Posted by:
Freevolved
(
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Date: February 19, 2011 04:11PM
"[T]his is one of the more interesting sub domains of social psychology. The idea was developed by the social psychologist Leon Festinger and it's called "Cognitive Dissonance Theory." And what Festinger was interested in was the idea that what happens when people experience an inconsistency in their heads. And he claimed it causes an unpleasant emotional state, what he described as "dissonance." And he argued that we act so as to reduce dissonance. When there's a contradiction in our heads we're not happy and will take steps to make the contradiction go away."
"Here is the classic experiment by Festinger. Gave two groups of people a really boring task, paid one of them twenty dollars, which back when this study was done was real money, gave another group of subjects one dollar, which was insultingly small, then asked them later, "What do you think of the task?" It turns out that the group that had--were paid a dollar rated the task as much more fun than the group given twenty dollars. So, think about that for a moment. You might have predicted it the other way around, the twenty dollars, "wow, well, twenty dollars, I must have enjoyed it because I got twenty dollars," but in fact, the logic here is the people with twenty dollars when asked, "What do you think of the task?" could say, "It was boring. I did it for twenty dollars." The people paid one dollar were like the character in the Dilbert cartoon. When paid a dollar they said, "Well, I don't want to be a donkey. I don't want to be some guy who does this boring thing for a dollar. It wasn't that bad really, it was kind of interesting, I learnt a lot," to justify what they did."
"This has a lot of real world implications. Festinger did a wonderful study with people--a group of people, and he wrote this up in a book called When Prophesy Fails, who were convinced that the world was going to end so they went on a mountain and they waited for the world to end. They had a certain time and date when the world was going to end. He hung out with them and then the time passed and the world didn't end. What people then said, and this is what he was interested in--;So, people's predictions were totally proven wrong and they left their families, they gave away their houses, they gave away all their possessions, they lost all their money, but what Festinger found was they didn't say, "God, I'm such a moron." Rather, they said, "This is fantastic. This is exactly--This shows that us going to the mountain has delayed the ending of the world and this shows that we're doing exactly the right things. I couldn't have been smarter." And in general, when people devote a lot of energy or money or expense to something, they are extraordinarily resistant to having it proven wrong."
"Now, people have manipulated cognitive dissonance in all sorts of ways and, for instance, hazing. Hazing is cognitive dissonance at work. Fraternities and med schools and other organizations haze people. What they do is when people enter the group they humiliate them, they cause them pain, they cause them various forms of torture and unpleasantness. Why? Well, because it's very successful at getting somebody to like the group. If I join a fraternity--it is also by the way illegal so – but if I were to join a fraternity and they say, "Welcome to the fraternity, Dr. Bloom. Here. Have a mint," and then we have a good time and everything. I'm thinking "okay, sounds like a fun idea." But if I join a fraternity and they pour cow poop on my head and make me stand in the rain for a month wearing pantyhose while they throw rocks at me [laughter] I then think--after it I think "God, I went through a lot of stuff to get into this fraternity. It must be really good." And in fact, hazing through cognitive dissonance draws the inference that this is really, really valuable and this is why it exists."
"If you are a political--If you are running for office, you will tend to have volunteers and not necessarily pay people. One reason for this is obvious; it's cheaper not to pay people, but the other reason is more interesting. If you don't pay people, they are more committed to the cause. Again, it's cognitive dissonance. If you pay me ten thousand dollars a month to work for you, I'll work for you and I'll think "I'm doing it for ten thousand dollars a month, that makes a lot of sense," but if I do it for nothing then I have to ask myself, "Why am I doing it?" And I will conclude I must think very highly of you.'"
Paul Bloom
http://oyc.yale.edu/yale/psychology/introduction-to-psychology/content/transcripts/transcript16.html----------------------------------------------------------------
So after reading this I want to ask your opinions on a couple things.
- Have mormon temple ordinances become a type of hazing? (If they aren't embarrassing I don't know what is)
- Are mormon leaders aware of this psychology, and is that part of the reason that they have members clean toilets?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2011 04:12PM by Freevolved.