Article Review - Research Paper Example

Prior to the 1957 study, two studies were undergone in 1954 and 1956 to prove that individuals would change their private opinions to make them similar to the behaviors that they were forced to carry out. The study required the participant to improvise a speech that supported a point of view on which he disagreed. During the speech, the opinion of the speaker would gradually change until he agreed with the position of their speech. The results of these studies were inconclusive, prompting Festinger and Carlsmith to conduct their own experiment in an attempt to compile more promising evidence in favor of social comparison.

To prove that individuals gauge their opinions by comparing themselves to others, Festinger and Carlsmith centered a study around the concept of forced compliance, or the belief that opinions can be swayed by the force of outside influence. This study consisted of seventy-one male college students. The participants were instructed to perform a series of dull tasks that were intended to be monotonous and boring. The specific tasks they were assigned involved placing spools onto a tray and then removing them for a half of an hour, then to rotate square pegs clockwise in quarter turns and start over again until all forty-eight square pegs had been turned.

The participants were placed in two separate groups, A and B, with Group A receiving no introduction to the tasks they were being asked to complete, and Group B receiving an introduction during which the experimenter made the tasks seem as though they would be enjoyable. After the mundane tasks had been completed, each participant was interviewed to gauge their experience. Some subjects were dismissed, who became the control group, and the remaining subjects were asked to become experimenters.

They were offered either one or twenty dollars to speak to another group of participants, again making the participants feel as though the tasks would be entertaining. Once the second set of participants had completed their tasks, they were then interviewed about whether or not the tasks were enjoyable and if they would be willing to participate again. When the results of the study were considered, eleven subjects were disqualified due to reasons ranging from telling participants the truth about the study to doubting the sincerity of the original experimenters to pay them after the study had concluded.

Festinger and Carlsmith considered the interviews of the sixty remaining participants. The results declared that even though they experimenters knew the tasks had been tedious and unimaginative, the unpaid group of participants rated the activities by giving them low negative ratings, but the paid group, whether they had received one dollar or twenty, gave higher ratings. In conclusion of the study, Festinger and Carlsmith determined that when people are persuaded to lie without receiving justification for the lie, instead of telling a lie themselves they perform what is expected of them by convincing themselves of the falsehood.

In the case of this particular study, it was also determined that if someone were properly persuaded, as many of these participants were with money, then they would be even more likely to convince themselves of the lie even if they had originally disagreed with the position. Not only