19.4: Effort Justification and Dissonance

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The second sort of dissonance phenomena involves our need to justify the effort that we put into something. For example, numerous studies show that when people undergo a severe or difficult initiation to join a group, they value membership in the group more than people who don’t have to go through so much to get in.

People who undergo a severe initiation seem to reason as follows: I am a sensible person who would not put myself through this difficult initiation if it were not worth doing; I am putting myself through all this difficulty. Now if the group isn’t worth belonging to, this package of thoughts is inconsistent and that will create dissonance. But if the group is worth the effort, that could justify what I’ve been going through. More generally (just as your grandmother always said), people tend to value things more when they must work hard to get them.