jan 1, 1959 - Festinger and Carlsmith conduct a study on the Insufficient Justification Effect / Cognitive Dissonance

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Festinger and Carlsmith did a study on 60 male Stanford students (it was originally 71, but 11 were disqualified). They had these men perform a very dull and remedial task, then they asked the men to convince the next person to perform the task that it was interesting. The interesting part is that they offered the men $1 or $20 to lie about it being enjoyable. The original thought on this manner of justification is that those who received $20 would be more ready to say that it was fun, but the study found that it was actually the $1 Ss who had changed/believed their view on the activity. This showed that when the reward for a task is low, views will change to alleviate cognitive dissonance.
https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/345/345%20Articles/Festinger%20&%20Carlsmith.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_compliance_theory

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