Assume That You Were a Participant in the Experiment Conducted

question 126

Multiple Choice

Assume that you were a participant in the experiment conducted by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) in which participants were paid either a large or small sum of money to tell an innocent stranger that the boring, tedious task you had just completed was really enjoyable and very interesting.Further assume that you were paid a large amount of money to tell the stranger that lie.In this situation, you would be most likely to

• A) convince yourself that the boring task was actually more interesting than you had previously thought.
• B) maintain your original assessment of the task as dull and boring.
• C) convince yourself that the stranger deserved to be lied to.
• D) ask to complete the task again, given that you had high internal justification for doing so.

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Definitions:

Separate Control Group

A group in an experiment that is not exposed to the treatment or intervention and is used as a benchmark to measure the effects of such treatment.

Regression Toward the Mean

The statistical phenomenon that high or low scores naturally tend to move closer to the average over time.

Extreme Scores

Values in a data set that are significantly higher or lower than the majority of the other scores, potentially skewing results.

Less Extreme

Refers to measures or values that are closer to the average or mean in a distribution, as opposed to being more extreme or far from the average.