Page 241 - The Social Animal

Self-Justification 223

The Justification of Effort

Dissonance theory leads to the prediction that, if a person works
hard to attain a goal, that goal will be more attractive to the indi-
vidual than it will be to someone who achieves the same goal with
little or no effort. An illustration might be useful: Suppose you are
a college student who decides to join a fraternity. To be admitted,
you must pass an initiation; let us assume it is a rather severe one
that involves a great deal of effort, pain, or embarrassment. After
successfully completing the ordeal, you are admitted to the frater-
nity. When you move into the fraternity house, you find that your
new roommate has some peculiar habits: For example, he plays his
stereo loudly after midnight, borrows money without returning it,
and occasionally leaves his dirty laundry on your bed. In short, an
objective person might consider him to be an inconsiderate slob. But
you are not an objective person any longer: Your cognition that you
went through hell and high water to get into the fraternity is disso-
nant with any cognitions about your life in the fraternity that are
negative, unpleasant, or undesirable. To reduce dissonance, you will
try to see your roommate in the most favorable light possible. Again,
there are constraints imposed by reality—no matter how much pain
and effort you went through, there is no way an inconsiderate slob
can be made to look much like Prince Charming—but, with a little
ingenuity, you can convince yourself that he isn’t so bad. What some
people might call sloppy, for example, you might consider casual.
Thus, his playing the stereo loudly at night and his leaving his dirty
laundry around only serve to demonstrate what an easygoing fellow
he is—and because he’s so nice and casual about material things, it’s
certainly understandable that he would forget about the money he
owes you.
Prince Charming he isn’t, but he’s certainly tolerable. Contrast
this viewpoint with what your attitude would have been had you
made no investment of effort: Suppose you had moved into a regu-
lar campus dormitory and encountered the same roommate. Because
there was no investment of effort in obtaining this room, there is no
dissonance; because there is no dissonance, there is no need for you
to see your roommate in the best possible light. My guess is that you
would quickly write him off as an inconsiderate slob and try to make
arrangements to move to a different room.