• take back book (change behavior so it aligns with original attitudes about Ben)
• decide Ben is actually a good guy (change attitudes about Ben so they align with new behavior)

In one experiment, three psychology graduate students join a doomsday cult with the hidden intent of simply observing what goes on, so they can publish a paper on it later. (Ideal research.) This cult had a charismatic leader, a Ms. Kitsch, who apparently was telepathically tuned to the planet Clarion. The world was going to end soon on a particular date. A flying saucer would pick up the cult members at a particular location. Ms. Kitsch included many details that seemed to make her prophecy more convincing, such as saying that all pieces of metal would have to be removed during the pick up (perhaps the metal would disrupt the tractor beam). The students watch cult members give up everything, relinquishing their jobs and families, selling all possessions.

On doomsday, the cult members are standing in the middle of nowhere, staring quietly up at the sky, waiting with bated breath. The anticipation in the air is so thick, you could pick it up and eat it with chopsticks. The critical moment comes. The critical moment passes! Hey we're still alive! The graduate students look around, and look at each other. An awkward silence. What happens now? Ms. Kitsch then says that she's receiving another message from the aliens, and will be back shortly. After a brief leave, Ms. Kitsch returns and says: "We have saved the world."

How did the cult members respond to this contradiction? You might think they became really angry, having discarded their entire lives for an event that didn't happen. However, what actually happened is that belief in the cult became stronger than ever. The cult members were even more convinced of the cult's validity. It is worth noting that the cult body tended to consist of rational and intelligent people, often skilled in computers and web design (a useful skill to have for disseminating propaganda).

Those poor females who recited Henry Miller decided that the boring discussion was actually interesting. They changed their attitude about the ends to justify the means.

Three experimental conditions then follow:

• Control: Fill out questionnaire describing how much they liked the experiment.
• Case 1: The experimenter tells the students that he's running late, and there are still other students (actually confederates) waiting to be debriefed. He offers the students $1 to help him debrief the others, and just tell them how much they liked the study. Afterwards, the students fill out a questionnaire like in the control condition.
• Case 2: Same as Case 1, except the experimenter awards $20.

Results:

The control condition results prove that the experiment was indeed excruciatingly boring. The other conditions produced contradictions in the subjects: even though they disliked the experiment, they were paid money to tell others how much they liked it. Those who received $20 used the money to relieve their dissonance: their public lies were justified by the fact that they were getting $20 to say the lies, and thus their original attitude toward the experiment didn't change. However, those who received only $1 had trouble justifying their lies for such a small amount of money. Thus, they reconcile that they must have liked the experiment.

• just compose the speech
• compose speech, then recite it on video camera for a high school audience
• compose speech, write a list of circumstances in which you have failed to use condoms, and then recite your speech on camera for a high school audience

After the ordeal, students were given the opportunity to purchase condoms cheaply.

Results: Students in the hypocrisy condition were far more likely to buy condoms. By reminding the students of their failure to use condoms, and then having them preach condom usage, Aronson induced high dissonance. To remove this dissonance, students practiced what they preached. Follow-up telephone interviews with the students several months later showed that the hypocrisy condition students were still practicing condom usage to a greater extent than students in other conditions.

Miller and Brickman were trying to figure out how to convince 5th graders to pick up their trash during recess. (5th graders tend to just drop their crap on the ground.) A nigh impossible task, considering how 5th graders tend to be ... in the words of my psychology professor Dr. Dacher Keltner, "monsters". Tell them to do one thing and they'll do the opposite.

Three different experimental conditions:

• Control: The researchers didn't do anything to the 5th graders.
• Persuasion: The 5th graders listen to lectures about environmental awareness and the consequences of improper litter disposal.
• Labels: Adults at the school label the 5th graders as really clean people. A teacher might say, "Wow, you kids are so clean! Gosh I'm impressed." When the principal comes by to visit the class, he might say, "Oh, you guys must be the neat and tidy kids! I've heard about you."

Results:

Dramatic effects. 85% of the kids in the labelled class condition picked up their trash during recess. Also note that the persuasion approach using environmental lectures had no effect on 5th graders whatsoever.

Psychologists went door to door in Palo Alto, asking housewives if they would grant ridiculous requests. In one experiment, they claimed to be conducting some scientific survey, and asked, "Would you allow 5-6 people to come into your kitchen, search through it, and classify all household objects?" In another experiment, they were asked to post a giant, obtrusive sign that says "Drive Carefully" on their front lawns.

Both experiments had two conditions. In the first condition, the subjects were asked only the large requests. In the second, the psychologists preceded their large request with a a small request. For instance, they might first ask the housewives to sign a petition about driving safely before asking them to post the giant sign. Interestingly, it didn't matter whether or not the small request was thematically related to the large request! Sometimes the petition was about environmental causes instead of driving. The dramatic results, shown below, were the same.