Raffle Tickets take advantage of cognitive dissonance
• Posted by birdman on May 5th, 2009
I just realised that raffle tickets take unabashed advantage of cognitive dissonance.
I first heard of the phrase ‘cognitive dissonance’ from the book “The Lucifer Effect”, and then understood it as the effect when a person’s actions affect their thinking. The second time I came across it was during my research for my MPPD critical appraisal on “The relationship between pharmaceutical companies and medical students”. The third time was just now, rumaging through my bag and pulling out a raffle ticket I recently acquired.
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An experiment goes as follows - a large group of children was split into two groups. Both groups would ultimately be placed in a room full of toys for a period of time. One group, A, was shown a particularly attractive toy that they were not allowed to play with, and told that if they played with it, they would be severely punished. The other group, B, was shown the same attractive toy and were told they were not allowed to play with it, and were also told there would be punishment if they played with it, but in this case the punishment was purposefully mild.
After all children had spend their time in the room, it was found that all the children did not play with the toy, following the rule they had been given.
Next, the same children were put into the room, and were given the same toys to play with, this time without instruction. It was found that many more of the children who were told they would be severely punished actually ended up playing with the forbidden toy the second time around than the children who would be given only mild punishment.
Numerous studies on this topic suggest an explanation for this phenomenon: the need to reduce cognitive dissonance.
So what is cognitive dissonance? It is the state where our mind is in conflict within itself. Conflict can be between thoughts, beliefs, actions etc.
Group A did not play with the toy mainly because of the threat of severe punishment. This is different from Group B, who had no strong reason to not play with the toy, as only a mild punishment would be received. This lack of a strong reason is the catalyst for Group B, in which cognitive dissonance would have been higher. Group A children would have thought - “I want to play with that toy… but the rules say it is forbidden. Also, if I play with it I will feel bad later.” In this way, they easily able to justify to themselves why they did not play with the toy. Group B children, however, would have thought - “I want to play with that toy… but the rules say it is forbidden… but nothing really bad will happen if I play with it… I can’t find a good reason not to play with that toy.” The children in Group B, however, finally did not play with the toy. They are therefore suffering from a contradiction between their thoughts and their beliefs. The fact that they did not play with the toys demonstrated that they ultimately made up their own minds about why they did not want to play with the toy, in order to justify their actions to themselves, and resolve the cognitive dissonance. As shown by the second part of the experiment, this ultimately lead to behavioural change.
And who would have thought that this is becomes very relevant when discussing pharamceutical companies and medical students?
Part 2 coming later. I’m sure you’ll be able to guess what I’m going to say next.
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