Cognitive Dissonance and Impression Management Explanations for Effort Justification
- 1 September 1984
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Vol. 10 (3), 394-401
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167284103007
Abstract
When individuals expend effort for a task that turns out to be boring or trivial they often justify their effort by enhancing the ratings of the task. The present experiment attempted to differentiate between two explanations for this process of effort justification: dissonance and impression management. Subjects completed either a simple (low effort) or difficult (high effort) number-circling task for an experimenter who was either friendly and pleasant (high attractiveness) or rude and unpleasant (low attractiveness). Contrary to impression management theory, and as predicted by cognitive dissonance theory, effort justification occurred only in the presence of the unattractive experimenter.Keywords
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