Social Dissonance Theory Paper

In relation to the first question, the results showed that subjects in the control group rated their experience somewhat negatively. Subjects in the one dollar category rated their experience statistically more positively in comparison to the control group while the twenty dollar category’s average rating was only minimally higher than that of the control group. Participants in the one dollar group also responded more positively when asked about their willingness to participate it similar experiments compared with the control group. There was no significant difference in responses from all subjects in relation to how much they had learned from the experiment. These results are in line with the authors predictions as the response to this question should not be affected by the created element of cognitive dissonance. The findings in this study strongly supported Festinger’s (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance and derivations in relation to forced compliance (Festinger and Carlsmith 1957).
An obvious strength of this piece of research is the importance of the theory to the field of psychology. Cognitive Dissonance theory is one of the most extensively studied theories in social psychology and is considered one of the most influential theories in the field. (Gabronski 2012, Perlovsky 2013, …show more content…
The subjects in this study did have a choice of which studies to participate in and selected them by signing up on a university bulletin board. The guidelines also state the participant has the right to withdraw consent at any stage, the authors do not address this issue in the report and this can be considered a weakness in the study. The use of excessive incentives or financial rewards for participation in research should be avoided. In this study for some