An Abstract for the "Making Hard Choices" Essay

I started graduate school at TC in the early 1960s and ran into some cognitive dissonance research that motivated me to pay more attention to thought processes and the changes that resulted.  In one of those experiments they asked students to write speeches endorsing a plan to raise tuition at the college where the students were attending.  Half of the students were told to write a “raise tuition” speech.  The other half of the students also wrote a tuition-increase speech if they agreed to do it willingly. It was assumed that that both groups would be opposed to the increase before the experiment began, so both of them would be endorsing an idea that they were personally opposed to.  After the speeches were completed, they asked the subjects how much they personally agreed or disagreed with the increase.  The “pressured” subject’s reported a negative attitude, as expected, but the “willing” subject’s exhibited a favorable attitude towards the increase which means that their attitudes changed from negative to positive during the course of the experiment.    

I read the above study years ago and I have never stopped thinking about it. The “willing” subjects promoted a raise-tuition view that was not in their best interests to promote.  It took 30 minutes or less to produce the attitude change and even if the changes were temporary, it was a remarkable outcome. The world is full of people who are trying to change and be something different..  Was there something about that simple experiment that disposed subjects to make unexpected attitude changes when the only condition unique to these subjects was their willingness to do something that was counter intuitive.  

The willing subjects changed their view about tuition cost from negative to positive.   Can the same experimental conditions change a person’s views about moral choices, that really matter, such as, a change from bad to good or from unproductive to productive and so on?  I think the answer is a qualified yes.