Article Review

Running head: ARTICLE REVIEW
Article review
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1ARTICLE REVIEW
Topic, purpose and importance of the study:
The article by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) focussed on the topic of cognitive
dissonance resulting in opinion change following forced compliance. This is in relation to the
situation where a personal is induced to make a statement contrary to his private opinion because
of rewards. The main purpose of the research was to investigate the derivation whether amount
of rewards forces a person to make a contrary statement or not. The significance of research in
this area is that it will help to identify the reason behind immoral acts or behaviour in society.
Researchers question and hypotheses:
The research question for the article by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) was that whether
more number of rewards increases the likelihood of giving contrary statement or not. The
research hypothesis is that the larger the reward given to people, the smaller will be the
subsequent opinion change.
Methods and unique features of the study:
Experimental study was done with seventy one male students studying in the psychology
course at Stanford University and they had to spend certain number of hours as research
participants by choosing among the available experiments in which they wanted to participate.
The present study was a two hour experiment. Two groups were taken in the experiment. First
group included those who were about previous expectation about the experiment and the other
group was the one who had no expectation about the experiment. The subjects were given the
task of putting spools onto a tray, emptying the tray and refilling it with spools. The
experimented focused on observing behaviour of subject. After this, the subjects were divided
into control, one dollar and twenty dollar group. One dollar group were given one dollar to tell