Question

In a classic cognitive dissonance experiment, subjects completed an extremely boring task. after the task, subjects were asked to tell the next person that it was a fun task. who reported the most enjoyment with the task?

Answer 1

A cognitive dissonance experiment involves the study of people who may hold conflicting beliefs about issues and actions. Generally, such a task is intended to show a certain level of discomfort among the subjects. In this case, the task that shows discomfort among the subjects is the unknown "boring task" from the experiment. As the result of the boring nature of the task, there was a general discomfort among the subjects--perhaps causing them to want to move on or avoiding the risk of causing a sense of dissonance among the group. Because they are being, in a sense, forced to comply by being asked to tell the next person that the task was fun, the person who took the most enjoyment in the task was the person who was told that it was a fun task; as the person who was asked to tell the person that it was a fun task was lying--and therefore, there was no dissonance with that subject.