--Original published at Ben's PSY105 Blog
I would think if I could have $20 to perform a task, rather than just have $1. However, as the video shows, only being offered $1 makes people force themselves to really change their opinion on the task, since they didn’t have as much motivation to just claim they liked it. In my experience, I feel like I’ve gone through similar experiences in terms of enjoying media. For example, if I kept hearing about how good a new album was, even if I didn’t enjoy it when I listened to it, I would keep telling myself the album is good until I believed it. I feel like a lot people tend to change their opinions simply because other people didn’t agree with them.
Another example of cognitive dissonance, I believe, would be lying about something until you believe in your own lie. If you continue to tell other people something and presenting it as the truth, even when you know it isn’t, you would eventually accept your lie as the truth. I think cognitive dissonance can be dangerous, but it could also be useful. A positive example of cognitive dissonance would be forcing yourself to make a change even though you don’t want to, like knowing exercise is good for you but being too lazy, until you force yourself to start working out. On the other hand, you could be convinced to either believe in a harmful lie or participate in a harmful behavior to get over cognitive dissonance. Knowing smoking is harmful but continuing to smoke anyway would be an example of cognitive dissonance being harmful. It all boils down to people doing things, positively or negatively, because it makes them more comfortable in their choices.