Page 261 - The Social Animal

Self-Justification 243

the pain of those in the high-dissonance condition interfered less
with the tasks they were performing. Thus, not only did they report
less pain, but, objectively, they were less bothered by it.
Similar results have been shown for hunger and thirst. Jack
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Brehm reported a series of experiments in which people were de-
prived of either food or water for long periods. In addition to experi-
encing hunger or thirst, these individuals experienced high or low
dissonance for much the same reasons as Zimbardo’s participants.
Specifically, some had low external justification for undergoing the
hunger or thirst, whereas others had high external justification. For the
participants experiencing great dissonance,the best available way to re-
duce it was to minimize the experience of hunger or thirst. In separate
experiments on hunger and thirst, Brehm found that high-dissonance
participants said they were less hungry (or thirsty) than low-disso-
nance participants who were deprived of food (or water) for the same
length of time. Again, this was no mere verbal report: After the exper-
iment, when all of the participants were allowed to eat (or drink) freely,
those in the high dissonance condition actually consumed less food (or
water) than those in the low-dissonance condition.

Practical Applications of Dissonance
Theory

One of the reasons the theory of cognitive dissonance has attracted
such great interest and inspired so much research is its ability to ex-
plain and predict phenomena not readily explainable in commonsense
terms. Furthermore, as the reader has seen, dissonance theory has been
applied to account for a great many phenomena, ranging from how ru-
mors are spread to major changes in important attitudes and behav-
iors—from practicing safer sex to the reduction of racial prejudice.

Reducing Weight by Reducing
Dissonance

Beyond its power to help us understand and predict a variety of phe-
nomena, a theory is of particular value if it can be practically applied
in ways that benefit people. Earlier in this chapter, I pointed out cog-
nitive dissonance theory’s relevance for educators wishing to instill