Page 242 - The Social Animal

224 The Social Animal

These speculations were tested in an experiment I performed al-
most five decades ago in collaboration with my friend Judson Mills. 48
In this study, college women volunteered to join a group that would
be meeting regularly to discuss various aspects of the psychology of
sex. The women were told that, if they wanted to join, they would
first have to go through a screening test designed to ensure that all
people admitted to the group could discuss sex freely and openly.
This instruction served to set the stage for the initiation procedure.
One third of the women were assigned to a severe initiation proce-
dure, which required them to recite aloud a list of obscene words.
One third of the students underwent a mild procedure, in which they
recited a list of words that were sexual but not obscene.The final one
third of the participants were admitted to the group without under-
going an initiation. Each participant was then allowed to listen in on
a discussion being conducted by the members of the group she had
just joined. Although the women were led to believe the discussion
was a live, ongoing one, what they actually heard was a prerecorded
tape. The taped discussion was arranged so that it was as dull and as
bombastic as possible. After it was over, each participant was asked
to rate the discussion in terms of how much she liked it, how inter-
esting it was, how intelligent the participants were, and so forth.
The results supported the predictions: Those participants who
made little or no effort to get into the group did not enjoy the dis-
cussion very much. They were able to see it for what it was—a dull
and boring waste of time.Those participants who went through a se-
vere initiation, however, succeeded in convincing themselves that the
same discussion was interesting and worthwhile.
The same pattern of results has been shown by other investiga-
tors using different kinds of unpleasant initiations. For example,
49
Harold Gerard and Grover Mathewson conducted an experiment
similar in concept to the Aronson-Mills study, except that the par-
ticipants in the severe-initiation condition were given painful elec-
tric shocks instead of a list of obscene words to read aloud. The
results paralleled those of Aronson and Mills: Those who underwent
a series of severe electric shocks to become members of a group liked
that group better than those who underwent a series of mild electric
shocks.
It should be clear I am not asserting that people enjoy painful ex-
periences—they do not; nor am I asserting that people enjoy things