In their 1959 classic paper, Cognitive consequences of forced compliance, Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith describe a study where they gave a set of students an incredibly boring task to do individually. At the end of the task, each participant was instructed to tell the next person how exciting and enjoyable the task was. In other words, they were told to lie. For their efforts, each student was paid - some a paltry amount, while others were paid enough money to go out on a date at a high-end restaurant.
At the end of the study, each participant were asked how much they had really enjoyed the original boring task.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Participants who were paid a little kept on telling the lie, while those who were paid a lot told the honest truth: They had detested the task and did not enjoy it.
This is counterintuitive because you’d expect those who were paid a lot to keep on lying to themselves, and vice versa.
Here’s what’s going on.
People experience some mental discomfort when they behave in ways that are not consistent with their values or beliefs. This state is referred to as cognitive dissonance. Since people generally have a tendency to minimize pain and maximize pleasure, they resort to all forms of rationalization and self-justification in order to enjoy the bliss that psychological consistency delivers.
The group of students that were paid a lot did not have to resolve whether the task was indeed boring or not. When given the permission to do so, they could be objective about how they really felt about task. On the other hand, the students who were paid a little had to struggle to find a consistency between what they did and what they told others about what they did. They were more liable to rationalize the joy in the task with thoughts such as ‘The experimenter told me to tell the others that this task is fun. Maybe it actually is and I haven’t figured it out yet.’
My key takeaway from this study is somewhat related to the concept of sunk costs which I have discussed before. What are the non-essentials in your life that you keep holding on to, even when you know there’s no light at the end of that path? What are the long-term relationships you are still holding on to, even when you realize that they are toxic to you? What are the bad habits you are still engaged in, even when you are aware that they could be the end of you? How long will you keep trying to resolve the conflict between your actions and your values? This is a conversation you need to have with yourself.