Dissonance, self-perception, and the perception of others: A study in Cognitive cognitive dissonance

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Abstract

Subjects were simultaneously involved participants in a dissonance experiment and observers of other participants. As involved subjects, those who expected to expend a great deal of effort preparing for a test which they might not have to take showed high subjective probability that they personally would take the test. As observer subjects answering the same question for the person seated three seats away, they showed no such respons veness to the manipulation of anticipated effort. The apparent demonstration of dissonance reduction by subjects who engaged in no overt behavior from which to infer their beliefs challanges Bem's (1965, 1967) self-perception interpretation of what others have regarded as dissonance reduction. The failure of observer subjects to duplicate the subjective probability responses of involved subjects under identical stimulus conditions poses further problems for Bem's self-perception model. The data suggest the subjective response to an aversive motivational state rather than simple selfperception.

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This research was supported by grants from the Ontario Mental Health Foundation (110) and the Deference Research Board of Canada (9465-11). We thank Miss Lorraine Wood for assistance in gathering the data, Drs. Leyla de Toledo and Abraham Ross for aid in recruiting subjects, and Donald Dutton and Robert Lake for a critical analysis of many of the points raised.

2

Now at the University of Michigan.

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