind of ideological (if you are a scientist) or materialistic goal.
You like to work for a goal, whatever it can be.
The experiment does not seem to make the subject lie. Instead, the circumstances change his perceptions. If I had a boring task to do, I'd want to find ways to find it more appealing.
the fastest way to make people run like hell is to tell them the truth.
(they will continue to believe the lie they always have because it is easier to do so rather than having "your boat rocked too much".
It just means you are ignorant, not that the new information can't be correct!!
There is too little information on the article that I can´t produce an opinion about it
Shouldn't there have been some sort of control group, brought right to the interview, no lying involved? What if half of them had said that the experiment was moderately interesting? Might be, and I suspect this to be true, that people tend to convince themselves that what they do is meaningful and worthwhile, almost no matter what it is.
They didn't know why they were asked to lie, but this point I feel is being missed; They WERE asked to say that the experiment was interesting. They were not told why they were to say that, only that it was a part of the experiment. In this situation, I certainly would not feel like I was lying, just as little as the people conducting the experiment felt like they were lying. They were, technically, but lying is not itself a bad thing (unless you think in unevolved terms of religious dogmatic moral) and a person can distinguish between right and wrong, or so I believe, in more sophisticated and subtle manners than through categorically dismissing certain acts as immoral (again, unless they are brainwashed religious people).
A lot of the time,I find myself lying to myself.As in,i realize I'm lying while I'm lying.The thought is sort of automatically shut off,though it's still there and I can lie to myself in peace.
I for the most part have stopped lying to myself. The best way i can explain it is I began questioning and thinking about things. At some point in time I realized I thought some things because its what i was raised and told to believe. I began to question my own brain. The more i did it the more i began to realize what the world was really like. One thing i ended up doing was seperating my thoughts and my emotions, because emotions can change your thoughts, and thoughts can change your emotions. Once i could think things through without letting emotion skew my perspective, i began to see how things actually were. I also started being able to control my emotions with my thoughts, and seeing the lies other people had which controlled their beliefs, thought processes, and actions. I could very easily read people through their tone of voice, what they say, the words they use to say it, and body language, just by thinking "whats going on in their head that caused them to do that?", and when i knew why they did it, i could easily manipulate their thoughts, like making them think something boring was interesting.
If you want to see a world without lies, it basically comes down to how logically you think, and how much you can control your emotions(if you think about it, theyre pretty much the same thing). I've gotten to the point where i realize that life is basically a big distraction, you do things to keep yourself occupied. Anything you do has absolutely no meaning, except the one you give it. Ive gotten to the point where if im sad, ill just think to myself "ive only got one life to live, why am i spending it being sad? I should be happy while i still can" and it works because i believe nothing should make me sad, i just need to realize i cant do anything about it, and get over it, and not let it bother me. The way i see it, anything you see, hear, taste, smell, feel, or think, its all in your head, so however much you control your head is how much you control every aspect of your life.
Josh, there was a control group. Some people did the task without the manipulation and they confirmed the task was indeed very boring!
it is true "sunchaser". nobody want's to be told what to do. if you ask them and let them know it's a favor, chances are they will do it. i use it all the time.. not to get my way but to get things done.
What I find interesting in these types of studies is that an authority figure (the researcher) gives the subject permission to lie, so that it "really isn't lying". Most people have internal mechanisms to help them avoid unethical behavior (religion, values instilled by their families, a personal code of honor, past bad experiences resulting from the behavior) so they avoid doing it. But when an authority figure rationalizes it for us (it's ok to torture that prisoner - it's urgent that we get the information) we do things we normally would not do.
What has caused a lot of mental distress (and some suicides) in military personnel is that, on the one hand, they are told by one set of authority figures to observe the Geneva Conventions, but then they are pressured by another, more insistent and nearby authority figure, that it's ok to violate the norms. That creates a lot of cognitive dissonance. Some resist but most go along.