Japanese Psychological Research 1980, Vol.22, No.1, 32-41 ATTRIBUTION OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND DISSONANCE REDUCTION HARUKI SAKAI AND KIYOSHI ANDOW 1 University of Tokyo The relationship between personal responsibility and dissonance reduction was investigated in a situation where an individual had to undergo a negative consequence caused by an agent beyond his control, i.e., by chance. Eighty participants received either strong or weak electric shock, depending on the oddness or evenness of spots of a die thrown either by the experimenter (Ex- perimenter-Caused condition) or by the participant himself (Participant- Caused condition). It was found that participants in the Participant-Caused condition evaluated electric shocks less painful, estimated their heart rates to be less faster, and perceived the experimenter more intelligent and favorable than participants in the Experimenter-Caused condition. These results were interpreted as lending support to the newly reformulated dissonance theory. Cognitive dissonance theory has been tion may be observed only to the degree reformulated by some authors since the that the individual sees himself as re- original statement (Festinger, 1957) ap- sponsible for bringing cognitions into an peared in the late 1950s. Brehm and inconsistent relationship (p. 10). Cohen (1962) stated that dissonance was These reformulations cited above clearly aroused only when an individual was concerned with the necessary conditions bound by a behavioral commitment to for dissonance arousal, and it may be said, one of the inconsistent cognitions. Aron- as Greenwald and Ronis (1978) pointed son (1968) stressed that the self concept or out, that dissonance theory has evolved some other firmly held expectancy must along a direction of convergence with be involved for dissonance to be aroused ideas from the tradition of self theory. (e.g., Nel, Helmreich, & Aronson, 1969). Thus far several studies have investi- Recently Wicklund and Brehm (1976) gated the relationship between personal have refined the earlier revisions in terms responsibility and dissonance reduction. of the concept of personal responsibility: For example, Sogin and Pallak (1976) ... dissonance arousal requires the per- offered subjects high or low choice for ceptions of a strong causal link between their performing a dull random-number- oneself and the potentially dissonance- writing task. Half of the subjects were arousing event. Unless such a connec- told that task usefulness depended on the tion is perceived, the behavior and con- subject and that task results from others sequence are two irrelevant cognitions as had been useful, while the other half were far as the person is concerned, and the told that task usefulness depended on terms consonance and dissonance are not chance and that task results from others applicable (p. 70). ... Dissonance reduc- had also been useless. This information 1 The authors wish to express their thanks to was intended to vary the extent to which subjects thought that they were responsible Associate Professor Toshiro Suenaga for his helpful comments on the earlier manuscript. Requests for for the usefulness of their production. All reprints should be sent to Haruki Sakai, Depart- subjects later learned that their task results ment of Psychology, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo- were useless (i.e., negative consequences). ku, Tokyo, 113 Japan. Postexperimental ratings of the number Responsibility & Dissonance Reduction 33 task revealed that the task was seen as cepting or rejecting the personal responsi- more enjoyable in the high than in the bility may be used as a mode of dissonance low-choice conditions, but only when sub- reduction, although there are some meth- jects were led to feel responsible for the odological difficulties to test this idea consequence. Thus these results clearly strictly. These hypotheses are:(a) Even demonstrate that personal responsibility when conditions are not right for inducing for negative consequences affects dis- responsibility, if the cognition reflecting a sonance reduction processes. Similarly, negative consequence is highly resistant to Cooper (1971) has suggested that counter- change, personal responsibility may be attitudinal behavior will produce dis- accepted retrospectively so that the nega- sonance if the actor feels personally re- tivity of the event could be ameliorated by sponsible for the consequences of the means of dissonance reduction;(b) even behavior. According to Cooper (1971), when conditions are right for inducing personal responsibility is accepted if the responsibility, if the cognition reflecting a person had free choice in performing the negative consequence is not highly resistant behavior and the person was able to foresee to change, personal responsibility may be its negative consequences. rejected retrospectively to reduce or avoid In some situations, however, a person possible dissonance. In order to help would feel personally responsible for a test the latter two hypotheses, the present consequence, even if there is no sufficient experiment included the variable of" an- ground for that feeling from an objective ticipated duration of the negative con- point of view (see Wortman, 1975). The sequence" which was expected to vary main purpose of the present study was to the resistance-to-change of cognition re- investigate whether the concept of per- flecting the negative consequence. sonal resposibility suggested by Wicklund An additional purpose of the present and Brehm (1976) could be extended to study was to examine the impact of such a situation where an individual has cognitive dissonance on physiological vari- to undergo a negative consequence caused ables. There is now fairly good evidence by an agent beyond his control, i.e., by that the cognitive changes specified by chance. Wicklund and Brehm's (1976) dissonance theory are eventually mani- formulation leads to the following hy- fested in physiological changes as well. pothesis with respect to a negative conse- For example, Zimbardo, Cohen, Weisen- quence caused by chance: If a person berg, Dworkin, and Firestone (1969) has a feeling of personal responsibility for found that a subject who committed him- a negative consequence even if he did not self to receiving electric shock reduced his bring it about objectively, dissonance will dissonance by lowering his felt level of be aroused. Hence the person will try to pain. In addition, they demonstrated that reduce the dissonance mainly by, in this GSR responses were lower for the high- case, underestimating the negative con- dissonance than the low-dissonance sub- sequence itself. Wortman (1975) found jects. Glass and Mayhew (1969) replicated that merely causing a chance outcome Zimbardo et al.'s (1969) findings in a and having foreknowledge about the con- similar situation. Furthermore, Brehm, sequence induces a feeling of personal Back, and Bogdonoff (1964) found that responsibility. Accordingly, the Wort- dissonance altered hunger level, and that man's (1975) procedure can provide a it was reliably related to changes in the necessary basis for testing the hypothesis level of free fatty acids (FFA). In the mentioned above. present study, the participants' pulse rates A second purpose of the present study were monitored throughout the experi- was to examine the possibility that ac- ment to examine whether the changes 34 H. SAKAI AND K. ANDOW noted earlier in cognitions could be ex- METHOD tended to the noncognitive components of pain. Measuring pulse rates was also Participants. Eighty-three male under- expected to make the" cover story" of graduates at the University of Tokyo the experiment more plausible for the participated individually in the experi- participants. ment entitled" a study of the effects of Theoretical expectations described thus tension state on human behavior." A far were investigated by means of a 2•~ total of three participants were not in- 2•~2 factorial design. In the present ex- cluded in the analyses (one because he periment, electric shock was utilized as a couldn't comprehend the instruction, one negative consequence. The first variable, because he rejected to receive electric causal agent, was whether a die was shock, one because of an equipment mal- thrown by the experimenter (Experimenter- function), leaving a final sample of eighty Caused condition) or by the participants participants. All of them were paid themselves (Participant-Caused condition). 500 yen (approx. 2 dollars) for their The second variable, magnitude of nega- participation at the end of the experiment. tive consequence, was manipulated by the Procedure. When the participant arrived level of electric shock determined by for the experiment, the experimenter in- casting a die (Large-Negative-Consequence troduced himself and escorted him to the versus Small-Negative-Consequence con- experimental room. He was seated at a dition). The third variable, anticipated table facing a small screen on which a duration of negative consequence, was " flow diagram of the experiment" was manipulated by telling the participants written. Then the experimenter gave that a negative task would require either him a general introduction: thirty minutes (Long-Duration condition) The purpose of this study is to in- or only a few minutes (Short-Duration vestigate how tension state affects hu- condition). man behavior. There are, of course, The hypotheses were as follows: many studies which investigated its ef- 1. Participants in the Participant-Caused fects on the